First state to legalise no-fault divorce was in 1969 and in the late 1960's was when birth control was becoming widely available.
I suspect a lot of this is to do with the effective doubling of the full-time workforce.
To be clear, I'm NOT saying women being able to work full-time is a bad thing. But I DO think that average people have been totally fucked by the transition to 2 person incomes economically.
Prior to the 1970's, one middle class partner could bring in enough money to support a family, own a home, pay all the bills etc. Whilst at the same time having one person at home meant cost of living was lower and everyone had SIGNIFICANT amounts more free time.
Now, the average middle class family struggles to survive on two incomes and once mum and dad have both completed their 40hrs a week each at work, they both have another 20hrs a week of domestic responsibilities to complete in "their own time" that originally would have been done by the stay at home partner.
Every time this is posted there’s people arguing that this is all caused be social issues. But if you look at the charts it’s pretty highly correlated with the timing of the Nixon shocks, plus the discontinuations (or discontinuation in the derivative) are pretty immediate. My point being something social like the death of the single income two parent family unit didn’t just suddenly happen one day. Hundreds of millions of women weren’t hired on the same day. The gold standard went from there to gone in effectively a day.
This is so strange to me. The workforce doubled, twice as much is being produced. You would think that means the average family would be twice as well off. Instead they have to work twice as long for the exact same amount. This makes no sense at all, until you realize that a tiny percentage at the top took all that extra value.
For the exact same amount? The amount of stuff people have today has absolutely exploded. The amount of content, products, quality and sophistication of these products has skyrocketed as well.
Things like an overseas holiday was described as once in a lifetime because it would literally only be affordable to do once. Modern computers would be impossible without the boost to the workforce.
Peoples expected standards of living has skyrocketed which has kept them working the same amount. And scarce things like land has gone up because you are bidding against other groups who will work two full time jobs.
Because the cost of housing isn’t really based on productivity. It’s based on having more money than everyone else who wants to live in that area. Housing is very cheap in undesirable areas.
Higher density property is the only way to put more housing in the same desirable spaces.
Detaxing land (e.g. prop 13) deliberately created incentives to inhibit higher density housing. This plus growing wealth inequality kicked off the NIMBY revolution.
Housing is by it's very nature exclusive; every building with a roof and at least four walls is put up to keep out animals, the elements, and other people. Exclusivity on it's own has little to do with price. Desirability, mainly in terms of easy access to/production of vittles and lack of crime, is what influences the latter.
> The workforce doubled, twice as much is being produced
The labor force doubled, productive capital did not, and there are declining production gains to additional labor when existing capital is already well employed. Also, the labor force isn't just the force actually producing; unemployment also went up initially (it came down later, as falling real labor prices made it economical to employ less-productive labor.)
> a tiny percentage at the top took all that extra value.
This is true, but increasing competition for some (especially low-skill) labor played a role in concentrating the gains (within the workforce.) Tax policy also played a role.
Eroding the 'natural' i.e. market rate of interest made inefficient activities relatively more valuable. The more we interfered, the more valuable financial holdings became, regardless whether or not they actually contribute to society. IMO we hardly have any idea right now what's worthwhile business activity and what's not, because we destroyed the measuring stick.
The female employment was not nearly at zero back then - in 1970 male employment rates were 80% and female 43%. There was huge amount of women working, just not at well paid jobs. (In 1950 it was 86% to 34%).
Moreover, house work now requires significantly less time and effort then back then. The tech did improved it a lot. Just about the only exception is childcare, in 1970 you could have your 6 years old walk to school alone and play unsupervised whole day. No one would expect you to drive him/her to fifteen activities per week or regularly spend hours on homework projects with the kid.
Elizabeth Warren basically sold her soul to the DNC to become senator. Don't be surprised when she parrots party platform BS even when she should know better. That's literally part of her job now. Thanks Obama (no really, he should have made her head of the CFPB, she'd have done far more good in that role than she will ever do being a mediocre senator).
My recollection is that her state was held by a republican Governor at the time, so putting her on the CFPB would have reduced the Democratic senator count by enough to threaten other legislative priorities. But I might be misremembering
I suspect a lot of this is to do with the effective doubling of the full-time workforce.
To be clear, I'm NOT saying women being able to work full-time is a bad thing. But I DO think that average people have been totally fucked by the transition to 2 person incomes economically.
Prior to the 1970's, one middle class partner could bring in enough money to support a family, own a home, pay all the bills etc. Whilst at the same time having one person at home meant cost of living was lower and everyone had SIGNIFICANT amounts more free time.
Now, the average middle class family struggles to survive on two incomes and once mum and dad have both completed their 40hrs a week each at work, they both have another 20hrs a week of domestic responsibilities to complete in "their own time" that originally would have been done by the stay at home partner.