Reddit reviews The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke
We found 45 Reddit comments about The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
She literally wrote the book on the changing structure of the American economy and how it was affecting the American working class, spotting the problems long before most people were switched onto it. She predicted the financial crisis when nobody else did.
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907
I wonder how much of this has to do with the shift towards more women entering the workforce. Theoretically, wages may be suppressed as more people enter the workforce.
I'd bet the average household income and buying power have gone up.
edit: since this has gotten a small discussion going.. if you are interested in these concepts you might be interested in https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907
While your overall point is correct, I wouldn't dismiss the commenter so quickly. You are correct that the pricing mechanism they describe is inaccurate, and that the firm's cost structure is hugely important. (Unless the firm had extremely effective price discrimination and a huge degree of market power). However, I believe that the cited comment is actually making (or could potentially make) two different arguments as its core claims:
First, arguing from a general "Keeping up with the Jones" principle. In particular,
> Because the more things people have, the more people expect you to have it.
While the nice things that people have surely provide utility in of themselves, part of the utility that these goods provide is in the signal of social status relative to those around you. Similar to the argument that Krugman puts forth, relative increases in wealth can matter more than absolute increases. In this case, the fact that people around you have nicer things exerts pressure on you to own those same goods. You can't extend this argument to say "people in the 90s aren't any better off than they were in the 50s", but dismissing OP out of hand seems unfair.
Secondly, we may imagine that some goods are zero-sum, or at least close to zero-sum. Elizabeth Warren makes this argument regarding dual-income families in The Two-Income Trap. While OP doesn't reference this specifically, a great example of this phenomenon might be access to high quality public schools. The best-quality public schools have a finite and relatively constant number of seats, such that they are accessible only to people in the top X% of income. If all families excepting yours begin sending both parents to work, and use that supplemental income to purchase property near these upper-tier school, the relative tier of school you attend will fall, even if your actual income remains unchanged. If everyone's income doubles, it may well be that the relative tier of school you attend is unchanged. The absolute quality of every school may increase, but ranking is often seen as more important. (Numerous thinkpieces describe this same phenomenon as being behind the increased competition in college applications, particularly for elite schools).
Elizabeth Warren wrote a book about it:
https://www.amazon.ca/Two-Income-Trap-Elizabeth-Warren/dp/0465090907
I've noticed that this sub sees a lot of posts from students who want to go into social work but are resistant to social work values specifically and social justice practice more generally. The overwhelming impression I've gotten every time someone has posted to this effect is that they genuinely do want to help people, but they:
I'm not trying to be harsh or criticize; it's simply an observation of patterns I've seen emerge here (and also r/psychotherapy). And while I don't think that mentality means that you can't be a social worker at all, it does mean that you'll likely be fighting an uphill battle to be effective because, with that attitude, you're going to:
When you impose your worldview, social narratives, and beliefs on clients and try to dictate what they should and shouldn't be doing, you're going to have a bad time. I think the social work perspective is way less about some arbitrary set of rules developed by academics and internet armchair activists and way more about recognizing that other peoples' experiences are valid, meeting them where they are, and not imposing your own values or expectations on them. To me, that's beyond the scope of American liberal vs. conservative politics.
Anyway. Your paragraph examples are misinformed, so a handful of links, if you're interested:
Back in the 1950s, certainly, some women who wanted to work in professional jobs were prevented from doing so based on a combination of social pressure and employment discrimination.
Today, as Elizabeth Warren extensively documented 15 years ago, many families struggle to make ends meet with two incomes, when their parents and grandparents made do with one. The result is that many women who would prefer to stay home with the kids instead are forced to enter the workplace due to economic pressure.
It's not at all clear to me that the feminist revolution has led to any decrease in the net amount of coercion exercised on women. It has simply changed who is getting coerced and what they are getting coerced into doing. It's entirely possible, depending on what percentage of women would prefer to be stay-at-home moms, that the net amount of coercion has actually increased.
