Actually, Senator Liz Warren wrote a book about the 2 parent income trap. Her solutions are typical liberal ideas like “free” daycare and paid family leave but she did identify the problem.
To be honest the 2 parent income trap is all about choices. It starts with people purchasing a home needing 2 incomes and then sending kids to private schools, buying their kids cars, paying for cellphones etc. etc.
These are all choices my parents didn’t have to make or in the case of cars and private schools the choice was no.
Every time I see a news article comparing wages of today to wages of the 60’s and 70’s I always throw-up my hands. We and just about everyone else did not live a life anywhere close to even the poorest of kids today. Just look at the average kitchens today. I didn’t know any 2 car families and I knew many who didn’t have a car at all. Granted things changed in the 80’s with the election of a new president....
What you say may be true but there are points you do not address. Very many of those you speak of who live as if they are well to do have a negative net worth. There were some two car families even in the fifties but generally those who had two cars had no debt on either of them of if they had any it was only on the newer one. Many today have two cars and could not sell either one for what is owed on it. If you look past surface appearances things are not really as you perceive them.
People who do NOT send their children to private schools now would be better off not to send them to school, it has been reported some time ago that the recent college degree is of LESS value in the job market than a public high school diploma was worth in the sixties and the situation grows worse every year. I keep repeating my own story to people, I was raised on a dirt farm of forty acres and literally walked behind the plow until joining the Navy upon high school graduation. I studied electronics in the Navy and was released from active duty two days before my 21st birthday. I then had three years of inactive reserve before receiving my honorable discharge. By age 23 I was working in the manufacturing engineering department of a plant in a tiny town in South Carolina, driving a new Mustang which I bought myself, no one gave it to me and my weekly paycheck was sufficient to have supported a wife and child had I had them but I was called a failure to my face because I was still single at age 23. You really need to think about that and think about how things really are today. I promise you that the peak earning years for people in most categories of private employment when properly adjusted for inflation came in the early seventies before Carter and it has been down hill since. Things did improve under Reagan but it is all about appearance now, as if someone who lived in a modest house with one car but owned a farm free and clear and had money in the bank fifty or sixty years ago was somehow poorer than someone who has a bigger house and two cars but a negative net worth today.
I will close with this, I DON’T support minimum wage laws but the minimum wage in 1963 was $1.25 per hour and that not only bought more than the current federal minimum of $7.25 but it bought more than the $15.00 minimum that people are calling for would buy. The meme that working Americans are much better off now than they were when John Kennedy took office is smoke and mirrors. Show me all the young high school graduates who are married homeowners with children before they reach 25 today AND DID IT WITHOUT GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE. There were plenty back in the sixties, I was the oddball because I didn’t marry until I reached 28. Don’t just tell me that today’s young people don’t want to do that, they couldn’t if their lives depended on it in most cases. Many enter their forties still burdened with student loans and working at a job that would have been done in the past by someone with at most a high school diploma. So what if they have a big screen TV and other such gadgets, if they owe more than it all is worth?