[quote=bearishgurl][quote=Arraya]…Now, Elizabeth Warren did a good job showing that 1 income was better off in 1975 than two incomes are today with things that are mostly out of their control but it is certainly not the whole picture….[/quote]
No, it’s NOT the whole picture, Arraya. In her daughter, Amelia Tyagi’s book, “The Two-Income Trap,” they don’t delve into the REASONS why these “two income” families are stretched to the limit on finances and even filing for BK. Warren seems to understand WHY parents of today are driving up the price of RE in some areas but won’t delve into SOLUTIONS for these families’ (self-imposed) financial morass that they have spent themselves into. She doesn’t seem to take into account that middle-class families in 1975 lived a VERY spartan lifestyle compared to MC families of today (and even compared to some families currently on public assistance with a Section 8 grant)!
I didn’t read the book, but in her speech, Warren never addresses the compulsion for “overconsumption” that you speak of here or the infinitely higher expectations for every facet if their’s (and their childrens’) lives that most parents of today display. This is the main reason for her “perception” that families in 1975 were better off, IMO.
Actually, children are MUCH better off today than in “1975.” At that time, there were no laws against child abuse or sexual abuse of a child…only visible and overt neglect. Sexual abuse which occurred in families was swept under the rug and often the children were led to believe that it was they who were the perpetrator! There were no real “standards” to graduate from a public HS – the “teacher’s favorites” and “jocks” graduated doing almost no work and with a bad attendance record. There was no afterschool care. There were no health or dental plans in place for children. At that time, Title IX was new which allowed girls to participate in some boy’s sports. Divorced and unwed dads never got custody of their children, even if the mom was a flake, drug addict, prostitute or all three. There was nothing preventing one parent from withholding child visitation from the other parent, which deprived countless children of the other parent. In CA, many dads never even realized they HAD children and (unknowingly) lost them thru adoption, because the law didn’t require the mom to name them as the father and notify them! When they found out about the adoption (thru friends/relatives and tried to take custody of them during or directly after the process, they were denied and told by the court that they “failed to offer to pay for prenatal care, failed to bond with the child, failed to support it and bring it into their homes,” etc. How could they do any of these things when they never knew the mom was pregnant or she refused to talk to them during her pregnancy? In a nutshell, the above was nearly the exact language of a whole host of statutes in CA that have since been repealed. Yes, the lives of children have been greatly improved since the early/mid seventies.
As I stated on the “shadow inventory” thread, Tyagi’s book reviews overwhelmingly showed little sympathy for parents who were attempting to live a life which was more than they could afford.
I thought Warren was intelligent but her speech often “victimized” the “poor, overworked, overspending parent” who is currently “trapped” in suburbia-ville and unable to survive on two incomes. I was left wanting to hear about her take on “personal responsibility” but that never materialized.[/quote]
BG,
Unfortunately, I think you’ve latched onto things that weren’t in Warren’s lecture.
The reason middle-class families are falling behind has very little to do with overconsumption — that was exactly her point.
When women entered the workforce en masse, it did a couple of things. First, it put downward pressure on men’s wages because women were willing to do the same jobs for less money. It had the same effect that illegal immigration has on the labor market — more labor supply (absent an equal increase in the demand for that labor) means lower prices/wages. This is why you see men’s wages actually going down since the early 70s. Second, since families were earning more in aggregate, they could spend more money **for the same house/insurance plan/education/etc.** It’s the same effect that we see when credit is expanded; not only can people buy more of something, they can also pay more *for a given item* than they were previously able/willing to pay.
“Globalism” provided some relief from this cost inflation, as slave-wage labor overseas could provide cheaper goods/services for some things that could be outsourced. This is why you see the cost of goods/services that must be sourced domestically (housing, healthcare/insurance, education, etc.) go up, while imported goods/services came down in price.
People often want to say that people bought “too much house” during the housing bubble. While that might be true for some people, the biggest problem came from people *paying too much for a particular house.* It’s cost inflation that’s the problem; people are not necessarily “buying more.”