>I think it's because society expects women to be childish and not men ,
No. You are basing your hypothesis on a flawed premise. You can't equate fashion with gaming in the manner you are doing.
For most women historically - and some women today - the only means of advancement was an advantageous marriage. Prior to the industrial age there were many means of making such a match because most households required economic input (work) from two genders to be viable. Our economy was set up to be "complementary" such that neither a man nor a woman alone was an economically viable unit. A simple example would be a shepherd boy who stood to inherit part of a flock. He would need a wife skilled in weaving/dyeing to be economically viable since clothe sells for enough to keep a household afloat while raw wool does not. Likewise the daughter of a shepherd would be trained by her mother in exactly those crafts and need a husband with a herd of sheep.
But we switched with the rise of the industrial age to a non-complementary economic system and for awhile in the last century to a single-earner model where the men still had trades and crafts but the women didn't. For those decades the only way for a woman to make an advantageous match was to be physically/socially attractive. You couldn't buckle down and be an amazing weaver or skilled in the stillroom or an amazing cook and attract a mate interested in a hardworking craftswoman as a wife. Meanwhile the guys no longer needed to evaluate potential wives by any metric other than attractiveness. They didn't need a wife who was also a business partner anymore. Heck, with microwaves they didn't even need good cooks.
So makeup became our mothers' trade. And fashion her craft. Not hobby. Not trivial amusement. People refer to lipstick and mascara as warpaint for a reason. It is/was economic warfare. And as such deadly serious as all the energy and talent that previously went to other forms of work got poured into these things for lack of any other outlet. Thankfully that time is past and the Two Income Normality has returned.
No amount of raiding in WOW will increase your standard of living. In fact, if you do it in excess it will probably stagnate or decrease your standard of living. Its a hobby/diversion. Letting the important things in life slide to do it is indeed childish. Meanwhile, The Miss America Beauty Pageant is the Largest Provider of Scholarships for Women and surveys show that physically attractive women consistently earn more money than less attractive women. It literally pays to accessorize well. And thats without adding the few remaining gold diggers into the equation.
>That's why there is no equivalent for term for women like women-child
Actually there is.
/shrug
You even guessed it. Its literally "woman-child". Its in urban dictionary. The Japanese call them "Parasite Singles". Happy googling.
> He says it's not really enough money to quit working permanently
That rather depends on a lot of other factors.
> I may not be able to get back to work above being a walmart greeter if I leave now.
Hyperbole, but not by much. The plain truth is that any time off will have major impacts on your career path. A few months is okay; a few years and your experience will no longer be relevant, your references will be useless, your contacts will have moved on. You'll be starting over from scratch, more or less.
> He said the money really belongs to our family, not just to me,
Depends where you live, but legally that's almost certainly incorrect. Morally, it's a bit trickier, but I'm not sure it matters hugely, because....
> we should make a decision about how to spend it as a unit.
You should make all major decisions (and deciding how to spend nearly a million dollars is certainly major) as a unit; otherwise you're not really married in any meaningful sense.
> My kids are the most important thing in the world to me and I can't think of a better way to use this money than to get more time with them.
How about saving for retirement? How about using it to buy a house in a nicer school district? How about a cushion to pay for unexpected medical bills? How about putting it in a college fund? (Your assertion that you and your husband paid your own way though and your kids can too is charming, but sort of ignores the reality of how college tuition has changed over the past 10-15 years.) How about spending it on a vacation with your husband?
That being said, I see in your comments you reckon your take home after tax and daycare is $8,400/year. That's absurdly low. You might want to look at the book The Two Income Trap, by Elizabeth Warren. If you are disciplined and frugal, it's very possible that you could save money in the short term, by staying at home, with or without the inheritance; don't forget the added costs for transport, professional clothes, cleaning, prepared meals, etc. that also come along with working outside the home.
