The 2011 woman wanting to live the 1950's fantasy

[irc333]

There was indeed a thread here of a woman wanting a man who would have sufficient enough income to support her family, and even kids when the have them.

 

What's really wierd, I'm an OLD-fashioned guy myself, but however, when I hear women state, "I'm seeking a man who can support me and my kids"...it makes me uneasy.

 

I want an old-fashioned woman, however, will not be able to acheive the old-fashioned lifestyle for any woman, plus multiple people IN the household at once time, it's just unrealistic.

 

That being said, maybe I'm not as old-fashioned as I think?

 

Here are some excerpts I had read about in a profile of a woman who claims to be old-fashioned

 

She tends to descibe herself AS the stereotypical housewife (if she were ever to get married)

 

And get this, wants a man who is willing to be married AND have children within the next TWO years.

 

She actually puts in a deadline for this kind of thing which would make any man uneasy(this could also be another thread, where people have deadlines in mind when it comes to dating then marriage)

 

You can't put a deadline on such things, right? lol

 

It sounds more like a formal write-up, even how she express how she enjoys affection, doesn't seemingly give you the warm fuzzies.

 

 

She even delegates that PDA is highly encouraged, wet passionate kisses, and touching spontaneously is indeed desirable.

 

It's one of those, "Why does this person need to express this in a profile, when it's not even necessary, I mean what person doesn't desire "wet kisses and PDA"?

 

She says she has a tender heart, intelligent, and quick witted, and looking for a man to "take the lead" and "Man up"

 

Even states she wants a man who even want to make a world a bit better than what it is.

[Intricategirl]

Let me preface this by saying that I agree with a lot of your conclusions, just not necessarily how you arrived at them. And to give a bit of my perspective, it's likely that I will outearn and have a greater net worth than any man I choose to date or marry.

 

That being said, I think about the past and the stereotypical middle-class family. The families were typically larger than they are today, they owned their own home, and the wife typically stayed at home. It's not absolutely unheard of for the more well-off, but still middle-class households, to not only have the woman stay at home, but also have help around the house. For these reasons, I have to reject that it's not possible today to support a family on one income.

 

That being said, you also have to take into account that divorce was less common, and a man would not be paying child support or alimony. Nowadays, since it's still more common that a man would pay these than a woman, it places him in a situation where he's supporting two households rather than one. I don't believe this is the sole cause of making it more difficult, but I think it probably is a factor. I also believe that the overabundance of cheap credit, combined with a more materialistic lifestyle also contribute to the difficulty of maintaining a household on one salary.

 

In the end, it doesn't matter much. She wants something from a relationship that you aren't willing to provide, and I guess that's enough to make it unreasonable for you to start a relationship with her. Find someone else more compatible. I personally don't care for that sort of relationship, but some women AND men do. Whatever.

[carhill]

What's really weird, I'm an OLD-fashioned guy myself, but however, when I hear women state, "I'm seeking a man who can support me and my kids"...it makes me uneasy.

 

Where does that uneasiness come from?

 

How would you qualify such a woman?

 

Here's my short list:

-Has my back, always. Every minute of every day, I know we're a team in life.

-Our family is her priority.

-She guards *our* money like the bullion in Fort Knox. Every aspect of our solvency and potential is important to her. No issue is too inconsequential.

 

 

TBH, I've met very few women like this in my life, even those married to others. Still a lot of life left yet though

 

I don't ask for characteristics I don't bring to the table.

[irc333]

There are some characteristics that people think that they can bring to the table that doesn't equate to others (nor compare)

 

Like with women, they say their companionship, love, male needs to fulfill and loyalty is enough, but when she's expecting support on a one income family, I tend to wonder if whatever she claims to bring to table ACTUALLY holds water?

 

 

Where does that uneasiness come from?

 

How would you qualify such a woman?

 

Here's my short list:

-Has my back, always. Every minute of every day, I know we're a team in life.

-Our family is her priority.

-She guards *our* money like the bullion in Fort Knox. Every aspect of our solvency and potential is important to her. No issue is too inconsequential.

