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No, that's a quite recent development too. Not too long ago it was normal for each household to have one earner. Now, thanks to women joining the workforce, we

No, that's a quite recent development too. Not too long ago it was normal for each household to have one earner. Now, thanks to women joining the workforce, we all work more for the same thing.

standerman 8y ago
Not that recent. We left the gold standard in 1971. All that inflating monetary supply has to get stored somewhere. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS
- moorhosj 8y ago
  CAGR from 1961 (beginning of data) to 1971 (gold standard) - 4.2% CAGR from 1971 to 2018 - 5.5%
Frondo 8y ago
It isn't women's fault that the capital-holding class has turned the screws on the rest of us. It is, however, to the capital-holding class's advantage that we blame women for being paid less.
- quacked 8y ago
  https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
  - alehul 8y ago
    While I love Slate Star Codex, just commenting a link in response to a written comment feels a bit snarky. It'd be a lot nicer if you could provide some preface, maybe a summary given the length of it, and just link to it as a source for your comment. :)
    - Forbo 8y ago
      Particularly when the reader view estimates it to be 78-99 minutes. I'm several paragraphs in and not seeing the connection to the comment thread. Edit: Just as soon as I post about not seeing the connection, I find the bit they were referencing: "6. The Two-Income Trap, as recently discussed on this blog. It theorized that sufficiently intense competition for suburban houses in good school districts meant that people had to throw away lots of other values – time at home with their children, financial security – to optimize for house-buying-ability or else be consigned to the ghetto. From a god’s-eye-view, if everyone agrees not to take on a second job to help win their competition for nice houses, then everyone will get exactly as nice a house as they did before, but only have to work one job. From within the system, absent a government literally willing to ban second jobs, everyone who doesn’t get one will be left behind."
Barrin92 8y ago
>we all work more for the same thing No, we work more for more things. If you were to live according to the living standards of the times we associate with stereotypical one income households, say 40 years ago, your house would be 1000 sq feet smaller, your electricity consumption would be much lower because you would have no smartphone, a small TV, your car would not have the features it has today, you would likely have no college education, and your healthcare expenditure would be lower because you would receive significantly less care. You also would sweat a lot in the summer, because back then air conditioning was a luxury rather than the rule. You would also eat significantly less meat, and you would be much less likely to go on holidays, travel abroad, or eat fresh fruit from the other end of the world at all times during the year.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ip26 8y ago
  Your TV & other appliances all used a lot more electricity to get the same job done, even if the screen or icebox was smaller. Your car got worse fuel economy and didn't last to 100k miles. Your house used a lot more wood/gas/oil/electricity to heat. A big part of why we have more is social & technical progress. We get more for our money. I do think your parent's question is an interesting one- thorny, but it's not ridiculous to wonder if doubling the work force eventually gnaws away at compensation for the same work. (The natural next question is, well did the demand for labor grow to match, stay constant, or somewhere in between? Did the pie grow and we're all wealthier for it, or are twice as many people now fighting over the same pie?)
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    There seems to be an error in that argument. If you shrink your workforce holding productivity equal, then labour becomes more expensive and wages and prices are going to be pushed, i.e. you just get inflation. A larger labour force means more competition in wages, but it also increases supply so this shouldn't have any effect. If this wasn't true, then you could reduce inequality simply by artificially restricting the supply of labour, which I don't think has ever occurred.
cimmanom 8y ago
Women, including married women and mothers, have been in the (paid) workforce for millennia, doing all sorts of jobs. Common paid jobs outside the home included: housekeeping; laundry (which btw 150+ years ago was heavy manual labor); childcare; factory work; tending shops and market stalls; beauty services; entertainment; and more recently (since it's become more common for women to be educated), clerical work and teaching. The only people to whom a single-earner household outside the upper and upper middle classes was ever considered a default were the inhabitants of certain developed countries for a few decades in the middle of the 20th century; and even then it was more of a norm than a universal fact. The only things that changed recently are a) women now can also have "careers" and prestigious occupations instead of just jobs; and b) working outside the home has become normal for upper middle class women as well as working class women (and for some even a status symbol rather than a symbol of poverty).
- black-tea 8y ago
  Some women worked, they did not have careers. Who do you think had all the children, and how?