Then again, remember that spending all day every day with kids will quite possibly drive you mad, and that once they're off living their own lives your career will be completely derailed. Throwing away a career to provide daycare to your kids may seem very sensible while they're in daycare. What will you do when they're in high school, or college, or have left home entirely? In 20 years you'll probably be making a fair bit more money, but your daycare costs will be 0. Taking off now impacts the money you'll make for the rest of your life.
Anyhow, don't think of this as "I can invest the money, live off the interest, and stop working for 'free'". If you quite working, it'll cost the $8,400/year you're giving up in salary; if you increase your consumption any more due to the inheritance, that's an additional cost. (If that doesn't make sense, look up the concept of "opportunity cost" and "sunk costs". If you go from making $8,400/year to spending $8,400/year of your inheritence, the total cost is not $0/year, not is it $8,400/year, it's $16,800 a year.)
Still, at the end of the day, you don't have a money problem, you have a communication problem. The fact that you got crosswise with your husband over how to spend this suggests to me that you need to really step back and work on your relationship. Draw up sample budgets with different options, and talk to him about what he thinks you guys should do, and what his concerns are. If you approach this as "it's my money, and I can do with it what I want", then your marriage is fucked.
You should read Elizabeth Warren's The Two-Income Trap. Consumerism is an easy scapegoat but it isn't actually as much of a problem that many people think it is. The reality is that many times people are forced into decisions because there's simply no other option - living in expensive, car-oriented suburbs where you have to drive 30 minutes to work just to give your kids some decent schools to attend.
Also, the amount of pollution by the average person is peanuts compared to large corporations.
No, but, I have a lot of disposable income in terms of percentage of my net. I suppose you could argue I'm in the "two-income trap", but since I don't have kids it's less of a trap and more fancy lunches whenever I please.
Here's the video. She wrote a book as well.
She, along with her daughter, wrote a whole book tackling this subject: The Two-Income Trap
Lot's of undertones of the theme of the "Two Income Trap" here (http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907/).
I have a coworker whose kid was accepted to some good school, but he has to move his family or get an address in a new school district. House prices in our area are on a Saturn V rocket to the moon right now (though that may change), and his hunt is going poorly. Every day he comes in, and is just dejected for any NUMBER of reasons: nice house went pending before he got in, wife couldn't decide, cost too much, he didn't like it but she did, she liked it but he didn't, she's mad about him not liking it, time is ticking... etc. etc. etc. Just seems completely unnecessary.
The wife and I recently purchased, and we had ample opportunity and discussion about purchase into the "two income house" range to get something closer to town, but... we opted against it ultimately. Just didn't feel safe... and we went for a house we could afford (barely) with just 1 income.
The part about parents reporting a higher level of overall happiness seems like garbage. I'll buy the "having kids was worth it" but I'm not going to buy the "no kids means unhappy" and "my kids are my retirement strategy" lines. It's always anecdotal, but everyone knows PLENTY of well educated, well brought up, rock stars in HS/College who are total EFF ups and can't be relied upon to do much, let alone fund your retirement.
It's not the only reason I do not want children, but it is in the mix somewhere: You can be the worlds best parent, literally impart your kid with the best genes and the best skills imaginable, and there is STILL a very high non-zero chance they will be a complete fuck up.
Wife and I are not having children (emphatic, relationship is based on it, snippage is scheduled for very soon), and we are always asked, "Who will take care of you when you are older and unable to care for yourself?" My wife's answer, always half a second later, is, "Morphine."
Is the two-income trap when you trap yourself in more income, higher living standards, a more efficient economy, and more freedom?
>mutta vähänkään hyvän duunin syrjässä kiinniolevilla on Yhdysvalloissa aivan merkittävästi paremmat tulot kuin Suomessa koulutuksen, terveydenhuollon ja eläkesäästöjen kustannuksista huolimatta.
