What is Reddit's opinion of The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

The Two Income Trap book is a fascinating read if anyone has an interest in diving deeper into the reasons for the growing trend of two income households. https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Still/dp/0465097707/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1XPLT3SNA52DH&keywords=two+income+trap&qid=1670874459&sprefix=two+income+%2Caps%2C270&sr=8-1

Yeah, Elizabeth Warren wrote a book about it. That said, I like my career, and my wife likes her career. I imagine we'd both want to keep working rather than one of us becoming a homemaker.

Being a super wealthy CEO, I have benefitted from feminism because my pool of potential wage slaves has doubled, driving the cost of labor down despite inflation. I'm also able to over work these people with long hours and stressful conditions, ensuring that they will remain loyal to me (out of fear of not earning money) instead of loyal to their family.

Those wage slaves that do end up married benefit me as well (you think I wouldn't cover all my bases?) because their kids will need to be cared for by private programs (which I own) or public alternatives (that I influence) guaranteeing another generation of weak willed wage slaves.

Oh yeah, and while everyone is fighting about men being bad, or women going too far, no one pays atention to the fact that I've done all this intentionally.

https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Still/dp/0465097707

That’s the title. The two income trap.

https://www.amazon.ca/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Still/dp/0465097707

Ntm modernity actively causes it.

By at least 3 ways I can tell.

We move away from almost all support /family for jobs/economic opportunities which means the average woman has much less support

Also now that the majority of women work, they have much less time to foster community, which imo is much more important than earning money.

Liz warren wrote a book in 2002 with her daughter called the two income trap , that explains how feminism has benefited the average corporation significantly more than the average woman.

Pretty sure we'd see less post partum depression if women weren't basically forced to work , and often incredibly exhausted.

https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Still/dp/0465097707/

Social atomization is as bad for our health as smoking ( 7-8 years reduced life expectancy), and even worse it effects literally almost everyone.

While men worked , women baked pies for neighbors,welcomed new families,nursed the sick,babysat each other's kids,forged relationships,made weekend plans,etc. https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Robert-D-Putnam-audiobook/dp/B01N94FW0P/

2 we discourage co sleeping even though it's extremely beneficial for the baby and much better for the mother because they aren't forced to constantly wakeup to feed the baby. And a well rested mother is also significantly better for the baby.

https://mommypotamus.com/co-sleeping/

https://www.askdrsears.com/topics/health-concerns/sleep-problems/scientific-benefits-co-sleeping/

3 modernity is so full of toxins /pollution that at least 90% of Americans are magnesium deficienct ,which is probably the most important nutrient for good sleep/ mental health /preventing depression.

https://www.amazon.com/Magnesium-Miracle-Second-Carolyn-Dean/dp/0399594442/

https://naturalcalm.ca/magnesiums-role-in-postpartum-depression/

Hell approximately 95% of US baby food is poisoned with heavy metals, some had 100x the legally allowed limit of heavy metals

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/17/health/baby-foods-arsenic-lead-toxic-metals-wellness/index.html

We also do other stupid things ,like discouraging swaddling , due to ethereal concerns about babies spines or hip dysplasia,when all that research comes from countries that use bundling boards., which will likely lead to babies sleeping less and mother's then getting less sleep.

https://www.savvyparentingsupport.com/reasons-use-swaddle/

We even ignore that s.i.d.s is almost certainly a phenomenon of toxic mattresses

https://www.kitchenstewardship.com/safe-crib-mattress-may-prevent-sids/

And we have allowed corporations to completely take over childbirth unfortunately, which has created untold negative consequences.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00OSS50DC/

For less messy amazon links you can extract the part after "/dp/" in

https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Still/dp/0465097707/

and make it:

https://amzn.com/0465097707

Or via smile link:

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0465097707

BEEP BOP

Plz send any recommendations via PM

Let's assume for the sake of discussion that no vaccine will be widely available / administered before next fall.

