7 ms·

> Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate high school and make enough to support yourself and a family with a bit of struggle This has literal

> Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate high school and make enough to support yourself and a family with a bit of struggle This has literally only been true for about 30 years out of the sum total of human history, would you like to guess when those 30 years happened to be? Obviously the answer is "1950s america". For the rest of human history, you needed something beyond the education you received until the age of 18 in order to support a family.

wizee 1y ago
People supported families with single incomes with less than high school education for centuries before the 1950s.
- watwut 1y ago
  All the other members of the family were active and produced useful things - both kids and women. The iddle lifestyle was limited to richer classes.
  - mandmandam 1y ago
    In foraging societies - ie, most people for the vast majority of human history - people worked ~15–20 hours/week on subsistence tasks. The rest was leisure or social time (ie, time for being a human later rebranded as 'idleness'). Industrialization has pushed inequality to extremes while raising hours worked - even as productivity keeps shooting up. There's no good reason for people to tolerate this; it's just exploitation.
    - _benton 1y ago
      You can still do this now, it's just called "being homeless" and it actually sucks.
      - mandmandam 1y ago
        A, being homeless and being in a gatherer society are very different things. And B, even if you wanted to live that way you can't any more; because the commons has been relentlessly exploited past its breaking point for centuries. I shouldn't really have to explain any of this, but people generally seem to have some weird ideas and blind spots surrounding our history as a species.
        _benton 1y ago
        In many countries the only obstacle is the legality of living on government lands. In Canada there are people living a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle on crown land. The option is totally available for many people who chose not to do it.
        mandmandam 1y ago
        > the only obstacle is the legality of living on government lands Yes, the obstacle of living illegally on land that has been systematically over-exploited for centuries (or too harsh to bother), without any community or experience. Not sure I'm seeing your point.
        _benton 1y ago
        People do it so it's definitely possible. Most people chose not to do it because it's a hard life with a horrible quality of life. Being a hunter-gatherer and living a nomadic life is not and was never easy or fun.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      Those hours worked are carefully defining a lot of work away. Most things people eat need hours of preparation that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example. When you relook at what people did most of the time you realize they had to work really hard for a lot more hours to survive.
      - mandmandam 1y ago
        Look man if you want to write a refutation of Marshall Sahlins' work, go ahead. I might even read it. But I'm not going to just take the word of a random commentator - are you even in anthropology? Like, this is a broad consensus thing. There's not really much debate; ethnographic studies have backed it up. Where are you getting your info from?
        Avshalom 1y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Crit...
        mandmandam 1y ago
        There seem to be two main points of critique there: 1. That there was war and war sucked; disease; and also infant mortality was high - therefore life sucked back then. None of that really factors in to the debate of how much free time people had; and those thing are all still very much with us (especially in America). 2. That food prep and gathering firewood takes time. Well, gathering firewood is also known as 'going for a walk in nature', and it's actually good for you. You can chat with your friends while you do it. It's not like your average job. It might not be technically 'idle', but it's a lot closer to 'idle' than flipping burgers in a sweatbox. Same with food prep - picking through some dried beans, or stirring a pot every 30 mins and making sure it doesn't boil over, while you tell stories around the table just isn't comparable to working in an Amazon warehouse pissing into plastic bottles. It's critique, and you can buy it if you want; but there's nothing there I would call substantial.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
    Who said anything about the idle lifestyle?
    - jimbokun 1y ago
      Implied by "single income". In reality in most families all family members were contributing something to the household income.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
        Income in this context means trading labor for cash. In the past, huge amounts of household work were done without any such exchange. Today, child raising, cleaning, cooking, provisioning, and more remain unpaid household labor. The people who do that work were not idle 800 years ago, and they are not idle today.
        watwut 1y ago
        Women and kids would tend to animals and food came directly from the animals. They both would tend the fields when work did not required physical strength - and thre was plenty of such work too. The crafts women did were for sale or trade. They would also sell on the market whatever excess household produced. If we are talking about "centuries" quite a lot of people including men did not worked as in being employed for salary. But their work was economical - necessarily so. Being stay at home mom today is mostly battling boredom and demotivation. Or then, making up things to do. It is not the same as milking cows or making cheese.
        PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
        > Being stay at home mom today is mostly battling boredom and demotivation. Or then, making up things to do. It is not the same as milking cows or making cheese. I was a stay at home parent for my daughter. It was extremely far from battling boredom (except perhaps for first year and a half, if that, and even then anyone who is actually interested in child development will not find it boring) and it was the opposite of demotivating. Rather than speak in such broad generalizations, I think it would be better to restrict your claims to specific, real stories.