Mitä jos tulot muutetaan tuntipalkaksi? Amerikkalaiset tekevät kamalasti töitä. Olisi myös kiva tietää kuinka suuri osa tuotteiden halpuudesta tulee siitä, että Yhdysvalloissa on paljon erittäin pienituloisia ns. working poor talouksia. Lähes kaikissa tuotteissa työn osuus on merkittävä.
Kotitalouksien käytettävissä oleva mediaanitulo ostovoimakorjattuna verojen jälkeen (disposable income):
USA : 29,056
SUOMI : 24,035
83% usa:n tuloista
Keskimääräinen vuotuinen työaika 2012:
USA: 1790
SUOMI: 1672
94% usa:n työtunneista
Tuntipalkkoina USA $16.2 suomi $14.4, eli suomalainen tienaisi ostovoimakorjattuna 86% Amerikkalaisesta. Näistä sitten pitää maksaa välttämättömät menot kuten lasten koulutus, asuntovelka, vakuutukset, lääkelaskut, ruoka jne. jotta voisi selvittää erot harkinnanvaraisissa tuloissa (discretionary income). Elizabeth Warren on kirjoittanut kirjan, siitä kuinka Amerikkalaisten perheiden harkinnanvaraiset tulot ovat romahtaneet. http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents/dp/0465090907
>Today's two-income family earns 75% more money than its single-income counterpart of a generation ago, but has 25% less discretionary income to cover living costs.
---
lähteitä:
> Der Durschnitts Mittelklasse Amerikaner verdient 30 % mehr als Du und hat nen Häuschen mit zwei Autos.
Da arbeitest du halt aber auch 30% länger. Irgendwie muß auch finanziert werden, dass man in Deutschland umgerechnet mehr Freizeit und Teilzeitarbeit hat. Dazu kommt dann noch, dass das Leben zwar nicht unbedingt teurer ist, aber sich die Ausgaben doch recht sprunghaft ändern können. Wie Claire Lundbergh vor einiger Zeit in Slate über Frankreich schrieb: "But though we make less money and pay more taxes in France, we haven’t felt the hit as hard—in fact, with health care, child care, and education so affordable, our money seems to go further."
Zwar wird da auch viel übertrieben (so schlimm ist es in den USA nicht, wenn man nicht gerade in den teuren Städten wohnt) aber auch für meinen Mann und mich sind die Ausgaben in Deutschland doch deutlich berechenbarer und "geglätteter", und wir sind obere Mittelklasse mit unserem Einkommen.
Das mit den zwei Autos ist relativ. Das liegt auch mit daran, dass man halt in den USA halt zwei Autos braucht wenn man Doppelverdienerhaushalt ist (und wenn nur einer der Partner verdient, dann ist ein Zweitauto vermutlich nicht drin). Ich empfehle "The Two-Income Trap" (von Elizabeth Warren mit ihrer Tochter geschrieben). Drücken wir's so aus: wir könnten uns hier in Deutschland durchaus einen Zweitwagen leisten, aber schon das eine Auto, das wir haben, sammelt unter der Woche eher in der Garage Staub. Deutschland macht halt – bei allen Beschwerden – ÖPNV auf einem ganz anderen Level und die Städte sind viel Fahrrad- und Fußgängerfreundlicher, während der amerikanische "suburban sprawl" ganz gezielt auf Autobenutzung ausgelegt ist.
Das mit dem Häuschen ist auch etwas zu relativieren, weil das sehr stark davon abhängt, wo in Amerika du wohnst. Es ist relativ einfacher, weil's da mehr Platz gibt, allerdings geht da auch als "Haus" durch, was in Deutschland schon in den 70ern bauordnungswidrig gewesen wäre oder quasi ein alleinstehendes Apartment ist. Besonders wichtig ist, dass Amerikaner hier bereiter sind, ein finanzielles Risiko für ein Eigenheim einzugehen (es könnten sich viel mehr Deutsche ein Haus leisten, wollen aber keinen Kredit aufnehmen) und dass Hypothenzinsen steuerlich begünstigt werden.
