Reddit reviews The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke
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>No, families found it more beneficial to have the second worker get a job outside the home.
Here's someone who disagrees quite strongly with that view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A
http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Mothers/dp/0465090826
Even if most Americans were making 70K/year, the cost of living has increased disproportionately regardless.
http://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Mothers/dp/0465090826
An attempt at sources for TravelingJourneyman's claims... This article has an inflation-adjusted chart. Elizabeth Warren wrote 'The Two-Income Trap', interview here Personal anecdote: I lived in South Florida during last decade's boom. A townhouse I lived in tripled in price between its construction in 1999 and its (third) sale in 2005. Units like it have drastically fallen... to twice their 1999 construction price. Whether you buy or rent something like that, it's a big chunk of your paycheck... which didn't experience the same doubling.
Just some further "food for thought" from my own experience that I felt people might find interesting.
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While the article itself is about the additional costs (childcare, etc) related to the "second earner" in a two income household (which I think E. Warren fully delineated -- and even made additional points the article did not address, things like income/financial vulnerability -- in her book, "The Two Income Trap").
But I think there is ALSO a lot of merit in looking at even the original/single/primary earner's "costs of holding Job X" in a similar fashion as well.
When I switched from a full-time commuting job (and one just a 30 minute drive away no less) to working from home, I noticed a dramatic drop in attendant expenses, to wit:
Long story short... even though I am single (so no childen, no child-care costs) I found that I was spending anywhere from $10k to $15k of my NET after tax income on basically "having a job" (that I commuted to/from daily). That meant for my income/tax situation, on a GROSS basis I needed to make (at least) an additional $20k to $25k a year -- in essence because employees cannot deduct all expenses like a business can -- I was "subsidizing" my employer by that amount to have me work "on-site" for him. I could live the exact SAME level of lifestyle, while making significantly LESS (and of course as your income drops, so do your taxes... so you functionally get to "keep" substantially more of the value of your own work/efforts).
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EDIT: Also, I would like to note for all of the "ride a bike" folks that the location of that particular employer (as well as the previous employer) was in an area with significantly higher housing costs (both rental AND/OR purchase would have more than doubled my monthly housing expenses), so "moving closer in order to bike to work" would have not only shifted the costs from driving to housing, but would have actually significantly increased my total costs as well (HUGELY with the prior employer, which was located smack dab in the middle of the highest-cost housing in my state).
Plus, of course I LOVE the relaxing, laid back location of my nice, but inexpensive and paid off, rural home (in an area that OTHER people buy second/vacation homes in, and spend 3+ hours driving to on Friday evenings, and another 3+ hours driving home from on Sunday night) -- a short distance from and with rights to several lakes, plus nearby state forests with walking/biking/XC & downhill skiing, not to mention my large almost 1 acre lot with garden, fruit trees & vines, etc -- in short by I don't need to travel to a relaxing destination for my "vacations", I already LIVE there!
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EDIT2: Note also that I am NOT claiming to be "perfectly frugal" -- I do still buy things I probably don't need, take occasional "wasteful" trips to town, etc. -- just that now that I am NOT commuting every day, the "opportunities" to do so are significantly fewer (probably 1/10th or 1/20th of what they were before); and I have been able to reduce what I previously budgeted for them (and then, SURPRISE! I have often found that over a whole year I have significantly under-spent what I had budgeted... who knew that would happen?)
It's The [Two-Income Trap] (http://www.amazon.com/Two-income-Trap-Middle-class-Mothers-Fathers/dp/0465090826) all over again.
This is a convenient myth. Far more relies upon circumstance and luck, than just responsible money management. In fact, some of THE BEST MONEY MANAGERS I know are persons of low wages or income, because they have no choice. I look around me at people over the $68K threshold, and we don't have to be as careful with our money, and, guess what? We're not! (and I am not just speaking for myself).
An excellent deep research of this in very readable form is "The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke" by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi (http://www.amazon.ca/The-Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class/dp/0465090826/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333117838&sr=8-1). Elizabeth is Special Advisor to the US President for Consumer Financial Protection.
The analysis here is as true for Canada as the US, more true since the economic downturn than when it was written in 2004.
In the face of inequality and greater competition, people will tend to put as much money into housing as possible. As women entered the workforce a generation ago, real household income almost doubled, but disposable income actually went DOWN. Houses got a little bigger, but, for the most part, bidding wars just swallowed up the extra money and funneled it to Wall Street.
And WHY are people buying more expensive houses? They're competing for location - safe neighborhoods and good schools. But if we put more money into schools and implemented a more progressive tax structure that lowered inequality, people would be less nervous about their kids.
If you want to read more about this, read The Two Income Trap.
I agree, I'd like to see more about disposable income.
Interested readers may want to check out, among other things, a book called The Two Income Trap
When both parents work and have kids to raise, you have additional costs, such as a second reliable car and day care / after school care. These can add up to put a big dent in that second income. Of course, there are variables, if both parents have really good jobs it makes it easier, or if you have a nearby relative to provide day care; but if one goes to work "to help pay the bills" and it is offset by $1,000 a month for day care it doesn't help as much.
The author of this article is also the author of "the two income trap", which details precisely the problem with transportation, food, and childcare that you mentioned.
Yea it is. When I was married, my wife didn't work. She, the two kids and I were just fine on my income (even though it was a fraction of what I make now).
Hell, now I'm divorced, she still doesn't work and seems to be just fine on almost half my income.
Then, some economists say the whole two income thing is a trap
There's a book on that. The Dual Income Trap.
> I ask this because even redpill guys say ridiculous things like "feminism isn't a bad idea just poorly practiced..."
Ironically, men have been the biggest benefactors of the sexual revolution and feminism since the 60's. Easy access to cheap sex is available to any man who wants to spend any time at all learning to how to manipulate women into taking their clothes off. By making the cost of obtaining sex fall to an all-time low, without serious investment and commitment, any incentives or social controls put upon men to have to take women seriously, have been washed away.
Even people like Elizabeth Warren have admitted that the drive to get women into the workplace isn't what many of them imagine it to be. And it hasn't left many families all that better off, contra the protestations of every feminist group out there, neither many women generally speaking.
I'm 26, you imbecile.
But good job denigrating evolution, saying its merely a collection of observation.
Evolution a proven fact. Classical liberalism AKA "free market" economics, which is haute bourgeois propaganda unfit for the academy. I suggest you learn how economies really operate.