- quickthrowman 1y ago
  No they didn’t, read some history. ‘Cottage industry’ and ‘child labor’ are good search terms to use.
  - dcow 1y ago
    Children helped support their families, I don’t see the face value problem with that. The fact remains that humans have been having kids in their teens and 20s for millennia, until very recently in western liberal societies.
defrost 1y ago
You might want to brush up on your history. Aside from the peer comment pointing out the bleedingly obvious, there's also a bit of history here: In 1907 Justice Henry Bourne Higgins, President of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court, set the first federally arbitrated wages standard in Australia. Using the Sunshine Harvester Factory as a test case, Justice Higgins took the pioneering approach of hearing evidence from not only male workers but also their wives to determine what was a fair and reasonable wage for a working man to support a family of five. Higgins’s ruling became the basis for setting Australia’s minimum wage standard for the next 70 years. that you're clearly unaware of. * https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/harvester-judgement https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/harvester-... * https://www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/history/waltzing-matilda-and-sunshine-harvester-factory/harvester-case https://www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/history/waltzing-matilda-and... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_case
- chownie 1y ago
  Can a man support a family of 5 on minimum wage in Australia, or did it stop working?
  - marcus_holmes 1y ago
    Minimum wage is more complicated in Australia. There are effectively minimum wage levels set per profession, known as awards. This is the list of awards: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/awards/list-of-awards https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/awards/lis... it's pretty extensive Each award is also complex, and covers a range of issues in the employment. For example, this is the Professional Employee award: https://awards.fairwork.gov.au/MA000065.html https://awards.fairwork.gov.au/MA000065.html just working out what the minimum wage would be for a graduate engineer with 2 years experience is a complex, detailed matter. But yes, probably, for most professions you could reasonably expect to support a family of 5 on the award, depending on location and definition of "support". Affording a house would largely depend on an additional inheritance, though.
    - 1y ago
erikerikson 1y ago
For most of human history, there were no formal schools.
ath3nd 1y ago
> Obviously the answer is "1950s america". And the 50s to 80s anywhere else in the civilized world.
- graemep 1y ago
  It does not have to be a replica of of 50s society though. In particular, I do not think the model of "men go out to work, women look after home and kids" is a great one. There are lot of alternatives. Men can be primary parents (I was, once the kids got to about the age of eight or so, and was an equal parent before that) and they could stay at home (I continued working, but I was already self-employed and working from home, and my ex never worked after having children). I think the ideal set up (it would have been so for me) would have been for both parents to work part time. Of course it still comes back to, you should be able to raise a family on the equivalent of one full time income. Of course, if the leisured society predicted a few decades ago had come to pass it would be one part time salary.
  - ath3nd 1y ago
    > I think the ideal set up (it would have been so for me) would have been for both parents to work part time. Beautifully said, very progressive also! I am a big fan of the 4-day work week (for the same amount of money as 5 days), it's been transformative for my life. The extra energy and focus you get from that 1 day translates to higher productivity in the 4 days where you do work. Sadly, the current "squeeze em', bleed em' dry, and drop em'" brand of capitalism is incompatible with the majority of the people to experience how good life can be like that. I certainly ain't looking forward to them raising the retirement age to 1337 by the time I get to retire. It's like a race where they repeatedly move the finishing line because the organizers took the medals and sold them, while waiting for you to drop dead so they don't have to give you what you are due.
    - pc86 1y ago
      Who wouldn't be a fan of 80% of the work for 100% of the pay? It's a built-in raise equal to or greater than what you'd get from changing jobs, without the switch in seniority or experience.
Spooky23 1y ago
Huh? Maybe that’s when you saw people on TV for the first time. High school was advanced education in 2000. Basic education ended around grade 6-8.
- pc86 1y ago
  No reasonable person considered high school advanced education in the 70's let alone 2000. If 85%+ of people get it for half a century, it is by definition not advanced. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Grad-rates-Figure-1-FINAL.png https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Grad-ra...
  - Spooky23 1y ago
    Whoops, that was a typo, i meant 1900 :)
    - pc86 1y ago
      I don't know the 1900 stats but I bet in that case you're right :)
meheleventyone 1y ago
Whether something should be the case has little bearing on whether it has been the case for any length of time particularly in something as flexible as the organization of society. It should largely be fine to point at something and say "I would like things to work this way" and try to organize society in that direction.
tuna74 1y ago
That was only true for 1950s USA if you were a white male with a pretty good job and a wife staying home taking care of the kids.
frollogaston 1y ago
In less wealthy countries, usually the compromise is that husbands are significantly older than their wives. A woman is ready for marriage at 16-20 but a man isn't ready until 25-35. Also they don't own single-family houses unless they're in totally rural areas.