Das heißt nicht, dass das Leben in Amerika schlecht ist; im Durchschnitt unterscheidet sich das Alltagsleben im Mittelstand nicht großartig zwischen den USA und den reicheren europäischen Ländern. Man muss sich halt darüber klar sein, dass man in den USA mit einem etwas höheren Lebensrisiko rechnen muss und insbesondere langfristig finanziell vorausplanen muß und mehr in Eigenverantwortung leben. Aber umgekehrt ist das Gras in Amerika auch nicht grüner.
> Warren only recently has been saying the things she does
Here's her book from 2004 explaining all the issues with our economy before almost anyone else (Bernie excluded) had caught on.
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907
>The end result of closing the wage gap is women spending more time working in corporations and spending more on consumer goods and the average couple spending more time at work than in the past - just to make ends meet.
This is also Elizabeth Warren's viewpoint, in fact she has a book on the subject, and essentially believes that having both parents in a family working is a huge problem. She thinks it's causing a drop in the quality of life across western civilization, and has been doing so since the 1970s. There's a long and plain spoken lecture on it. It's very statistics heavy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A
As for "Cultural Marxism"; I find it interesting that The Frankfurt School were vehemently against propaganda and indoctrination - having seen the rise of Nazi propaganda in their home country - are targetted and blamed for that exact same thing. They called it "The Culture Industry" and believed it was used against the interests of the masses. To quote Adorno:
>"The Culture Industry not so much adapts to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them." -Adorno
>"this bloated pleasure apparatus adds no dignity to man’s lives. The idea of “fully exploiting” available technical resources and the facilities for aesthetic mass consumption is part of the economic system which refuses to exploit resources to abolish hunger." -Adorno, Enlightenment as Mass Deception.
...and yet they're blamed for creating this industry that they were so against! The targetting of this conspiracy theory seems to be on purpose. The creators of this theory have blamed the only group of western intellectuals who had studied the problem in detail. Effectively obscuring what The Frankfurt School were on about.
Luckily now, thanks to the internet - we make our own cultures.
Anyways - I agree with most of what you've written! Congratulations on coming through the thickets and seeing another side!
Oh so you are one of those about the fed and not something like "there arent enough jobs to employ every man and woman in most (if not all) countries"
Ok. Your links from some other subreddit don't do anything more scientific than i did. They just said things without any data models either. The first link says "declining union strength" as a reason. I agree that its a massive problem, but to play devils advocate I'll just say "correlation is not causation". It also mentions globalization. Again, I agree. But fun fact, adding 50% of the population of a country into the workforce IS a form of globalization.
And yes, "correlation is not causation" is becoming just some "lala cant hear you" or "i dont like it so shut up". Before social media took off it was used primarily for situations i explained above. And your "links that completely explain everything no questions" didn't do the same thing.
EDIT: These two books (written by two very different authors from an ideological basis) show what im talking about somewhat.
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907
http://suzannevenker.com/books/the-two-income-trap-why-parents-are-choosing-to-stay-home-ebook/
> the financial stability of a second income has value
It's a trap.
Well, to be fair (I think?), in the 1950's only the men worked. Now it's more typical that each house has two incomes. Elizabeth Warren writes in one of her books (see here, great book btw) that this fact is one of the causes of the higher inflaction to income rate. She doesn't make the accusation of course, but it seemed implied to me, and it seems like exploitation somehow.
**I say I think because it's not fair, lol. But it should be noted.
Damn, its nice seeing someone else who sees the bigger picture here. Have you read or heard about this one? The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke. Honestly, I haven't read it myself yet, but I sure mean to soon.
By the time you pay for daycare, gas, and all of the other crap that goes along with both spouses working, you'd better hope they're making a lot of money to make up for it. And then somebody else gets to raise your kids.
