Letters to the Editor
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Step up and be an adult.
Yes, "personal responsibility" has been the watchwords they've used to push all this down our throats, all this stuff about having to pay for our own healthcare, having to pay for our own retirement....
Do we really want to be personally responsible for all this stuff? Why can't somebody else take on some of this responsibility? Why can't corporations and government, which have more money and more power than the individual, be responsible for taking care of some of it...?
um, well, maybe because a corporation is NOT responsible for our retirement. i think the author's position above (read: whining about having to pay for things that are HERS and benefit HER) is appalling.
looking to blame someone else, looking for a handout.
say what you want about the economic crisis (and i actually agree with a lot of what she presents) but jumping to socialism or a belief system that points the finger of responsiblity to someone else is outrageous. i'm not thrilled about our current situation, nor the high percentage of taxes i pay for services i don't actually use, but do i mind paying an insurance premium through my employer for health insurance that covers ME if and when I need medical attention? no. that's part of being an adult, and providing for MYSELF.
god, i get so sick of the people who think anyone owes them more, more, more. and who feel free to demand it of anyone or anything with more money.
it's unethical and disrespectful to ask other people to pay for things for you just because you don't want to. some payments (MY retirement, MY healthcare) are just mine to shoulder. seems pretty simple to me.
let me pay less in taxes and actually pay for those services i specifically use.
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@Taliesan
"Up social spending on roads and maintanance, the more that degrades the harder and more expensive it is going to be to fix it, but don't spend the money on hiring someone's nephew to oversee the funds, spend it on actually fixing things."
In fact, why not start up new WPAs and CCCs dedicated to fixing this country's infrastructure? That solves two problems with one stone.
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What did we expect?
It makes me sick when I read an aritcle like this one, handwringing over the decline of the middle class, the concentration of wealth into fewer hands, the failure of people to locate the correct enemy.
When the ignorant middle class starting voting republican in large numbers starting in the Reagan years, they sealed their fate and are receiving exactly what they deserve. The republicans convinced the middle class, spoiled by years of post-Depression socialistic policies, that the poor were the ones causing them grief. Republicans used "welfare" and a war on the poor to their advantage, getting the middle class to believe that the taxes they paid went to the undeserving poor who were bleeding them dry. That the middle class was unaware just how small a portion of their total tax bill went to welfare is testament to their ignorance.
The republicans also were adept at turning the newly-minted professional middle class against the blue collar union workers. This professional class, the subject of the article, were made to feel resentful that the blue collar was making as much or more money without a higher education. The professional class feasted on that class resentment, again unaware that the conservatives were targeting them next.
So now we have a professional middle class that finds itself in much the same position as the blue collar, their frustration and desperation growing like the underclass they threw under the bus.
Too bad.
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My Theory
"How have women going into the workforce in great numbers since the '70s affected the big picture? Why hasn't that given dual-income households more security?"
My theory as to why housing costs have gone so high that in many cases it requires two incomes to live a middle class lifestyle is as follows.
Prior to the early 70's, banks would only look at the husband's income to establish the amount of mortage loan a family could handle. That changed when through some regulation in response to the "womans movement" banks were required to include spousal income. Suddenly families could qualify for higher mortgages and as a result housing prices began to escalate as these two earner families bid up the price of houses. As more and more spouses entered the job market this escalation continues until now in most cases it requires two incomes to purchase a home.
Imagine what would happen to home prices if suddenly the country reverted back to looking only to one spouse income.
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Joenbo
Maybe doubling the supply of labor meant that it was not scarce anymore, and therefore wages didn't have to rise? Why would an employer work to keep an employee, when they can replace him or her easily, and cheaply?
I think businesses got hooked on the plentiful supply (and accompanying low cost), and that's why we now have outsourcing and wink wink nod nod attitudes toward illegal immigrants.
I am a woman, and I'm really glad that I have the chance to have a career of my choosing. But my basic econ course in college taught me that if you double (or hugely increase) the supply of something, without also increasing the demand, the price of the good or service is going to go down. Which is why it now takes two incomes to support a family.
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On Encouraging Career Paths...
I bet our grandchildren will be encouraged to become engineers, nurses, teachers, or accountants.
-- CyclingFool
I see your point, but I have to say I don't know what career paths I would encourage my children to pursue, if I had any. It seems that so much work is so easily sent off to other countries to be done by people who make less than one would by working in a crap retail job here. It's something to think about when figuring out what path you want to take (or that you want to encourage your children to take). Engineers and accountants are among those whose work gets sent to India or China; teachers and nurses are safer from that, though they have their own worries, I'm sure.
I work in web development, and I think about it all the time. I work for a small startup (basically just me and the owner), and we do sometimes outsource work to a Chinese firm. My boss loves it because we only have to pay them $5/hour. I wonder how much of that the people doing the work actually get. Are they doing technical work for like $2/hour, or do they have a high enough volume of business that they're able to be paid better than that? I hope it's the latter, for their sake, but one never knows.