Why now both, the father and the mother, have to work to make ends meet?

Hello,

I am just wondering that.

I remember my father worked but my mother didn´t need to work at all, and we were six brothers, so, only with my father´s income we were feed all, we had clothing, food, vacations, and so forth.

Nowadays, both have to work, it is not a matter of choice any longer, but a matter of survival, to pay the mortgage, the two cars, and so forth. Even more, it is very rare nowadays that a couple, a married couple have more than two children.

I just can´t make sense of it.


Thanks in advance!

 

There are several reasons. These are regulations, taxes and inflation.

Regulations: I remember when Jack Kemp, who was Housing Secretary, should that 1/2 of the price of a home went to covering government regulations. So if a home cost $500,000, you have to pay $250,000 more for that home. So your parents have to work harder and longer to buy a home. And that's just one item.

Taxes. At the Federal, State and Local level government combined takes about 1/2 of national income. So, basically, 1/2 of your income goes to paying for government. That means you need 2 incomes to do what one income use to do.

Inflation. When the dollar was on the silver standard, money would keep it's value. In the 70's, Nixon took the dollar of the silver standard which resulted in inflation. This means that if you could buy a bag of groceries with $10 dollars. The next year you might need $20 dollars, then $30 dollars and so on and so on. The result is need more and more money to buy the same stuff.

So this is the state of the economy today. The price of everything goes up because of regulations and taxes. Throw in the fact that the value of your money keeps dropping and as a result you need two pay checks just to keep up. Or accept a lower standard of living where you say something like, "My parents had it better then I".

 

Did you have 4 TVs, 3 PCs, 4 consoles, 2 cars...........

 

This is what they want us to believe, nothing furthest than reality, this is not (what you point out) the issue, at least, in my opinion.

 

It's all about equilibrium. Wages are set by what the minimum price workers are willing to work for. When it was just the man working, the worker demanded enough to provide for his family, and would/could not work for less. When women entered the picture, the increased competition of an expanded work force drove wages down.

From a Marxist perspective at least, the basic idea is that if all the workers work twice as hard, they will all collectively still be earning the same ammount as they did before. This is an excellent example of The Fallacy of Composition - what is true for individual parts is not necessarily true for the whole. If you work harder, obviously you are going to earn more money, but if everyone else is working harder too it is going to mean more competition and lower wages for you.

But I believe this effect has mostly manifested itself in the increased cost of housing.

 

Seeing how most workers pay up to 50% of their income on Federal, State and Local taxes, sales tax, fees, etc., doesn't help either.

 

Very interesting question to stop and think about.

There are so many factors:

Rising cost of healthcare, education, home prices, food, and energy combined outpace the rise in wages.

Deregulated lending industry, credit cards, usury laws, everyone should own a home mentality, the debt people and the Government take on, military spending, entitlement spending, decreased power of the dollar, fractional banking system, social programs.

Where do you start? I can keep listing things that seem relevant. I think it is an important question for everyone to think about but we are so (*)(*)(*)(*) busy trying to pay for everything who has the time.....lol

 

all you need to do is become rich and you can pay less then 15% for all the money you earn

some believe we need to reward the rich for being rich cause they do not think the being rich is reward enough


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I am not concerned only in the US, but in all contries around the world

 

I am not concerned only in the US, but in all contries around the world

 

But here in Europe healthcare and education are free, except for Holland, as far as I know.

Military spending here in Spain is not as huge as in the US, at all, well, you know this.

I heard someone said it was because of the inflation, but I can´t understand it.

 

I don't know about living in Europe and I can't peg it to one thing. Here in the states education and healthcare have been rising exponentially. We are not making the products we are using anymore and we import cheap throw-away goods. We have huge labor supply. Household incomes have been flat since the 90's. We have had 3 decades of NAFTA. Home prices are still high. IMO America is changing faster than people realize and we have lost our "mojo".

I am just stabbing at things. If I had to pick one thing, I would say irresponsible use of credit.

 

For me, it is astonishing to see how you pay so much for health care, and how unfair that is, putting aside the poors, never understood that, or that a young guy has to ask for a 70.000 dollars to have a degree, that is , in my view, totally crazy

That is off-topic, I know, but never understood that from the US, the so-called greatest country in the world.

Here, healthcare is free and we have real good doctors ( I am sticking to statistics, facts) , and education is free, for all the people have to be entitled to both healthcare and education, and a shelter, I should say.