He did make his choice, but I think a lot of us assume that two incomes is always the best way to do a family. (The Two Income Trap) It can work, but we should check ourselves before we criticize families with stay-at-home moms.
There's no correct answer, of course.
Over time, my wife and I have used combinations of a nanny, grandparents, and day care since my son was two months old, as we both had to return to work for various reasons. In terms of his health and development, we have no complaints: he is thriving. That doesn't mean much, as I'd probably say the exact same thing if my wife were working at home, or if I was. He is in a full-time day care that he loves. There have been plenty of tears along the way, but your husband's view of day care as something out of Dickens is just wrong. He cherishes his little friends, the teachers, and the lessons he gets each day.
For me, an important factor is the total cost to the parent who stays at home. Some people have mentioned depression, etc., but I would focus on career issues. I'm in my 40s. With one exception, the women I know who stayed at home to raise kids are simply erased from the work place. Whatever their level of achievement before --- these are women I know with PhDs, MBAs, etc. --- they never manage to find a full-time job again. The stories (excuses?) are different, but the results are the same, whether they tried in elementary school or later.
The parental choices you make include what your life will be like after the children have come and left the house. If you have an advanced degree, or work in an area that you love, I would urge you to consider full-time or part-time child care. I don't know you, of course, or your field, but your remarks about part-time projects struck me as probably unrealistic. I'm a hiring manager, and the vast majority of the resume I see with side-projects do not lead me to hireable candidates. Many people fool themselves; don't be one of them.
You also mention living in the SF Bay Area. You two should plan out some realistic budgets that go out to school age for your two kids. As you've noted, many of our public schools are simply awful, in part due to the lingering disaster that is Prop 13. You may well have to move or use a local private school.
Finally, I strongly recommend the book The Two-Income Trap, written by now Senator Elizabeth Warren and her daughter. As you may know, Warren is a bankruptcy specialist, and she came about the topic of the book from an unusual angle: she was looking at why couples got into financial straits. The book is too long to summarize, other than to say that every couple needs to look thoughtfully at their real risks and their actual obligations. Genuine love of children is one element of the two-income trap, as the book explains.
I recommend you read Warren's 2004 book, The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are Going Broke before questioning her longstanding commitment to idealistic and rational solutions to a broken system.
Bernie and Liz are both awesome, and both are bringing rational ideas to the mainstream. However, Bernie didn't invent these ideas. Baron Von Bismarck gave Germany Universal Healthcare in 1848. Free college in the US goes back as far as the Land Grants under Lincoln. Reducing money spent on bombs we blow up and instead on infrastructure that lasts 40 years just makes solid sense, and reminds everyone of The New Deal. Making sure greedy actors don't corrupt the free market and act like cartels is an idea from the late 1800s.
They have similar ideas because anyone with intelligence, critical thinking, the ability to read history, and a deep profound care for the future of their society and humanity at-large, will always land on these solutions. I am thankful that we have both of them in our political system, and as part of our society.
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907
Firstly, if you look at income quintile growth in the 1980's, everyone was basically flat or falling behind but the top 20%. If the middle class did better under Reagan, it was because of deficit-financed tax cuts and more women going to work out of economic necessity.
What we have in this country are a corporate conservative party (Democrats) and a radical theocratic conservative party (Republicans). People in this country don't even know what progressivism is anymore, because establishment liberals sabotaged radical leftists. Elizabeth Warren is the closest thing we have to a nationally viable progressive politician in this country, and even she's not talking about things like a guaranteed minimum income, which was last put forth by Richard Nixon. Yes, if Richard Nixon were a politician today, he would be considered too liberal for the Democratic Party.
I'm not convinced. The largest expenditure in the United States of America is on housing. The reason for this is radical urbanization, combined with competition for homes in the right neighborhood and school districts. Extra money handed out would likely go straight back into home ownership and rent.
