[Wildwell]

The unleashing of cheap credit has enslaved both partners to now have to go out to work in many cases to maintain a household.

Since the 1950s when women started going out to work and the free availability of credit has meant:
- The rise in ability to purchase cars and multiple cheap foreign holidays, thereby pushing up oil use significantly.
- A noticeable increase in yobbish behaviour and the destruction of the family unit. Crime has risen out of all proportions.
- Initially people could afford a bigger house, but whereas a property could be bought on one person’s wage, the exact same bricks are mortar now requires two. Therefore the family is materially worse off, because it now takes more work to purchase the same item
- People now live beyond their means. Whereas it was shameful to obtain cheap credit to buy items in the 1950s, cash buying is now seen low class and strange. Balance of payments problems have increased through the purchase of cheap foreign goods on credit.
- People now have less quality time at home.
- There has been an increase in depression and suicides as people are unable to keep up with the rat race as cheap credit has put up basic things like property out of many people’s reach. Solitary lifestyles have become more normal increased mobility have led to social problems, obesity, lack of fulfilment. House price rises caused by two partners working and credit have caused more sprawl, accidents, and pollution as people have to commute.

BTW, just in case there is any confusion, this is not an argument for women to be tied to the kitchen sink. Any one of the partners can stop at home!

Just something to think about in our oil use debate! It seems that the inputs of credit and additional labour are the catalyst for oil use rather than being the other way about. The addtional wealth is in fact illusionary in most cases, especially as government is now having to fund the basic costs of living for an ever increasing group.

[Ludi]

I think people work too much. I suggest both partners limit their work hours. My husband and I each work about 2 - 3 hours per day for money - we're self employed. This is our average hours, in actuality the hours are usually lumped together so he works a 35 hour week and then I work a 35 hour week, and then we take some weeks off, usually. We carry no credit except a mortgage which we've paid down by 1/3 and refinanced at a lower rate for a shorter term.

[Wildwell]

BTW, I'm well aware this is a contrvershal subject. The question can be asked another way. Are people living beyond their means? And by doing this are they causing societal problems and a short term drain of resources?

[hull3551]

You bring up some good points. I also wondered the actual cost of working, meaning the cost of work clothes, transportation, food, and al the other work-related items. Add to that daycare, the need for a second automobile, non-quantifiable items (such as quality-of-life degradation, stress on marriage, lack of family time), and it isn’t a very compelling argument for both parents to work.

I think credit expansion has definitely added to more problems than solutions for the average US citizen. Consumerism is touted as the ability to raise one’s standard of living, but I really don’t see people more satisfied with their lives based upon material possessions. Actually, quite the opposite.

I scaled back my lifestyle and certainly am happier because of it. I am also lucky though my wife and I agree we need to reduce possessions versus acquire them. Hopefully, we’ll be total debt free (including dreaded student loans) in a few months, although we plan on buying a home next year in a pedestrian/bike friendly town.

[Kez]

Yeah great points. I definitely think that easy to get credit has made it too easy for people to live way beyong their means, and waste energy that they otherwise would never even have.

Only about 2% of the people I know and work with don't have credit problems, or big mortgages and car payments. They all live much better than me and my wife, but they are also paying much more for everything they buy when you include the finance charges.

For me the motivation is easy to remain out of debt and not buy junk - do I want to be working when I'm 60 and 70 like 90% of the people I know, or do I want to be doing other things?

[RiverRat]

If the vast majority of households in the US would make a conscience decision to live BELOW their means, I would think that (short term) this would spiral the economy into a recession (as it is dependent on consumer spending).

It would be a self fulfilling prophecy.

Only one member of the household COULD work and they would HAVE TO live below their means.

[Ludi]

I agree that living at or below one's means would, if practiced on a wide scale, ruin the economy, because our economy depends on infinite growth. But too bad, I think people should do it anyway, for the eventual good of us all, including non-humans.

[jaws]

Credit is so easy because the government decided it would be better that way. They have to 'stimulate the economy' by creating immense amounts of money which then circulates through the financial system as cheap credit. What they don't tell you is that it robs the small investor of the value of his savings. Having a savings account at the bank returns so little interest there's essentially no reason to save money at all. And why should the bank pay you interest at all when the federal reserve will supply them with all the money they need to make cheap loans?

So there you have it, the credit-crazy economy was completely engineered by Alan Greenspan to make himself look like a titan of economic management.

[MicroHydro]

I like this idea. Now I have to talk the spouse into letting me be the one to stay at home.

[I_Like_Plants]

Oh yes, one staying at home especially if there are kids makes a LOT of sense. Mom or Mr. Mom, doesn't matter, and I like to think there isn't much of a stigma against a guy being mr mom any more.

People look back and long for the 1950s lifestyle, with Mom at home, and think they can't attain it, but they can. There are living examples to learn from all around us - Mexicans. These folks a 1950s lifestyle! Mom stays at home, Dad goes to work, Dad carpools, buses, or bikes as often as drives, which is like the 1950s. Mom budgets and shops very carefully, cooks all meals at home, including Dad's sack lunch he takes to work, does the laundry etc all that. Fancy non-1950s things like cable TV, other fancy toys are avoided to a great degree. Living quarters are small, remember the average new house in the 1950s was something like 800 sq.ft. These guys do it! Their kids grow up with Mom at home, they go to Church on sundays, relatives are not estranged even if they're on the other side of a border, it's great.

