Comment by 3cats-in-a-coat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 3cats-in-a-coat | Hacker News Reader

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3cats-in-a-coat

In the 70s one family had one working member supporting the whole family, currently it's becoming increasingly common for one person to hold multiple jobs and their spouse too. Multiple states are voting back child labor, literally, so add those jobs too, to the count. Working children. The job count is a BS metric at this point and doesn't reflect the quality of the jobs, or the quality of life. It means nothing.

Also "9 months" is kinda ridiculous to expect to see the long-term effects of AI. AI may be evolving fast, and it is, but business, laws, healthcare, regulatory agencies and so on are held back by gigantic inertia and some real safety cocnerns. It is still humans who have to integrate AI in their human processes, so the first few iterations will be slow and cautious to occur (after that... eventually AIs will run systems made by AIs so change will accelerate). For example, a startup tried to offer an "AI lawyer app" for traffic tickets, and lawyers sued the startup. Hollywood is starting to use AI as well, and writers and actors went to strike.

Obviously things like that will hold AI back for a while. But not forever. AI is inevitable.

> In the 70s one family had one working member supporting the whole family

Do you have a citation for this? I googled around and couldn't find a graph for "number of earners per U.S. household by year".

I am wondering if it was the case that most households in the 70s had one earner or if it was mostly middle class or upper middle class households that had this luxury.

Have you heard the phrase "vanishing middle class"?

It was easier to be in the middle class then, for myriad reasons.

In the 60s you'd be given kitchenware just for filling up your tank at a gas station...

Of course I have heard the phrase. I am asking if anyone has data to back it up.

edit to add: I am not specifically interested in the middle class, which is ill-defined. I am interested in the overall income of households and how that has changed.

Elizabeth Warren wrote a book in 2003 (The Two-Income Trap) on this topic. I will admit that I haven’t read it, but I assume that has some solid references.

I have also not read the book, so I will not make any assumptions about it.

My understanding is that throughout history, most households had at least two people working/earning (many homes were farms). Then we get some television shows in the 50s-70s that show how well the upper middle class lived. Now in 2023 we have people thinking that everyone in the past lived as well.

> My understanding is that throughout history, most households had at least two people working/earning (many homes were farms). Then we get some television shows in the 50s-70s that show how well the upper middle class lived. Now in 2023 we have people thinking that everyone in the past lived as well.

Prior to womens liberation in the USA, it was a very different scene for the ladies my man. The people who lived through this stuff are still alive, just talk to some old folks about it ffs. You're acting like ubiquitous stay at home mothers are a myth promulgated by television. There was a time when that was the primary form of employment for women. Men were paid well, and they supported their wives and families.

I'm a late Gen-Xer who grew up in a pretty average part of a fly-over midwest state. Even then it wasn't too unusual to meet housewives during the whole dating and meeting parents phase of life. We're not talking high class demographics here.

My parents are Italian immigrants with limited means and even they did the traditional patriarchy with her staying home. Mom only pursued employment once when dad got injured so bad he was laid up for an entire year, and it was a big ass deal. Concrete construction worker, blue collar AF. I'd estimate ~50% of the homes on my childhood block were stay at home moms. It was already trending towards dual income everywhere, but it wasn't always that way at all.

I am also a Gen-Xer (born 1972). I am also of course aware that many women in middle class households had no income. I am asking about households in general, especially those below middle class. Obviously, men who were paid well could keep a wife at home. Most men were not paid that well.

Again, if anyone has any data or statistics, I am interested in that, not anecdata from those who were born into the middle or upper middle class.

I don't know for how long this data has been tracked / how to compare it over time, but the census does cover labor force participation (look at the Family Group tables): https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/demo/families/cps-20...

This is a false story about the '70s. Movies aren't reality.

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