University of Maryland Global Campus, Adelphi, MD, United States.It's only at extremely LOW wages that only one partner works because at $5/hour, it's a better use of time for one spouse to be doing housework. Problem: at $100,000/year, the other spouse would want to work at Starbucks too and hire a sitter to watch the kids. For instance, if you could make $100,000/year as a Starbucks barista (holding all else equal), one income could in fact raise a family.
That would be nice! The problem is that this analysis is totally backwards. I remember Blake Masters last fall ran an ad about how you should be able to raise a family on one income again. That is unquestionably better now.įinal point on two income families. I get thinking 2023 is terrible if you're a conservative, I don't get it if you're a progressive who is concerned with stuff like gay rights. This is where I'm also out of step with the left. In a time of peace and prosperity we have to find a different place to channel our energy. Not very difficult to find a purpose when you're staving off starvation or fighting in a war. It reminds me of the Louis CK bit "everything's awesome and nobody's happy." People not bringing kids in to the world because it's such a dystopia? This is the greatest time to be alive in human history! We're bored! That's our challenge. These are the problems we get when we've mostly eliminated extreme poverty (except for a few places like Indian Reservations which do still have crushing 1950s poverty or worse).
Fentanyl, porn, fast food addiction, and general hopelessness are all diseases of affluence. To me, a lot of these problems have something in common. Kudos to Matt for acknowledging that there ARE some things that are getting worse. What I'm concerned about is having an economy dynamic enough that periods of unemployment are brief, not preserving every last job ad infinitum. I accept that economic progress means that some people will lose their jobs sometimes. Demographic change doesn't bother me (I'm young, it would be weird if it did). Technological change is going to be difficult to adjust to, but is a net good. I've complained here a lot of having views traditionally associated with the right (pro-free market, kinda hawkish, pro-family and religion) but just having nothing in common with 90% of Republicans I meet. I think this actually sums up WHY I'm out of step with the right. Great post! I love a good myth debunking. But I think his analyses miss something profound that is happening primarily, though not exclusively, to the younger generations (the most connected, the most depressed) that goes beyond mere dollars. I love that Matt approaches issues through the lens of data and economics, and pushes back against a message of despair. Social media connects while amplifying each outrage, injustice, and crisis in the pursuit of their one-more-click business models. The relentless stream of negativity results in a message that is a gross distortion of reality. Today we are inundated with stories about the terrible state of our lives, our country, our climate, our planet. The meme Matt used isn't nostalgia for a different time it is just another way of saying "things are terrible, previous generations had it better and you are getting screwed". People love remembering when they were young.
And always with a note of romanticism and nostalgia for the halcyon days of youth. How many times have we heard the phrase: "We were poor back then, but we didn't know it." Often said by people when describing their childhood, or by long-married couples recounting their first years of marriage. But not, it seems, before melting American brains into thinking that the incredible growth of the post-war era was normal and perpetually sustainable, rather than the result of a very specific economic and political moment in time. to grow its own domestic markets.īy the 1960s and 1970s this exceptional situation began to wear off, as the rest of the world was finally able to begin competing economically and the limits of the domestic market were reached. In this same time frame, investments in American infrastructure, electrification, and industrial capacity which had begun in the 1930s and accelerated during the war finally began to bear fruit, allowing the U.S. as the money to rebuild Europe was often spent on American products). as the world's sole major source of goods, foodstuffs, and capital investment (the Marshall Plan was excellent economic diplomacy, but it's also worth remembering how much it also benefited the U.S. 1945-1965: Europe and Asia had been devastated by World War II and were in economic shambles, leaving the U.S. In all this 1950s nostalgia, I think what's sometimes forgotten is how truly unique the situation was in which the U.S.
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