 

 

TBH, I've met very few women like this in my life, even those married to others. Still a lot of life left yet though

 

I don't ask for characteristics I don't bring to the table.

[irc333]

That being said, I think about the past and the stereotypical middle-class family. The families were typically larger than they are today, they owned their own home, and the wife typically stayed at home. It's not absolutely unheard of for the more well-off, but still middle-class households, to not only have the woman stay at home, but also have help around the house. For these reasons, I have to reject that it's not possible today to support a family on one income.

 

There are times where I wish I was BORN in that era of simplicity. I'd be all for it, but having THAT and it being the year 2011. Well, wishes are horses. lol

[carhill]

Women tell you everything you need to know by watching their actions. They really do reveal themselves. It's up to you to take that information, process it, and make healthy decisions. Do not let the cloud of romance/love/infatuation/convincing words fog your brain to reality. BTDT.

 

BTW, I don't believe the lifestyle of the 50's is a 'fantasy'. It was a specific time in our history and is characterized by certain real and projected aspects. For a lot of people (my exW's family was an example), it was *nothing* like the 'fantasy' popularized in 'Leave it to Beaver' and similar.

 

I personally think people can grow and evolve and incorporate aspects of life, both historical and present-day, which they find to be healthy and beneficial for them. For some, that includes a stay-at-home partner or spouse. Unlike the 1950's, it's possible today for that person to be far more involved in both aspects of support and also contributing to the family's solvency simply due to changes in work, technology and society.

 

If that belief, or another, speaks to you, look for synergy in the *actions* of a woman. Accept what you discern, negative or positive. Choose. It's a powerful thing.

[eerie_reverie]

I would be able to support a family on my income, so I don't think there is a problem with my looking for a man who could do the same.

[TheLawmaker]

I am friends with a girl like this. I was previously interested in her, but delegated her to friendship status after discovering that we were looking for two different types of lovers (I am liberal, and she is very conservative.)

 

She found her Prince Charming, who also likes her for her morals and shares them. And she just had a baby with him. They're getting married pretty soon. I am very happy for her, because we were not meant to be together, and she found someone who was right for her.

 

It's not necessarily a 1950's fantasy. It's more of a "conservative vs liberal" fantasy. A woman who wants to do all the cooking and cleaning should be able to do those things, if she wishes. She's choosing her own fate, as it were, but that wouldn't be the case in the 1950's (where women were beaten, abused, and raped if they didn't comply.)

 

I'd have to say that the OP needs to do a little research into how things used to be. It's not only that women didn't have rights back then, it's that the family dog had more rights than a housewife. Someone trying to fit a stereotypical role, in this generation, would have it completely differently than someone who had to live that role 50-60 years ago.

[Intricategirl]

Actually, it is that simple. A little background: when I was married, I was a stay at home mom. I raised the children, I managed my own business, I made sure that my husband and children had lunch and dinner every night, and I took care of the financial aspects such as buying things we needed for the house and kids. This is one of the contributing factors in my divorce (although not the only one). He wanted someone who worked. Now, I owned my own business and I worked from home, but that was not considered "work". He wanted someone who would get a job outside the house. I was okay with that, but he also expected me to continue doing all of the above, without any additional contributory efforts from him. Considering that I was a stay at home mom, that meant that my work history was unable to match someone who had been in the workforce for a number of years. Combined with the fact that I had not yet finished college, that meant I was looking at either finishing my degree or getting a minimum wage job. Since I made more by staying at home running my business, it made no sense to give that up to get a lower paying job and still have all the home responsibilities. So I started checking into the college route, via an online degree, so that I could continue to provide support for my family AND get my degree, thereby putting me in a better position to get a better paying job. He decided that the cost was too high and we could not afford the tuition (nevermind that he got his own degree this exact same way while we were married).

 

Framed in that way, I told him why I would not be getting a job. He didn't like that answer, and as I said, it was one of the reasons we divorced.