wizee 1y ago

People supported families with single incomes with less than high school education for centuries before the 1950s.

watwut 1y ago
All the other members of the family were active and produced useful things - both kids and women. The iddle lifestyle was limited to richer classes.
- mandmandam 1y ago
  In foraging societies - ie, most people for the vast majority of human history - people worked ~15–20 hours/week on subsistence tasks. The rest was leisure or social time (ie, time for being a human later rebranded as 'idleness'). Industrialization has pushed inequality to extremes while raising hours worked - even as productivity keeps shooting up. There's no good reason for people to tolerate this; it's just exploitation.
  - _benton 1y ago
    You can still do this now, it's just called "being homeless" and it actually sucks.
    - mandmandam 1y ago
      A, being homeless and being in a gatherer society are very different things. And B, even if you wanted to live that way you can't any more; because the commons has been relentlessly exploited past its breaking point for centuries. I shouldn't really have to explain any of this, but people generally seem to have some weird ideas and blind spots surrounding our history as a species.
      - _benton 1y ago
        In many countries the only obstacle is the legality of living on government lands. In Canada there are people living a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle on crown land. The option is totally available for many people who chose not to do it.
        mandmandam 1y ago
        > the only obstacle is the legality of living on government lands Yes, the obstacle of living illegally on land that has been systematically over-exploited for centuries (or too harsh to bother), without any community or experience. Not sure I'm seeing your point.
        _benton 1y ago
        People do it so it's definitely possible. Most people chose not to do it because it's a hard life with a horrible quality of life. Being a hunter-gatherer and living a nomadic life is not and was never easy or fun.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Those hours worked are carefully defining a lot of work away. Most things people eat need hours of preparation that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example. When you relook at what people did most of the time you realize they had to work really hard for a lot more hours to survive.
    - mandmandam 1y ago
      Look man if you want to write a refutation of Marshall Sahlins' work, go ahead. I might even read it. But I'm not going to just take the word of a random commentator - are you even in anthropology? Like, this is a broad consensus thing. There's not really much debate; ethnographic studies have backed it up. Where are you getting your info from?
      - Avshalom 1y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#Crit...
        mandmandam 1y ago
        There seem to be two main points of critique there: 1. That there was war and war sucked; disease; and also infant mortality was high - therefore life sucked back then. None of that really factors in to the debate of how much free time people had; and those thing are all still very much with us (especially in America). 2. That food prep and gathering firewood takes time. Well, gathering firewood is also known as 'going for a walk in nature', and it's actually good for you. You can chat with your friends while you do it. It's not like your average job. It might not be technically 'idle', but it's a lot closer to 'idle' than flipping burgers in a sweatbox. Same with food prep - picking through some dried beans, or stirring a pot every 30 mins and making sure it doesn't boil over, while you tell stories around the table just isn't comparable to working in an Amazon warehouse pissing into plastic bottles. It's critique, and you can buy it if you want; but there's nothing there I would call substantial.
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
  Who said anything about the idle lifestyle?
  - jimbokun 1y ago
    Implied by "single income". In reality in most families all family members were contributing something to the household income.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
      Income in this context means trading labor for cash. In the past, huge amounts of household work were done without any such exchange. Today, child raising, cleaning, cooking, provisioning, and more remain unpaid household labor. The people who do that work were not idle 800 years ago, and they are not idle today.
      - watwut 1y ago
        Women and kids would tend to animals and food came directly from the animals. They both would tend the fields when work did not required physical strength - and thre was plenty of such work too. The crafts women did were for sale or trade. They would also sell on the market whatever excess household produced. If we are talking about "centuries" quite a lot of people including men did not worked as in being employed for salary. But their work was economical - necessarily so. Being stay at home mom today is mostly battling boredom and demotivation. Or then, making up things to do. It is not the same as milking cows or making cheese.
        PaulDavisThe1st 1y ago
        > Being stay at home mom today is mostly battling boredom and demotivation. Or then, making up things to do. It is not the same as milking cows or making cheese. I was a stay at home parent for my daughter. It was extremely far from battling boredom (except perhaps for first year and a half, if that, and even then anyone who is actually interested in child development will not find it boring) and it was the opposite of demotivating. Rather than speak in such broad generalizations, I think it would be better to restrict your claims to specific, real stories.
quickthrowman 1y ago
No they didn’t, read some history. ‘Cottage industry’ and ‘child labor’ are good search terms to use.
- dcow 1y ago
  Children helped support their families, I don’t see the face value problem with that. The fact remains that humans have been having kids in their teens and 20s for millennia, until very recently in western liberal societies.