Anyway, I think something is happening that the middle class is no longer a real middle class.

 

Many americans don't really understand it either. Powerful interests are the best explanation why we don't have something similar to yours.

 

From an article I am reading, really enlightening:

"...Yes, there's this great myth out there that we call the "Over-consumption Myth," which goes: If you earn a decent income, and you're in trouble financially, it must be because you're blowing all your money at the Gap, and TGIF. The myth is so powerful, it almost seems like heresy to question it. But when we actually looked into the data on what real families actually spend, it's just not true. An average family of four actually spends less on clothing than their parents did a generation ago, adjusted for inflation. That includes all the Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirts and all the Nike sneakers..."

 

Yeah........ from what I've seen workers in the 1950s in the US paid a lot more of their income in taxes.

 

How about this? (from minute 16:40 to minute 24:43 approximately):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

Astonishing, isn´t it?

 

How about this? (from minute 16:40 to minute 24:43 approximately):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

Astonishing, isn´t it?

 

15% on the return on your investments - assuming 5% ROI, you would have to invest $20M to get $1M in income. That $20M is invested in a business, giving it the capital it needs to expand, hiring more people, where the employees and business pay taxes.

Oh, and that 15% is only the federal tax on investment income. Many states consider capital gains just another source of income.

We are rewarding people for investing, including those of us that sell homes, or retirees that actually prepared for retirement by investing as a source of income.

We are not rewarding the rich any more than we are rewarding any other investor.

Would you prefer to do is punish the rich for being rich?

 

Part of the problem is the economy of course.

However part of the problem is also, living above your means. Credit cards, expensive cars with car payments, mortgages for expensive houses, fast food, having kids without a strong means of income to support them, etc

I can literally, have only about $750 a month in monthly expenses (bills, rent, groceries, gas, car insurance, etc) and make about $1300 or more every two weeks. Sure I have a slightly older car paid in cash which may require me to do some of my own repairs (instead of a flashy new car which would cost about $1000 a month in car payments and full coverage auto insurance) - I rent a trailer for $225 a month (instead of a fancy apartment, or a mortgage for a huge house), I have no kids, no longer use credit cards or loans, have no cable/Tivo/Iphones/ultra high speed internet - but being able to have as much as $2000 in surplus cash each month, without even having a college-level job, sure beats stressing and worrying every day that I won't be able to put food on the table or will be thrown out of my home onto the street, just because I feel the need to mortgage a $200,000 home I don't need, or take out payments for a $40,000 car, when a used car that costs $1500-4000 in cash gets the job done just as well, provided you know some basic auto maintenance.

Hypothetically, even if my older used car went completely kaput - I'd have to go through at least 10-20 of such cars to even match the expenses paid for a flashy new car leased from a dealer. I'd probably pay more in 1 month for a new car (payments/full coverage insurance) than it cost to buy one of my old cars off in cash, which lasted me about 3 years with maintenance. If I consistently made this money and kept my expenses down, then in 2-3 years I could just buy a modest home off in cash and not even half to worry about a mortgage.

 

And don't forget, just as taxes keep climbing, the value of money keeps dropping. So you have to pay for these taxes with more and more dollars.

 

Single parenting was pre-conned_sumer.Mom was cool with staying home and gardening, canning, sewing, watching stupid soaps and one car was fine as long as she could go to the grocer after the old man got home and head out to get her hair done on a Saturday. Entertainment turned people into junk addicts.
The old school mentality is still alive and well in the real world.That's another reason I live in it. True freedom and reason.

 

In my opinion, if you are saying that it is because you didn´t watch the minutes of the video I put as a link. Those minutes are very clarifying, really, give a try.

 

Nobody watched the video, the link I put here, only the minutes I pointed out, otherwise, you´d be talking a little bit about the data presented in that conference.

 

You don't need a mortgage. For that matter, you don't need a huge house. You can finance a small, modest home ($30,000 or under) with a mortgage as low as under $100 a month provided you have good credit.

You don't need to finance a car, ever. You can buy 2 old used cars for $1500-4000 each, with no car payments, and liability-only insurance. You can also save money by doing mechanical repairs yourself.

My previous car was only $1,500 paid in cash and lasted me for 3 years. Some people pay as much as that in 1 month on car payments and full coverage auto insurance combined. I could literally go through 20-30 'junker' cars before I'd spend as much as some people do just to drive around in one newer, flashy car they don't even need.