 

Now, it's been a few years since my divorce, and he pays me child support and alimony. The kids live with me full time, and I have since quit my low paying job that I got after the divorce to focus on my Master's degree and prepare for law school. My income is *mostly* from child support and alimony. Now, you can make whatever arguments you want regarding how this is not really income, but frankly, it's money coming into my household for the support of myself and my children. It's income, and even the government considers it as such. And the exact circumstances that made it impossible to get a job when I was with him made it necessary for me to get one after we divorced. With nobody else to look after the kids, it was still my responsibility. I could go to any college I wanted, as long as I could come up with the money to do so. And I could do it in a way that let me continue my business. And since the divorce, I have bought a house, a new car, and paid off several thousand dollars on credit cards that he left me with. He's living in an apartment, and risks losing his job through poor choices. Whenever the kids visit him for an extended period of time, he complains that he's overwhelmed at having to pick up after them and cook for them, and that they can't visit more often because it's an inconvenience.

 

What he and you both fail to realize is that I AM providing for a household on a single income. I'd personally rather it wasn't through alimony and child support, but if it feeds my kids, I'll do it (and yes, I'll state it right now that I hate getting alimony from him). I have finished my BS, am working on a Master's, and heading to law school in a year. I recently was given an opportunity to further invest in several businesses, and I'm taking the chance on it.

 

If the argument is to be boiled down to something as simple as whether a person can support a family on one income, I did then, I continue to do so now, and I am making plans that will allow me to do so in the future. He saw it as me refusing to get a job because I didn't want to work and wanted someone else to take care of me. If I wanted someone to take care of ME, there's better professions to go into than homemaking!! I saw it as asking me to provide an unequal amount with no returns.

 

So yes, it kind of is that simple.

[Feelin Frisky]

People in that post WW II era of the 50's and 60's often married at 20-23 and started having kids right away. My parents did and by the time I was 5 years old I had four younger brothers and sisters. This wasn't much different that the other families on my block in Brooklyn NY where lots of young Catholics adhered to church doctrine and procreated liberally. It was always expected that the woman would raise the kids while the man win the bread. Things have changed a lot in the US. I don't see that the desires of the woman in question are so out of line considering history. I myself would probably just pass without much of a thought. She wants what she wants and that's her business. Young people rush into things all the time and I think probably always will.

[irc333]

Yeah, I knew of this one woman, age 40, was a housewife her ENTIRE life, recently got divorced....had EIGHT children she was raising (still is)

 

Recently had become a personal trainer.

 

But she has to receive some kind of Alimony simply because she has no skills to enter the workforce with because her ONLY occupation for that long was...well...a domestic engineer.

 

The reason many women back then stayed at home was because it was expected. Women who weren't married were looked down upon and the ones who worked always made less than most men, even for the same job and the same skills. While this still goes on, it's less common. Because of this, many women married and many were not happy being housewives. Just look at the amount of alcoholic or drug taking housewives.

 

Being a housewife today takes way too many risks. The woman risks being able to find a job in the event of a divorce and the man risks losing more money supporting her if they divorce.

 

Btw, liberal versus conservative means nothing with regards to this. I know very conservative people who don't want this and have known liberal people who do.

[threebyfate]

What amazes me more are the self-styled "old fashioned" men who believe that women should take full responsibility of the relationship, domestic duties, all the man's needs, child rearing AND bring home the bacon. How very Princess-y!

 

Fly free, Princess! I suppose there's a momma for you somewhere.

[sanskrit]

The unspoken problem in this thread so far is that nothing other than the standards of consumption and luxury have changed, and IMO the problem lies with consumption/luxury standards as much as with gender roles. The old fashioned way is very much available, even more so, here are some examples.

 

Housing - In the past, having a family of four in a modest 1500 sq ft house was the norm. Today, good luck finding houses of that size in decent shape in decent neighborhoods near jobs in most areas of the U.S. Advances in construction together with lower cost materials have made it possible to build cheap, decent quality housing. Are those being built? NO. We are awash in garden tubs, corian or handpoured kitchen counters, custom flooring, etc. Decent furniture has never been cheaper, but decent is no longer good enough. Functional utilitarian furniture is verboten, everything must be custom made of the "finest" materials or it doesn't sell. My ass can't tell the difference between a pine chair and a walnut one. Why do we do this to ourselves?

