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I think there is another factor too- there are a lot more double income households than there have been in the past, which leaves less time for cooking, so peop

I think there is another factor too- there are a lot more double income households than there have been in the past, which leaves less time for cooking, so people just eat out. People are also under a lot of stress due to lack of job security, more part time or gig work, weekend and evening work, etc, which leads to stress eating. Communities are fragmenting as people have to move every couple years to find new work, or as they substitute online relationships for real ones (who has the time?), which again leads to stress eating. No doubt everything in the article is a factor too, but we are undergoing wider cultural changes that you have to take into effect. By the way, when I talk about "double income households" I'm not saying that women shouldn't be equal in the workforce, I'm saying that maybe men and women should both be working somewhat shorter hours so that they have time for their home lives.

CompelTechnic 8y ago
I hope that as time goes on more people are realizing the diseconomies that having a dual-income household creates. Chronic stress, outsourcing the maintenance of the household (cars, going out to eat, etc), higher tax brackets, childcare, a lot of it adds up faster than you think. Ambition for more fuels the dual income dream. Misplaced ambition is a killer. Another reason to save a large fraction of your income- to pay off the house quickly and get back down to a single income household, or have both people go part time. Very liberating. The big thing working against it though, is that land and luxuries are positional goods, and people will continue to work hard in order to outbid eachother in order to have more of these positional goods. This is why I'm afraid the dual-income trend will not reverse.
- marcosdumay 8y ago
  Most people learn to give up on chasing luxuries sooner or later. The one modern problem is "land". It's not even just that. Land is actually very plentiful, the problem is the small amount of land available in desired places. And it's again not what it looks like, because desirability is not some intrinsic characteristic of the land anymore, instead the land is desirable because for some reason all the employment opportunities are there. I really don't understand how employment got to be so much geographically restricted. But it is about this that people are fighting at current positional markets.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Because, buildings. And social structure.

CompelTechnic 8y ago

I hope that as time goes on more people are realizing the diseconomies that having a dual-income household creates. Chronic stress, outsourcing the maintenance of the household (cars, going out to eat, etc), higher tax brackets, childcare, a lot of it adds up faster than you think. Ambition for more fuels the dual income dream. Misplaced ambition is a killer. Another reason to save a large fraction of your income- to pay off the house quickly and get back down to a single income household, or have both people go part time. Very liberating. The big thing working against it though, is that land and luxuries are positional goods, and people will continue to work hard in order to outbid eachother in order to have more of these positional goods. This is why I'm afraid the dual-income trend will not reverse.

marcosdumay 8y ago
Most people learn to give up on chasing luxuries sooner or later. The one modern problem is "land". It's not even just that. Land is actually very plentiful, the problem is the small amount of land available in desired places. And it's again not what it looks like, because desirability is not some intrinsic characteristic of the land anymore, instead the land is desirable because for some reason all the employment opportunities are there. I really don't understand how employment got to be so much geographically restricted. But it is about this that people are fighting at current positional markets.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Because, buildings. And social structure.