the deleterious economic impact of feminism on the lower middle class.
Dazzleman,
I assume you are talking about the impact of two spouses both holding jobs when one could live off of the other's income. Even if your statement is true, women and feminism should not be blamed for it. If a husband and wife both work outside the home, both are responsible for their impact on the economy.
True, both are responsible, but feminism encouraged a change from the old status quo, and that is why I hold feminism partially responsible for growing economic gaps.
True about feminism changing the status quo, but the reality is that women's jobs are no more expendable than men's jobs, regardless of the former status quo, or the impact on the economy.
I'm not sure you younger guys realize how much the cost of housing has increased since the 1970s in relation to an average SINGLE income. The increase has been astronomical in many parts of the country. This is due in large part to the proliferation of 2-income households driving up prices. It puts those on a lower income at a severe disadvantage in trying to find decent housing.
There has also been a huge increase in incomes for many educated people even after accounting for inflation. I make more than 10x the amount of money that my father made at my age, and we were considered the lower end of upper middle class. That single income supported a family of seven in a nice house in an upper middle class suburb. A similar income today, even adjusted for inflation in the interim, could never do the same thing because of astronomically higher housing costs.
Economically, I have been on the winning side of this whole issue, so don't take anything I'm saying as a personal complaint. I think though that it's important to acknowledge who has suffered from these changes, many of whom are good, hard-working people just trying to live decently, and think about how things might be made better for them without government subsidies and things like that that never work as intended. I know a good number of people who are on the losing side of this whole issue -- struggling financially even with both spouses working (and forget how single parents with average jobs make out in this type of economy).
If you didn't live through the pre-1980s period, it may be hard to comprehend the type of economic shifts that I am describing, but I do think they have made life a lot easier for a lot of people, such as myself, and harder for others who really didn't necessarily deserve it.
I agree about the economy changing, and it is unfortunate, but like I said earlier, women's jobs are no more expendable than men's jobs. There are other ways to reduce the income gap between the rich and the poor without undoing feminism.