 

Cars - The used car market has never been better. One can get transportation costs including gasoline lower than ever before by buying 5 y.o. cars in good condition, using them for 5 years, then switching. Do people do that? NO. They wastefully buy brand new gigantic SUVS and the like. And when I was growing up, families carpooled even short repetitive trips to take children to school etc. No more, that looks too -shabby- today. Why?

 

Child-raising - Children used to be parts of families, not the governors of them. The amount spent on children's clothing, entertainment, activities and lower level education in this country is insane. Braces are considered de rigeur on children with near flawless teeth to begin with, families waste thousands of dollars on elite preschools and kindergartens as opposed to shouldering most of the child rearing process themselves. Of course a two earner income is required for all this when in actuality more TIME with the parents is the sensible alternative. Why?

 

Clothing has never been cheaper in this country. You can buy functional, good looking clothing at ridiculously low prices merely by finding outlet stores. I have a very nice wardrobe, and haven't spent more than $7 on a shirt in the last ten years or $40 on a pair of shoes, yet we cram expensive malls full and buy outrageously marked up clothing at "prestige" retailers. Why?

 

Good quality food has never been cheaper. In my youth, the kind of fresh fruit/fresh vegetable lean protein diet I consume would have been outrageously expensive, and the best foods for a family require little preparation. Yet we pack into "casual dining" restaurants and become addicted to additive sugar and fat, believe the lies restaurants tell about how wholesome the food is and fuel the fat/sugar addiction with starchy expensive fast foods. When we aren't eating, we are drinking custom coffee and paying outlandish markups in haute cuisine restaurants where the food is no more healthy than the chain.

 

Home products have never been cheaper, yet we use custom soaps, detergents, house goods of all kind. Why?

 

In the past people MOVED to where the jobs and affordable housing was. No more. People sit stubbornly waiting to afford the $750,000 1200 sq ft teardown in the chichi zip code. WHY?

 

I'm not making a case for zealous penny pinching, just common sense. The reason most of these threads exist lately is because we refuse to take advantage of the easily affordable life available, and instead focus on some luxury addicted life none of us needs to be happy. Why?

[thatone]

beyond what people want (and what they say they want which are often different), it's hard for women to find this these days because not only do men not look to provide it, they can't.

 

in the 50s/60s a guy could start out sweeping the floor at the plant and in 5-10 years make enough money to support a wife and two kids, including buying a house and car and having enough left over to save for vacations. anything extra was a bonus, since their pensions were their retirement.

 

those days are over. the middle class is making the same amount of money they were in 1981 and supplanting income lost to inflation by credit cards, 10 year car loans, and home equity loans.

 

and as we saw in 2008, debt that never gets paid is a bubble waiting to burst. when we saw the crash in 2008 and the first real fear amongst the haves that the have nots were about to break, we didn't consider saving the have nots, we ran to save the banks.

 

this is the world we all (well, most of us) live in. are there men out there who have overcome this and are still able to support a stay at home wife and two kids while buying the house, cars, etc? sure, there are a few, but they're getting fewer.

 

and to answer your questions sanskrit, people are that way because the guy who gave them the credit cards and home equity loans told them to be that way, and people don't know any better anymore.

 

i could write a dissertation about the poor taste of the typical american but that's another thread altogether. it's a symptom of the economy listed above, to put it in a sentence or two. those people who traded income for debt somewhere along the line started actually believing the commercials they saw on TV. but they're every bit as tasteless as the people who bring their kids to walmart to play with the toys for free, they just don't realize it.

Edited May 29, 2011 by thatone

[kiss_andmakeup]

The unspoken problem in this thread so far is that nothing other than the standards of consumption and luxury have changed, and IMO the problem lies with consumption/luxury standards as much as with gender roles. The old fashioned way is very much available, even more so, here are some examples.