For more understanding on this, take a look at (now Senator) Elizabeth Warren's and her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi's book The Two-Income Trap. In this they lay out a convincing case that life in the USA with two incomes at home barely scratches the living standards of yesteryear on a single income because of this environment which pits middle class Americans against one another in competition for a reasonable standard of living.
If you think that he's talking about her shameless lie for personal gain about being Native American at the expense of other, actual Native Americans I've got news for you...
Warren is a moderate masquerading as a progressive for political expediency. She was the author of The Two Income Trap for fucks sake. She explicitly argues how foolish it would be to just black-check programs like childcare with the implications it would have for families. I like old, moderate Warren. I would encourage any Warren supporter to read it. It's actually a good book that dives into the seemingly nonsensical increase in bankrupt women as more and more entered the workforce. But clearly she's two-faced and an ideological slut willing to say or do whatever will get her into office if her base philosophy is able to do a 180 in a decade from classical liberal to full blown progressive.
Oh I don't point fingers at them, but you have to admit it has an effect on the economy. Elizabeth Warren wrote an entire book on this subject http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents/dp/0465090907 Even accounting for the workforce doubling the reality we are seeing is beyond that.
This seems intuitive, but is actually incorrect. These items are actually insanely cheaper WRT household income when adjusted for inflation. your things that are more expensive are Housing, Education, and Insurance (and healthcare). These are non-discretionary. If you cut out all of the "goodies" that you have that your parents didn't, your financial situation would still not be comparable in anything but a very rural area of the country. Jobs are now concentrated in urban centers as well. there's a great book on this from a huge study done by Harvard:
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907
Someone should write a book about this....oh wait
Saying that Warren doesn't see class is funny considering she wrote the book on the changing face of working-class and middle-class household finances.
I won't deny that Bernie is to Warren's left because he's an actual socialist (something Bernie supporters will openly celebrate now in the primaries, just as they will furiously deny it if he makes it to a general election) but saying that non-socialist candidates don't acknowledge economic class is ridiculous.
also:
http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Going/dp/0465090907
Everyone in here needs to the the Two Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren.
Great advice, should have wrote a book
Additionally, there's quite a bit of evidence that the "two income household" is financially far more "unstable" (i.e. at risk) than a two parent, single-income household... so much so that even E. Warren (hardly an anti-feminist) referred to it as a "trap". (Cf the title of her 2004 -- i.e. pre housing bubble/bust era -- bestselling book "The Two Income Trap", and her hour-long 2007 Berkeley lecture expanding on the same basic material.)
Basically a fat lot of nothing has been gained (for families) by wives entering the workforce.
And arguably things have been made worse for nearly all workers because of that.
Feminists, of course, have a hard time really accepting that -- and they nearly always seek (often in a highly contortionist fashion) to place blame on other factors. Doubtless there ARE other factors (trade policies, monetary policies, tax policies, etc) also at play, but one cannot ignore feminism's impact in that it is part of the supply/demand situation in regards to labor; it is an objective verified FACT that despite all of the aforementioned "policies", and despite the recent downturn, there are even still MORE adults in the US workforce NOW (and not merely in numbers, but as a percentage of the population) than there ever were prior to 1980, and yet the actual take home pay for the middle class has deteriorated.
You're talking about The Two-Income Trap - a great read written by Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia.
This is an interesting episode discussing Elizabeth Warren's book The Two-Income Trap which discusses how family incomes have mainly risen because of women's entrance into the workplace, not because of rising wages. The result is that many families' financial statuses have become more fragile, since households are now dependent on two-incomes, with little to no back-up/insurance against loosing one income. To combat this, it is suggested that US social programs need to be revised to better fit this new reality. While this episode mostly focuses on the monetary aspect of this idea, I think there are clear connections to time poverty.
