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USANews版 - How the Dual Income Destroys the Lower Classes
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By Jeremy Egerer
It is oftentimes complained, partially unfairly, that the American lower
classes are getting poorer and poorer. But enough has been written, by
practically every conservative think-tank, about how the welfare state and
anti-discrimination legislation destroy neighborhoods and promote the
business interests of those with poor moral constitutions (leftists,
primarily) by providing layabouts with an arsenal of unreasonable lawsuits.
This article, recognizing the above socioeconomic maxims, will seek instead
to show how two-income households have played an equal, if not greater role
in impoverishing American lower classes. This aspect of American poverty
has not been adequately addressed -- perhaps, considering how feminism
pushes women into the workplace, because it is now culturally offensive to
do so.
When Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, he noted that although the
wages of the lowest classes were oftentimes determined by the lowest their
employers could pay, humankind's present population acknowledges that at
large, even with an imbalance of wealth, employers could not sustainably pay
their workers less than would maintain a family of four (Book I, chapter
VIII). If employers were to seek to pay less, then populations would shrink
until competition over labor would force the wages of even the lowest
classes higher. And since the population of the world is now greater than
in past years, especially considering that Western societies are generally
monogamous in terms of marital structure, then the poorest working classes
must have been able, even without minimum wage regulations, to afford
families of five and greater. If this was not the case, then wealthy
families would have been primarily responsible for the present population --
a highly unlikely scenario, considering even Smith acknowledged that
wealthier women were less inclined toward childbearing.
But there was a circumstance in which Smith noted that wages could fall
below this natural floor. Assuming that a household were to have a second
source of income, the worker was likely to compete for employment at a lower
price than his neighbors, bringing wages below standards of maintenance.
Today, that second income is provided either when welfare payments are
received from the state or when two breadwinners exist in the same home.
And the natural result of either circumstance is that the once-sustainable
wages of the single employment are compromised, and though two breadwinners
now occupy one household, their wealth is not greatly augmented.
The U.S. Census Bureau confirms this hypothesis with its 2010 study on
household income demographics. The lowest classes, those most likely to be
touted by left-wing organizations as oppressed, are the least likely to be
dual-income families, while those in wealthier middle-class categories are a
minimum of close to four times more likely to have dual incomes. Compared
with the bracket with the highest percentage of dual income households, the
lowest quintile is somewhere around eleven times less likely to have a
second income. If this is the case, then poverty and the number of incomes
are absolutely correlated.
The dual income, of course, has an equally disastrous effect upon housing
affordability. In past generations, a man could buy a small home with his
own savings. Today, not only has the housing market become radically
inflated through government-sponsored usury, but since home prices are
essentially monopoly prices, selling for the maximum amount the market will
bear, having two breadwinners in a majority of homes can only make a landed
lower class even less possible. According to the same Census Bureau report
above, the quintile most likely to have only one income (the poorest
quintile) constitutes one third of all renters.
Americans do not often consider that such a trend toward dual full-time
incomes -- and subsequently, toward the impracticability of properly raising
a traditional family with two children -- has already harmed this country
substantially. Conservatives complain of the unfathered children of the
most criminal classes, yet they often neglect to propose that a missing
mother could harm the family as well. They complain about a public school
system's advocacy for increasingly bankrupt leftist causes, but they will
not encourage mothers to fulfill their duty to raise their children. They
complain of the incredible burden associated with an aging population
without wondering whether it is actually affordable anymore for traditional
families to properly raise more than one to two children. Simply put, the
economic (and thus reproductive) power of the individual household is vital
to a host of conservative causes, and yet, for reasons neither logical nor
moral, the sacred cow of feminism takes precedence over all of them.
It may perhaps be complained that the woman's worth is not realized when she
remains at home, that she is disempowered in her motherly duty. But the
wise know -- not just with their minds, but also with their hearts -- that a
mother's value is not reflected solely in the peace of the home and in the
stability of nations. On the contrary, if a society of women arise to their
honorable calling, they are amply rewarded in the fortified paychecks of
their husbands, and in the affordability of their homes. This was yesterday
's America, steeped in the honor which accompanies the dutiful. Yet today,
the husband depends upon his wife to sustain a wealth they once had without
her leaving the home -- a deteriorating financial and reproductive state of
the American household for which leftists, of course, propose "remedies."
Toward such a solution, leftists remove capital from the American economy,
destroying the growth of industry -- a growth which Adam Smith recognized
alone as the poor man's insurance of equitable pay -- only to distribute
that money in welfare programs well-known by all studious men to destroy the
household further. This, as well-documented, results in more illegitimate
childbirth, more crime, and perhaps most offensively, more cries for more
government programs to further the cycle of plunder.
The second "remedy" proposes to open American borders, either officially or
effectively, thereby replacing the missing American children with desperate
foreigners from even the most ideologically opposite states. But this
endeavor not only greatly immerse Americans in a crime wave of epic
proportions, but, combined with leftist refusal to assimilate newcomers, it
destroys the very fabric of identity which gives Americans a reason to live
together. Certainly, some leftists and libertarians argue that such
importation cannot take too many jobs from Americans, as an open border
guarantees that the same people who come in search of employment may easily
leave when they cannot find it. But if foreigners are forced to leave
because employment cannot be found, that can only mean that the native
working class has already reached its most pathetic state, incapable of
bargaining any lower for the jobs which would at one time have fed a family
equitably. There is perhaps no greater guarantee for an impoverished lower
class than the combination of a feminized household and a completely open
border, calling every unemployed person across the entire globe to compete
in a finite market.
The wise know another method of restoring household stability, and it is a
restoration of the traditional, biblical nuclear family. It will do little
good to have both parents live in the same home if they refuse to subscribe
to the natural roles provided by the God of nature. How the husband and
wife manage themselves -- the man laboring as the breadwinner and the giver
of law, the woman laboring with equal nobility to raise her children and
ensure the propagation of heritage -- is as important as marriage itself.
This is not to say that women should never seek maximum productivity, as
even the Bible praises the woman who, above and beyond her duty to her
household, operates a business from her home. But her income must remain in
most cases a responsibility secondary to both the care of her children and
the economic liberty of the family. This structure is intended by God. And
if mankind is not wise enough to heed His call, as shown above, it will be
enforced by the iron hand of nature.
Jeremy Egerer is a recent convert to Christian conservatism from radical
liberalism and the editor of the Seattle website www.americanclarity.com.
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话题: income话题: classes话题: american话题: household话题: lower