Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
And up until recently, dual income houses were equally as rare, with most women staying home. Now dual income households are the norm, with two incomes unable to provide what one income did a generation ago.
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But one income back them didn’t really provide what two incomes do today. It provided a house (obviously real estate costs are the big difference), but otherwise not what we would consider a middle-class lifestyle. One car for the family, not two or three. Family vacations in a station wagon, not flights to the Mayan Riviera. Even look at Flames games. Good mid-bowl tickets ran $30 in the mid-eighties ($67 today). Why so low? Because that 40 year old engineer or accountant who bought the ticket was likely the only salary-earner in the household, and he had to cover a mortgage, car, food and clothes for three kids, etc on a single salary. $67 was the limit of what he could afford for a big night out.
The dual-income, two professional family unit has created a whole new class of consumer and new middle-class standards. Spending on children’s activities has quadrupled. Spending on home renovations has increased by multiples as well. That’s the real class divide we don’t like to talk about
: professional-class couples in enduring marriages vs working-class people in temporary partnerships. Marriage is the essential signifier of middle-class today and the two-professional family the winners of the modern economy. It isn’t just the one-percent who are pulling away, but the 20 per cent (who I expect account for many of the posters on this forum).