Let the Good Times Roll! -- 42,000 New Jobs Announced In September

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Jaguar
That would be fewer.

JIAR

[Kuciwalker]

Ted, frankly, since DD is the one working at that job and you aren't, it's completely asshattish of you to say it doesn't count.

[Ted Striker]

The irony of that statement.

[MosesPresley]

All jobs are real jobs. BUT, there needs to be a job base that will allow a family to be middle classed and yet have only one bread winner. Those days seem to be far gone and not to return any time soon.

I would like to see a discussion about what happened to the single earner family and what it would take to bring that ability back.

[Ted Striker]

I've often wondered that issue myself.

My question is, was that ever something that existed in the first place? Or was the post war boom something temporary that allowed the single family earner situation to exist.

I just don't know about what the workforce looked like pre WW2.

[notyoueither]

Back in the day, way back when, 'single earner' was a priviledge of the wealthy.

If you think your grandmothers and great-grannies didn't work (including bringing in income to the household) you are sorely deluded by Leave It To Beaver.

[DanS]

My question is, was that ever something that existed in the first place? Or was the post war boom something temporary that allowed the single family earner situation to exist.

Complicated answer. I note that while there has always been some measure of the single earner family, the number of hours that the single earner has worked was more than today. Further, we now expect the fruits of our labor to be very much more than the single earner expected in years past. Lastly, even if NYE's granny didn't have a formal salaried job, I'll bet she helped with the home economics in other respects.

[:) Smiley]

It is possible today to afford a 1950s standard of living on a single income.

However, what was back then considered the "World's Highest standard of living" would now be considered poverty.

[Kuciwalker]

Which says something about the word poverty.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Back in the day, way back when, 'single earner' was a priviledge of the wealthy

Bull****.

My grandma didn't work outside the home. My grandfather worked at Northern Electric (before it became Northern Telecom) on the factory floor as a tool-and-die man.

My other grandmother didn't work outside the home either. She did, however, raise chickens for food and sell some of the eggs for money. She used to cook a hot lunch for my grandfather every day, which he would come home to eat. He owned his own body shop (which did not make him any better off than having a wage job until he finally sold out around 1980)

Even my mother didn't work outside the home for a period of 10 years while we were growing up.

[KrazyHorse]

Oh, 9 kids, 5 kids and 3 kids respectively.

****ing Irish rabbits.

[DinoDoc]

Well ****. If were going to throw anecdotes around as if they prove something, both my grandmother and grandfather worked outside the home and the same goes for my mom and dad.

[KrazyHorse]

Both sides or one?

And my point isn't that everybody lived in a single-earner household, but that being a single-earner household was certainly not the privilege of the wealthy. Nor is it today.

[DinoDoc]

I dunno. My father's parents died before I got interested in such things and I don't talk to him much now.

[:) Smiley]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Which says something about the word poverty.

Yes and no.

Life is about more than just material well-being. Being poor is bad for one's social life.