No, that's a quite recent development too. Not too long ago it was normal for each household to have one earner. Now, thanks to women joining the workforce, we all work more for the same thing.

standerman 8y ago

Not that recent. We left the gold standard in 1971. All that inflating monetary supply has to get stored somewhere. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

moorhosj 8y ago
CAGR from 1961 (beginning of data) to 1971 (gold standard) - 4.2% CAGR from 1971 to 2018 - 5.5%

Frondo 8y ago

It isn't women's fault that the capital-holding class has turned the screws on the rest of us. It is, however, to the capital-holding class's advantage that we blame women for being paid less.

quacked 8y ago
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- alehul 8y ago
  While I love Slate Star Codex, just commenting a link in response to a written comment feels a bit snarky. It'd be a lot nicer if you could provide some preface, maybe a summary given the length of it, and just link to it as a source for your comment. :)
  - Forbo 8y ago
    Particularly when the reader view estimates it to be 78-99 minutes. I'm several paragraphs in and not seeing the connection to the comment thread. Edit: Just as soon as I post about not seeing the connection, I find the bit they were referencing: "6. The Two-Income Trap, as recently discussed on this blog. It theorized that sufficiently intense competition for suburban houses in good school districts meant that people had to throw away lots of other values – time at home with their children, financial security – to optimize for house-buying-ability or else be consigned to the ghetto. From a god’s-eye-view, if everyone agrees not to take on a second job to help win their competition for nice houses, then everyone will get exactly as nice a house as they did before, but only have to work one job. From within the system, absent a government literally willing to ban second jobs, everyone who doesn’t get one will be left behind."

Barrin92 8y ago

>we all work more for the same thing No, we work more for more things. If you were to live according to the living standards of the times we associate with stereotypical one income households, say 40 years ago, your house would be 1000 sq feet smaller, your electricity consumption would be much lower because you would have no smartphone, a small TV, your car would not have the features it has today, you would likely have no college education, and your healthcare expenditure would be lower because you would receive significantly less care. You also would sweat a lot in the summer, because back then air conditioning was a luxury rather than the rule. You would also eat significantly less meat, and you would be much less likely to go on holidays, travel abroad, or eat fresh fruit from the other end of the world at all times during the year.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ip26 8y ago
Your TV & other appliances all used a lot more electricity to get the same job done, even if the screen or icebox was smaller. Your car got worse fuel economy and didn't last to 100k miles. Your house used a lot more wood/gas/oil/electricity to heat. A big part of why we have more is social & technical progress. We get more for our money. I do think your parent's question is an interesting one- thorny, but it's not ridiculous to wonder if doubling the work force eventually gnaws away at compensation for the same work. (The natural next question is, well did the demand for labor grow to match, stay constant, or somewhere in between? Did the pie grow and we're all wealthier for it, or are twice as many people now fighting over the same pie?)
- Barrin92 8y ago
  There seems to be an error in that argument. If you shrink your workforce holding productivity equal, then labour becomes more expensive and wages and prices are going to be pushed, i.e. you just get inflation. A larger labour force means more competition in wages, but it also increases supply so this shouldn't have any effect. If this wasn't true, then you could reduce inequality simply by artificially restricting the supply of labour, which I don't think has ever occurred.

cimmanom 8y ago

Women, including married women and mothers, have been in the (paid) workforce for millennia, doing all sorts of jobs. Common paid jobs outside the home included: housekeeping; laundry (which btw 150+ years ago was heavy manual labor); childcare; factory work; tending shops and market stalls; beauty services; entertainment; and more recently (since it's become more common for women to be educated), clerical work and teaching. The only people to whom a single-earner household outside the upper and upper middle classes was ever considered a default were the inhabitants of certain developed countries for a few decades in the middle of the 20th century; and even then it was more of a norm than a universal fact. The only things that changed recently are a) women now can also have "careers" and prestigious occupations instead of just jobs; and b) working outside the home has become normal for upper middle class women as well as working class women (and for some even a status symbol rather than a symbol of poverty).

black-tea 8y ago
Some women worked, they did not have careers. Who do you think had all the children, and how?