5 ms·

A wealth benefit for who? Maybe in terms of aggregate societal wealth, but in terms of relative wealth things have gotten worse (you can't buy a home and raise

A wealth benefit for who? Maybe in terms of aggregate societal wealth, but in terms of relative wealth things have gotten worse (you can't buy a home and raise a family on a single income anymore for instance). Before: everyone had one wage earner per household. Prices for goods meets this reality. After: everyone has 2 wage earners per households. Prices for goods meets this reality. Nothing has changed except now you need 2 people earning to live just as well as before. More aggregate output means "more GDP", but who cares when your life is relatively worse in many ways.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago
I agree with your general point. However: > Before: everyone had one wage earner per household. Prices for goods meets this reality. This was only relatively well-to-do couples. Industrial economies were really good at expanding the middle class, but they never got rid of the lower classes in which both spouses had to work (and, of course, unmarried adults had to work regardless of sex). Labor force participation rate for women increased from a low of about 32% in 1948 (the earliest this chart goes) to a high of about 60% from about the mid-1990s to 2009. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 According to table 2 (page 4) of this BLS document (https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/05/art3full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/05/art3full.pdf ), a four-person family in 1947 could have a "modest but adequate" lifestyle on a budget of $2904. The median income for a family then was about $3000, while the median income for an individual not in a family was about $1000 (https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1949/demo/p60-005.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1949/demo/p60-00... ). The federal minimum wage of $0.40/hour in 1947 would gross about $800/year for 40 hours a week. So the income necessary for a modest but adequate lifestyle for a family was about 3.75x the minimum wage at our current labor standard hours. Today, with a minimum wage of $7.25/hour, that 3.75x would be $27/hour, or about $54,000/year. I'd speculate that even today a person with a typical engineer's salary, like then, could support a family at at least "modest but adequate" standards on a single income. But a typical laborer's salary would be stretching it, whether back then or today. Heck, the Turpin parents managed to do it with 13 kids, though they abused the hell out of those kids.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

I agree with your general point. However: > Before: everyone had one wage earner per household. Prices for goods meets this reality. This was only relatively well-to-do couples. Industrial economies were really good at expanding the middle class, but they never got rid of the lower classes in which both spouses had to work (and, of course, unmarried adults had to work regardless of sex). Labor force participation rate for women increased from a low of about 32% in 1948 (the earliest this chart goes) to a high of about 60% from about the mid-1990s to 2009. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 According to table 2 (page 4) of this BLS document (https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/05/art3full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/05/art3full.pdf ), a four-person family in 1947 could have a "modest but adequate" lifestyle on a budget of $2904. The median income for a family then was about $3000, while the median income for an individual not in a family was about $1000 (https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1949/demo/p60-005.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1949/demo/p60-00... ). The federal minimum wage of $0.40/hour in 1947 would gross about $800/year for 40 hours a week. So the income necessary for a modest but adequate lifestyle for a family was about 3.75x the minimum wage at our current labor standard hours. Today, with a minimum wage of $7.25/hour, that 3.75x would be $27/hour, or about $54,000/year. I'd speculate that even today a person with a typical engineer's salary, like then, could support a family at at least "modest but adequate" standards on a single income. But a typical laborer's salary would be stretching it, whether back then or today. Heck, the Turpin parents managed to do it with 13 kids, though they abused the hell out of those kids.