 

Housing - In the past, having a family of four in a modest 1500 sq ft house was the norm. Today, good luck finding houses of that size in decent shape in decent neighborhoods near jobs in most areas of the U.S. Advances in construction together with lower cost materials have made it possible to build cheap, decent quality housing. Are those being built? NO. We are awash in garden tubs, corian or handpoured kitchen counters, custom flooring, etc. Decent furniture has never been cheaper, but decent is no longer good enough. Functional utilitarian furniture is verboten, everything must be custom made of the "finest" materials or it doesn't sell. My ass can't tell the difference between a pine chair and a walnut one. Why do we do this to ourselves?

 

Cars - The used car market has never been better. One can get transportation costs including gasoline lower than ever before by buying 5 y.o. cars in good condition, using them for 5 years, then switching. Do people do that? NO. They wastefully buy brand new gigantic SUVS and the like. And when I was growing up, families carpooled even short repetitive trips to take children to school etc. No more, that looks too -shabby- today. Why?

 

Child-raising - Children used to be parts of families, not the governors of them. The amount spent on children's clothing, entertainment, activities and lower level education in this country is insane. Braces are considered de rigeur on children with near flawless teeth to begin with, families waste thousands of dollars on elite preschools and kindergartens as opposed to shouldering most of the child rearing process themselves. Of course a two earner income is required for all this when in actuality more TIME with the parents is the sensible alternative. Why?

 

Clothing has never been cheaper in this country. You can buy functional, good looking clothing at ridiculously low prices merely by finding outlet stores. I have a very nice wardrobe, and haven't spent more than $7 on a shirt in the last ten years or $40 on a pair of shoes, yet we cram expensive malls full and buy outrageously marked up clothing at "prestige" retailers. Why?

 

Good quality food has never been cheaper. In my youth, the kind of fresh fruit/fresh vegetable lean protein diet I consume would have been outrageously expensive, and the best foods for a family require little preparation. Yet we pack into "casual dining" restaurants and become addicted to additive sugar and fat, believe the lies restaurants tell about how wholesome the food is and fuel the fat/sugar addiction with starchy expensive fast foods. When we aren't eating, we are drinking custom coffee and paying outlandish markups in haute cuisine restaurants where the food is no more healthy than the chain.

 

Home products have never been cheaper, yet we use custom soaps, detergents, house goods of all kind. Why?

 

In the past people MOVED to where the jobs and affordable housing was. No more. People sit stubbornly waiting to afford the $750,000 1200 sq ft teardown in the chichi zip code. WHY?

 

I'm not making a case for zealous penny pinching, just common sense. The reason most of these threads exist lately is because we refuse to take advantage of the easily affordable life available, and instead focus on some luxury addicted life none of us needs to be happy. Why?

 

Excellent post. I agree with pretty much everything you said.

[Intricategirl]

Sanskrit, I very briefly mentioned that, and it's what I'm talking about when I mention materialistic lifestyles and cheap credit.

 

I could go into the details about how I'm seeing this play out with various people in my life, but I'll simply reiterate that if you're doing it right, you can raise a family on one income. You might not have a PS3. You might have to scrimp and save to take the family on a vacation, and they might not be to exotic locales. You might have to sit down and do a budget, and figure out whether it's worth the time to make your kids a sack lunch instead of buying the crap they're serving in the cafeteria.

 

And don't get me wrong- I need my coffee and I love my little adventures. But I also am acutely aware of how long it's going to take to save for each one of them, and actually make a conscious decision about whether it's worth it. My ass CAN tell the difference between a pine chair and a walnut one, so I'm going to go with oak 'cause it's going to last like walnut, but costs less!

[fortyninethousand322]

The unspoken problem in this thread so far is that nothing other than the standards of consumption and luxury have changed, and IMO the problem lies with consumption/luxury standards as much as with gender roles. The old fashioned way is very much available, even more so, here are some examples.