I think it does strengthen some couples, especially if they make it through a brief period and can look back on it. Years of poverty with a lot of kids must be hard on everyone. I suspect you are right; if the couple have different ideas for where money needs to go having very little of it means you have to make tough choices. It's easier if you have enough to make you both happy. I found this book very fascinating and it gets into the stresses of finances in modern families. http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents/dp/0465090907
>Presenting carefully researched economic data to support their arguments, the authors contend that, contrary to popular myth, families aren't in trouble because they're squandering their second income on luxuries. On the contrary, both incomes are almost entirely committed to necessities, such as home and car payments, health insurance and children's education costs. When an unforeseen event such as serious illness, job loss or divorce occurs, families have no discretionary income to fall back on.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents/dp/0465090907
http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents/dp/0465090907
This was tailing off by the early 1980s for sure, but it was very much the norm in the 1960s and 1970s for families to be single-earning.
As citation, I give you Elizabeth Warren's The Two-Income Trap.
Your experience with "primary breadwinner" and "part-time" is probably a good illustration of this. Such an arrangement allowed families to get that "little extra", like a swimming pool, or a better vacation, but was not necessary to pay the basic bills.
Keep in mind that the "telephone operator" job that your mother had is gone, and the best comparable job might be call-center worker, for minimum wage.
I would argue that some of the "living inflation" has taken place in direct response to the reduction in public service funding that took place in the late 70s/early 80s. The anti-tax movement was targeting local services. Where I live, in Massachusetts, they took aim at the public sector employees in a big way. What ultimately happened was that public services used to be pretty standard between communities before 1980, but after 1980, due to Proposition 2.5 which actually capped property taxes at 2.5% of the assessed property value in a community, many communities (usually larger urban) had to dramatically scale back services. What happened next was economic flight/sorting based on rationing of services - the people who wanted the good services (primarily schools) fled to the towns that were willing to pay for these services. That resulted in massive differences in property values between communities, which resulted in even more economic segregation.
In Massachusetts, that translates into communities which everyone wants to live in but can't afford, and communities which are very affordable but no one wants to live in them. Families wind up stretching themselves to the point where they are buying $500k houses, for which they need $150k in income to support - and they are unwilling to settle for a $150k house because those communities have lousy schools and copious amounts of poor people (plus brown people to boot).
My view of gender roles is... unconventional, subtle, and not necessarily that well thought out. I mean to embody the feminine role, but that isn't any of the following:
I dream of a world where conventional gender roles exist, are routinely followed, and, unlike the cracking-apart-and-fading-away gender roles we have in the real world, they don't suck.
I'd very much consider a girl who didn't want to be a stay at home mom, probably prefer one in this day and age, although there are some complications there -- mostly relating the the "two-income trap" (Basically, the parenting and housework still has to be done by somebody, and both parents working full time doesn't earn as much extra money when expenses are considered. So basically, two working parents becoming the normal standard leads to you being poor, insecure, and miserable, and if you can game the system you should.) An inflexible desire to focus narrowly on a career might not be that great. (and I don't have that inflexible desire either.)
OK so the other option is to give these children a significantly lower quality of life
http://www.amazon.com/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents/dp/0465090907
THAT IS MYTH TAHT KEEPS GETTING PASSED AROUND
PLEASE RE-READ THIS BOOK AND STOP SPREADING AROUND FALSIES
THE TWO INCOME TRAP
THIS WOMAN HAS SPENT A LOT OF TIME RESEARCHING THIS. IT'S NOT BECAUSE WE 'BUY MORE CRAP'
THE AMOUNT WE SPEND ON 'CRAP' HAS ACTUALLY LOWERED (PERCENTAGE WISE OF INCOME). ELECTRONICS AND OTHER 'CRAP' HAS BECOME CHEAPER SO WE CAN BUY MORE OF IT
THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS INCOME IS GOING TO HOUSING, FOOD, HEALTH CARE AND RETIREMENT. ALL OF THESE HAVE RISEN. GO LOOK AT THAT GRAPH POSTED ON REDDIT AWHILE BACK AND STOP SPREADING FALSE INFORMATION