Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Working, the economy, and kids

I recently wrote this to a friend.  We were talking about why it is supposedly too difficult for just one person in a relationship to work (Whether the man OR the woman) and here was my response:

As for our economy making it so that both people have to work, I disagree.  I think the primary problem is the fact that what we deem as "average" for house sizes, car sizes (SUV's seem to be the in thing but they are expensive!!!) etc. have now escalated to the point where the word average is not average compared to the past and, in turn, that means much more expensive.  If we all, tomorrow, reverted to buying 800-1,000 square feet 2 bedroom houses and even if we had 2 kids had them share a room, and in a 1-level house at that--ranch style, and economy cars.....our payments would be SO much lower that, in fact, both people would not HAVE to work.  And in the past?  That was doable.  But by WANTING more now, we have to pay more.  That, again, is why I think it's ridiculous that people have to constantly feel as though they have to upgrade.  When you upgrade your "stuff", you downgrade your "life."  It then becomes about debt and having little time for the family.  Will it be a little more crowded if we downgrade in our own houses?  Sure, BUT, on the other hand, that also means the families will be a lot closer.
 
I do agree that the middle class will cease to exist, but I also believe a lot of it will be due to greed.  Not just the greed of the rich people making it so incomes are minimal in this country and expenses are high, but the greed of the middle class wanting things that, 50 years ago, would be considered only for the rich.  Average to us, as I said before, is extravagant to people in the past.  We, as a middle class society, need to downgrade in order to get ourselves out of debt and be able to spend more time with people who are important to us.  If we don't, we'll have kids raised by others--the t.v., the internet, their friends, and not really raised by us.  And we'll continue to see an increase in divorce because couples will not have enough time to spend together, and that also screws the kids up.  So, overall, we can blame the economy or expenses all we want but, in truth, it all starts with us.  If things are too expensive, we need to want less.  It's as simple as that.