Social media right now is an ocean of would-be propaganda for traditional heterosexual marriage. There are “tradwives,” who cosplay submissive housewives on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. They overlap with “family vloggers,” typically conservative Christians with large families who chronicle their daily lives online. The world of Christian right content online is far more interested in the maintenance and promotion of the patriarchal nuclear family than, say, the life of Jesus Christ, who died as one of those “childless cat ladies” Vance hates so much. Billionaire Peter Thiel has even funded a woman’s magazine, meant to compete with Vogue or Cosmopolitan, that positions extremely conservative marriage as the only true path for women’s lives.
The funny thing is that it was Nixon/Reagan economic policies that destroyed the one income family.
LBJ wanted a quick win in Vietnam; when he realized he was stuck in a quagmire he started paying for the War by printing money. Nixon ran as a peace candidate who would control Johnson’s inflation. Instead he doubled down on both policies [more bombs paid for with paper money]. By the time the Arab Oil boycott was in full effect a lot of middle class women found they had to go to work in order to keep the household going.
Jimmy Carter hired a man named Paul Volker to try and control inflation. Carter’s policy worked, but Jimmy had been voted out before people saw the results.
Reagan kept Volker but created his own inflation by cutting taxes and spending more than ever.
In 1968, ‘middle class’ was defined as one income supporting a family of four. In those days $1 million was considered a vast fortune.
By 1992, when George Bush Sr was done, ‘middle class’ was two incomes and $1 million was what a richguy paid for a party.
This is to true and why I set the 70’s as sorta the best it got. Sure there have been areas of improvement since then but actual intention to make life better for the average person sorta went out the window. I still can’t believe we got a 40 hour work week for a single income but as we transitioned to a dual income norm the work week was not shortened at all.
It’s never coming back. That was a unique moment in world history, which will almost definitely never—and should never—be repeated. It was built on the wreckage of WWII, on US imperialism, and on the threat of a good example.
Will America Ever be “Great Again”?
Read “Hells Angels” by Hunter Thompson.
There’s a passage where he runs down the economics of being a biker/hippie/artist circa 1972.
An Angel could work six months as a Union stevedore and earn enough to live on the road for two years. A part-time waitress could make enough to support herself and her musician boy friend.
yeah its like houseing. the dream was to not have a mortgage on the home it was about paying off the mortgage. Similarly 40 hours a week was not expected to just get you by but to thrive and folks willing to live very modestly and just get by could work part time. There was complaining about all the people on welfare but if a job was not going to give you a decent amount for your work then yeah folks would not take it. There was a much higher expectation.