What is schooling going to look like? It appears that opening schools is downright disastrous:https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1313831721981415428.html

If schools closed early in the spring, and will miss a lot of fall/winter/next spring, and impacted next fall as well, that's a pretty significant interruption.

How long do schools need to remain in a 'special situation' before we decide they need to be overhauled? Right now every school is trying to muddle along on its own, some with hybrid, some with distance learning, some opening in person and closing/quarantining as necessary, but it's not clear what is the best solution (or that the infrastructure is there to support it)

What might such an overhaul look like? If we decide distance learning is the way to go, I could see experts getting together to come up with much better ways of communicating concepts than just streaming a normal lecture. Kids have no problem watching my little pony for hours on the screen. Couldn't we make something educational equally engrossing?

This would need some pretty significant investments into infrastructure, I think. Not everyone has access to high speed internet, not everyone has good laptops/speakers, etc. But I think these investments would be worth it, and would be a positive good even absent coronavirus.

One of the biggest issues with going to remote distance learning, possibly *the* biggest, is that Americans are well and truly caught in the two income trap (See excellent book by Elizabeth Warren : https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-Still/dp/0465097707/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2GXJJK6V9G16W&dchild=1&keywords=two+income+trap+elizabeth+warren&qid=1602261032&sprefix=two+income+trap%2Caps%2C135&sr=8-1

For many parents, the most important, and only essential, aspect of school is that it's government run and provided daycare so that they can both go to work and earn enough money to put a roof over their heads. The current situation underlines how this is a potentially unsustainable model that is extremely susceptible to unforseen shocks, and trying to get back to that model can drive bad policy choices. (reopening schools when you shouldn't, so the children can be out of the house, so the children can go back to work).

Going to distance learning could also have some very beneficial effects though. It would remove the tyranny of the zip code in terms of deciding how good an education your kid gets. This could have very beneficial effects on housing prices and help mitigate disparate educational outcomes between groups.

It seems, even if we do get a vaccine for coronavirus, that we ought to spend a lot of time trying to think of how to properly mitigate the next one, and some sort of educational system overhaul might be worth considering even if kids can safely go back to school next fall, having basically just missed two semesters. But maybe not. Maybe there isn't much use in trying to prevent/mitigate an event that happens once every hundred years.

But looking around at the young couples with kids I know, I cannot emphasize enough how incalculably less stressed are the couples where one parents stays home and the kids are homeschooled - especially if they have any kind of large yard/garden/farm animals, etc. For them, it's pretty much business as usual. Granted it's a small sample size.

Meanwhile, families in small apartments/townhomes/condos where they both have to work and they have no idea what to do for their kids education and were being driven up the walls by the quarantines and lockdown, are just incredibly stressed by comparison. (Particularly if in a location that went really overboard with restrictions, like closing parks, etc)

The former model seems to me to be much more resilient, and being much more resilient, it seems like society should encourage it - but if anything, society heavily looks down on that model and does everything it can to discourage it. It certainly seems like there are a lot of things we could do (such as emphasis on normalizing remote work, better hygiene, masks in public, cleaning doorknobs, cart handles, etc) that would be beneficial on their own, and would also help the next time a pandemic rolls around, that we as a society seriously ought to start consider embracing.

> Best trick of capitalits pulled was feminism.

It would explain why Elizabeth Warren wasn’t so well liked by the Herd when she published the Two-Income Trap

That's primarily the result of feminism.
DINK means more money to buy the house you want.
Elizabeth Warren even wrote a book about it, The Two Income Trap.

Minimum wage at least ($10/hour). If you care about your kids, probably a lot more than that. Keep in minds per (Senator) Elizabeth Warren, you are probably coming out on the short-end financially hiring child care at all vs. stay at home.

She was intellectually honest back when she wrote this.

Now she's a cynical politician, who middle America will largely see the same way they saw Hillary Clinton.