 

Housing - In the past, having a family of four in a modest 1500 sq ft house was the norm. Today, good luck finding houses of that size in decent shape in decent neighborhoods near jobs in most areas of the U.S. Advances in construction together with lower cost materials have made it possible to build cheap, decent quality housing. Are those being built? NO. We are awash in garden tubs, corian or handpoured kitchen counters, custom flooring, etc. Decent furniture has never been cheaper, but decent is no longer good enough. Functional utilitarian furniture is verboten, everything must be custom made of the "finest" materials or it doesn't sell. My ass can't tell the difference between a pine chair and a walnut one. Why do we do this to ourselves?

 

I think the standards changed because cheap credit made people believe they could have it all and never have to establish priorities, and make choices in what they spend their money on.

 

On homes in particular though I think the issue is that home prices exploded artificially, out of sync with wages. My grandparents bought a nice, brand new 5000 sq ft home with a huge yard, gigantic two car garage and long driveway in 1969; they paid $40,000 for it. At the time my grandfather was working at the proving ground making about $25k a year and my grandmother was a teacher and made just under $20k. That meant their combined income was more than the price of their home. How many people do you think live in $750k homes and make that much in a year? My guess is not many.

 

Not surprisingly my grandparents were able to save plenty of money and paid their mortgage off early with ease. I suppose they could have made it easily on just my grandfather's income, but it does go to show how much times have changed.

[Kriss]

What he and you both fail to realize is that I AM providing for a household on a single income.

 

Yes, but it's his income.

[D-Lish]

I know very few women that aspire to this lifestyle. I'd go bat-shyte crazy being a 1950's style housewife.

 

I'd be turned off reading profiles of women talking of deadlines for marriage and kids- yikes!

[Intricategirl]

Yes, but it's his income.

 

I knew somebody would have a comment on this. The problem you still don't realize is that it doesn't change the argument whatsoever. We lived on one income when we were married, and now we still are, but in two separate households.

 

And no, it's not. The IRS taxes me on it as income. It's like saying that his income really belongs to his boss because he's the one that earned it first.

 

Side rant: you may not hear this ever again, but I truly do hate getting alimony. I'll take it because I need it to take care of my kids, but I specifically put an expiration date on there that would give me enough time to get my degree and get a decent job. It literally repulses me, and I'd rather sever that tie completely. Financial obligations make that currently unrealistic.

 

But thanks for the bass-ackwards comments all the same...

[Kriss]

Side rant: you may not hear this ever again, but I truly do hate getting alimony. I'll take it because I need it to take care of my kids, but I specifically put an expiration date on there that would give me enough time to get my degree and get a decent job. It literally repulses me, and I'd rather sever that tie completely. Financial obligations make that currently unrealistic.

 

 

O.K. then you can pay it all back after you get your law degree.

[Idalis]

I haven't read through the whole thread.. but I don't see anything wrong with this woman expressing her exact wishes on her profile. She's free to express them, doesn't mean she will get them but at least she's not posting under a facade of 'independent woman' who is secretly trying to trap a man and have a family in 2 years. She's being upfront about it.

 

I consider myself an old fashioned gal and like the poster above stated its still possible to have that lifestyle if you are willing to live with in certain means.

 

I'm realistic and realize that I might not be happy with living with the bare minimum and also, to be honest, would not like to be thought about as a woman who expect to be "taken care of" so I don't. I have a career and put myself through college and will continue to pursue higher education and a higher career position. But my bf and I have talked about this and our ideal, together, would be for me to stay home with kids. Nothing wrong with that I think, as long as you're honest about it. (And honestly the closer I get to that the more I feel like I would need to get out and be social... but we're open to that too)

[irc333]

I'm not making a case for zealous penny pinching, just common sense. The reason most of these threads exist lately is because we refuse to take advantage of the easily affordable life available, and instead focus on some luxury addicted life none of us needs to be happy. Why?