defrost 1y ago

You might want to brush up on your history. Aside from the peer comment pointing out the bleedingly obvious, there's also a bit of history here: In 1907 Justice Henry Bourne Higgins, President of the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court, set the first federally arbitrated wages standard in Australia. Using the Sunshine Harvester Factory as a test case, Justice Higgins took the pioneering approach of hearing evidence from not only male workers but also their wives to determine what was a fair and reasonable wage for a working man to support a family of five. Higgins’s ruling became the basis for setting Australia’s minimum wage standard for the next 70 years. that you're clearly unaware of. * https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/harvester-judgement https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/harvester-... * https://www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/history/waltzing-matilda-and-sunshine-harvester-factory/harvester-case https://www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/history/waltzing-matilda-and... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_case

chownie 1y ago
Can a man support a family of 5 on minimum wage in Australia, or did it stop working?
- marcus_holmes 1y ago
  Minimum wage is more complicated in Australia. There are effectively minimum wage levels set per profession, known as awards. This is the list of awards: https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/awards/list-of-awards https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-conditions/awards/lis... it's pretty extensive Each award is also complex, and covers a range of issues in the employment. For example, this is the Professional Employee award: https://awards.fairwork.gov.au/MA000065.html https://awards.fairwork.gov.au/MA000065.html just working out what the minimum wage would be for a graduate engineer with 2 years experience is a complex, detailed matter. But yes, probably, for most professions you could reasonably expect to support a family of 5 on the award, depending on location and definition of "support". Affording a house would largely depend on an additional inheritance, though.
  - 1y ago

erikerikson 1y ago

For most of human history, there were no formal schools.

ath3nd 1y ago

> Obviously the answer is "1950s america". And the 50s to 80s anywhere else in the civilized world.

graemep 1y ago
It does not have to be a replica of of 50s society though. In particular, I do not think the model of "men go out to work, women look after home and kids" is a great one. There are lot of alternatives. Men can be primary parents (I was, once the kids got to about the age of eight or so, and was an equal parent before that) and they could stay at home (I continued working, but I was already self-employed and working from home, and my ex never worked after having children). I think the ideal set up (it would have been so for me) would have been for both parents to work part time. Of course it still comes back to, you should be able to raise a family on the equivalent of one full time income. Of course, if the leisured society predicted a few decades ago had come to pass it would be one part time salary.
- ath3nd 1y ago
  > I think the ideal set up (it would have been so for me) would have been for both parents to work part time. Beautifully said, very progressive also! I am a big fan of the 4-day work week (for the same amount of money as 5 days), it's been transformative for my life. The extra energy and focus you get from that 1 day translates to higher productivity in the 4 days where you do work. Sadly, the current "squeeze em', bleed em' dry, and drop em'" brand of capitalism is incompatible with the majority of the people to experience how good life can be like that. I certainly ain't looking forward to them raising the retirement age to 1337 by the time I get to retire. It's like a race where they repeatedly move the finishing line because the organizers took the medals and sold them, while waiting for you to drop dead so they don't have to give you what you are due.
  - pc86 1y ago
    Who wouldn't be a fan of 80% of the work for 100% of the pay? It's a built-in raise equal to or greater than what you'd get from changing jobs, without the switch in seniority or experience.

Spooky23 1y ago

Huh? Maybe that’s when you saw people on TV for the first time. High school was advanced education in 2000. Basic education ended around grade 6-8.

pc86 1y ago
No reasonable person considered high school advanced education in the 70's let alone 2000. If 85%+ of people get it for half a century, it is by definition not advanced. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Grad-rates-Figure-1-FINAL.png https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Grad-ra...
- Spooky23 1y ago
  Whoops, that was a typo, i meant 1900 :)
  - pc86 1y ago
    I don't know the 1900 stats but I bet in that case you're right :)

meheleventyone 1y ago

Whether something should be the case has little bearing on whether it has been the case for any length of time particularly in something as flexible as the organization of society. It should largely be fine to point at something and say "I would like things to work this way" and try to organize society in that direction.

tuna74 1y ago

That was only true for 1950s USA if you were a white male with a pretty good job and a wife staying home taking care of the kids.

frollogaston 1y ago

In less wealthy countries, usually the compromise is that husbands are significantly older than their wives. A woman is ready for marriage at 16-20 but a man isn't ready until 25-35. Also they don't own single-family houses unless they're in totally rural areas.