So, living like it's the 1950s is easy and it's done all the time, and there are people doing it you can learn from. I'ts living like the 1950s as far as one person working, but living IN a 2000's style big house with 2000's style toys, that's hard. And this is what people gripe about not being able to do.

[cube]

I have nothing but contempt for our financial system. It is base upon manipulation above all else. However I do not believe people need to be babysat. People need to be able to make their own choices in life even if it's a bad choice.

[Claudia]

The best book I've read discussing these exact issues is:

The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke

It backs up its assertions with some startling data about the trends in real family wealth. Most public libraries have it.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hese guys do it! Their kids grow up with Mom at home, they go to Church on sundays, relatives are not estranged even if they're on the other side of a border, it's great.

[I_Like_Plants]

You do have a point, a very good one.

Right along with wifes starting to work, the whole treadmill speed-up, working-class schools started to mean BAD schools. I'm willing to bet this is about the time money became much more important towards going to college too. That didn't used to be so, California had "Cal Grants" which meant, if you got decent grades in HS at all you could go to college. Other states had the same thing.

Then those programs were ended, and college fees started going up. They're still going up, much faster than inflation. Much much faster than wages, which we all know have been stagnant at best, decreasing for most people. This all started about 30 years ago when the dual-income thing started

Then about 20 years ago college became not only very expensive but for most people race-based. That meant if you were middle class and nonwhite, you got tons of money thrown at you, if you were working class and white, no matter how good your grades, we were not going to college. So, we lost a whole generation of engineers, doctors, etc., that would have gone to college in the 1950s or even the 1960s, but from the 70s on were kept out. Now, the US has to import doctors and nurses and engineers, and there's a whole generation of whites who had to settle for being carpenters and plumbers if they were lucky, more likely they're working at your local Home Depot for little more than min. wage and angry as hell. This will help liven things up with TSHTF.

And you're right, in wealthy areas the schools are decent and will help kids prepare for college, and now the way things are set up, the rich kids only have to compete with their own top 20% of the population, not the other 80%. No more fears of having to compete with the brilliant kid from the working class who worked their way up. So a lot of parents do work hard to get into a good school district so their kids will have a chance, because the treadmill is speeding up and even the kids have to work like hell to get somewhere.

And people wonder why some of us look forward to this system falling on its face when PO hits.

[oiless]

My Dad always used to say that things really started to go to hell during WWII. Up 'till that time women were seen as homemakers and child rearers, not inferior to men, but with different interests and inclinations. During the war the men went to fight, and there were labour shortages; and it was discovered through necessity that women could work in factories and other places just as well as men.
In his words: "Pretty soon the captialists realised that they had twice the labour pool to exploit and rip off that they thought they had, so they engineered a society where both parteners had to work."
Another quote: "I'm glad I'm not a young person today."

[0mar]

Real men don't let women work for necessitity. I don't let my girl work for rent/food/etcetc. Everything she earns is because she wants to earn and is free to spend.

[Raxozanne]

It was recently reported that the cost of living over a persons lifetime in the UK is £1.5 million.

[I_Like_Plants]

Omar that kind of chivalry died out in the US long ago, now it's about survival. And how about a family only eating because one of their daughters earned $5 or so that day babysitting or cleaning a yard?

We're on such a work-and-spend treadmill in the "first world" that sex roles are a luxury.

[Leanan]

The Two-Income Trap is an excellent book on this topic. You can read an excerpt here:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3079221/

The authors did extensive research into the causes of bankruptcy, and found that a lot of the stereotypes about it are not true. It's not Yuppies spending all their money on Starbuck's lattes and big-screen TVs who declare bankruptcy. It's families with children, who are pushed over the brink by a job loss, a divorce, or most commonly, medical bills. The biggest risk factor for bankruptcy is having children.

And it's the people who budget carefully and don't buy a lot of junk who suffer the most. If you are wasting your money on lattes and sports cars, if you get in trouble, it's easy to cut back. Sell the new Expedition and buy a used Corolla. Drink coffee at home instead at a pricy cafe. But if you're already frugal, there's nothing to cut.

And yes, it did help to have one parent stay home. A nonworking parent was like an insurance policy. If someone got sick, she could be the nurse. If the breadwinner lost his job or was disabled, she could enter the workforce. That insurance policy is gone when both parents work.

[Kingcoal]

I agree with Omar. The best arrangement is to have your woman’s work situation flexible and optional. That way when you decide to have kids, the loss of her income, if any, is not a big deal.

[I_Like_Plants]

In the US there are many cases where the woman has a high-paying job and the man does not, can earn only much lower wages, which ones makes the most sense to stay home with the kids? One of my sisters has a husband who has hepatitus-C and frankly I don't think the guy was ever a workaholic (although in all fairness that disease really whips a person) and she's a real workhorse. Oh, and they love each other very much. She goes out and charges hard and works, he stays home. It works. I'm sure way back when there were husband and wife pairs where She was the queen of the gatherers and He was not God's gift to hunting, and that worked out OK too.