Because...living in serious debt is the American way. LOL

 

(Total sarcasm)

 

Anyhow, I can be pretty darned frugal, not sure if that's an attractive quality to some women, but that's the way to choose to live financially. I'm not cheap, but I don't go nuts with money either.

[threebyfate]

Because...living in serious debt is the American way. LOL

 

(Total sarcasm)

 

Anyhow, I can be pretty darned frugal, not sure if that's an attractive quality to some women, but that's the way to choose to live financially. I'm not cheap, but I don't go nuts with money either.

irc, why do you do this kind of nit-picking of profiles?

 

It's as if any woman you find attractive shouldn't dare to want something you're not. So nitpicking is like a form of preemptive rejection, something that gives you the feeling of...power(?).

[thatone]

 

Housing - In the past, having a family of four in a modest 1500 sq ft house was the norm. Today, good luck finding houses of that size in decent shape in decent neighborhoods near jobs in most areas of the U.S. Advances in construction together with lower cost materials have made it possible to build cheap, decent quality housing. Are those being built? NO. We are awash in garden tubs, corian or handpoured kitchen counters, custom flooring, etc. Decent furniture has never been cheaper, but decent is no longer good enough. Functional utilitarian furniture is verboten, everything must be custom made of the "finest" materials or it doesn't sell. My ass can't tell the difference between a pine chair and a walnut one. Why do we do this to ourselves?

 

way off topic but i can't help myself, i'll reply to each one...

 

construction has devolved, not evolved. anything built a hundred years ago is better than what's built today. the materials were better, the methods were better. most of those other things are scams. flooring example...you know why they came up with these 'hand scraped' grooved floors? they had already found a way to convince cheap people to buy disposable floors with laminates, now they needed a way to convince people who buy solid floors to buy something disposable. voila, something with grooves torn in it, that way it can't be refinished, it has to be replaced. hand poured counter tops? is that a joke? concrete doesn't cost hardly anything. that's nothing more than finding a way to provide something that immigrant labor is good at. mexican immigrants grew up with stucco/brick/masonry type work, so they know how to do that already. it's for the contractor's convenience, not what the buyer might want. the finest materials don't cost much more than the lesser materials, to be honest. clear yellow pine (meaning no knots) around here costs 4-5 dollars a foot. black walnut costs about 8 dollars a foot. how much is in a chair? 10 or 12 board feet (board feet = square feet 1 inch thick)? the difference in cost is menial, to be honest, it's all marketing. and none of this crap people buy is "custom". it's just advertised as such. custom is hiring a local craftsman to build something FOR YOU SPECIFICALLY. most people never have anything done like that except for kitchen cabinets, the rest is as stock as it gets. and even in the cabinet example, unless you know what you're doing you don't really get 100% custom, cabinet makers will outsource doors or the boxes or some other parts to mass producing shops.

 

 

Cars - The used car market has never been better. One can get transportation costs including gasoline lower than ever before by buying 5 y.o. cars in good condition, using them for 5 years, then switching. Do people do that? NO. They wastefully buy brand new gigantic SUVS and the like. And when I was growing up, families carpooled even short repetitive trips to take children to school etc. No more, that looks too -shabby- today. Why?

because GM needs people buying cars every two years. just like the middle class lifestyle is built on debt, their balance sheet survives on debt. that's why they're so gung ho about hybrid electric cars. not because they feel guilty for selling 350 V8s for the last 50 years. anything but. they like hybrids because when the battery dies you're left with a 5 thousand dollar car that needs a 10 thousand dollar battery and are more likely to just trade it in for a new one every few years rather than keeping the old one.

 

Child-raising - Children used to be parts of families, not the governors of them. The amount spent on children's clothing, entertainment, activities and lower level education in this country is insane. Braces are considered de rigeur on children with near flawless teeth to begin with, families waste thousands of dollars on elite preschools and kindergartens as opposed to shouldering most of the child rearing process themselves. Of course a two earner income is required for all this when in actuality more TIME with the parents is the sensible alternative. Why?

because people don't know what to do unless someone tells them, so they imitate their neighbors. and as in most other walks of life, the loudest people are usually the worst people, but the loudest ones are the easiest to see and emulate.

 

Clothing has never been cheaper in this country. You can buy functional, good looking clothing at ridiculously low prices merely by finding outlet stores. I have a very nice wardrobe, and haven't spent more than $7 on a shirt in the last ten years or $40 on a pair of shoes, yet we cram expensive malls full and buy outrageously marked up clothing at "prestige" retailers. Why?

ya know, i spend a lot of money on clothes. i buy custom made suits, i buy handmade shoes. but the difference is i buy those things once every year or so and they last for many years. i know people who spend twice what i do on clothes. why? because they must go to the mall and spend a few hundred bucks every other week, it's an addiction. add that up over a period of years and they've got more money in bad clothes than i have in good clothes. instead of throwing clothes in the garbage and buying more, my money on clothes goes to the woman a few blocks away who does alterations and repairs. in that respect, people who spend thousands on clothes are a lot better than people who spend hundreds. admittedly this is specific to men because women's bodies change much more as they get older, but for men it definitely applies.

 

Good quality food has never been cheaper. In my youth, the kind of fresh fruit/fresh vegetable lean protein diet I consume would have been outrageously expensive, and the best foods for a family require little preparation. Yet we pack into "casual dining" restaurants and become addicted to additive sugar and fat, believe the lies restaurants tell about how wholesome the food is and fuel the fat/sugar addiction with starchy expensive fast foods. When we aren't eating, we are drinking custom coffee and paying outlandish markups in haute cuisine restaurants where the food is no more healthy than the chain.

i'll disagree a bit on this. i have no problem with spending money on good restaurants. but i'm from New Orleans i grew up that way. i won't go to applebees or chilis, mind you. plus i'm a meat eater, meat is hardly inexpensive compared to just a couple of years ago. as for why those options are available, i can tell you why from being in that business (commercial property). the money you can make in building a mall or suburban shopping strip or similar is directly related to the credit quality of your tenants. mcdonald's doesn't default on a lease. a local guy starting an independent restaurant very well might, whether by fault of his own or not. the credit quality of your tenants also affects your interest rates as the land owner. the better thought of they are in the corporate world, the more money you make. it's a self serving prophecy, so to speak. fwiw i never shop at any of the stores who pay me rent, lol.

 

Home products have never been cheaper, yet we use custom soaps, detergents, house goods of all kind. Why?

 

In the past people MOVED to where the jobs and affordable housing was. No more. People sit stubbornly waiting to afford the $750,000 1200 sq ft teardown in the chichi zip code. WHY?

 

I'm not making a case for zealous penny pinching, just common sense. The reason most of these threads exist lately is because we refuse to take advantage of the easily affordable life available, and instead focus on some luxury addicted life none of us needs to be happy. Why?

i heard a great interview on NPR while driving awhile back from an economics professor who basically stated that the difference in this century and the last is in the last the upper classes considered a liberal arts education to be a luxury. now, the upper classes consider it a waste of time, they want their kids to get their MBA as fast as possible so they can go on to a meaningless consulting job on wall street. we don't teach kids about art, architecture, style, and social grace like we used to. we teach them that the only judge of success or failure is how much they can make coupled with how much they can borrow. that's why people struggle so much with all of this stuff. they can't accept the fact that someone else will always have more, will always want more, and will always be more than they are.

 

how do you change all of this? you don't. it is what it is. a century ago we lived in a society of haves and have nots. we still do. the only difference in now and then is people back then were separated from everyone else strictly by money. now people are separated not as much by money with the availability of easy credit, but by education and intelligence (aka information). we have evolved from a monetary class system to an information class system. stupid people suffer, smart people succeed. that's the way of the world now.

 

and on the topic of the 50s, they were not good years. they were the beginning of the lifestyles that you're talking about above. so women who want what they think the 50s were are by default of the stupid class of information haves/have nots. the fairy tale of the 50s is just that, a fairy tale. it was the beginning of the decline.

Edited May 30, 2011 by thatone