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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25172 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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“Young adults are poor despite every metric which suggests otherwise” link

This is trending on Twitter so might as well discuss it here anonymously.

I know more than a few people say it’s just vibes and the data is good but I think this article makes a strong point that a real loss of social capital has actually made younger people poorer. And I believe this links into the fertility debate because the goods that you could buy before with social capital are especially needed with children. Having kids has gotten very expensive. I think everyone knows education, housing, and health care have boomed in costs. Being single means you don’t need to take on these costs. You can have kids if you are poor and live off government resources or you can have kids if you are rich but it’s a financial disaster for the upper middle class.

I largely come down to diversity (mass migration) and the Great Migration killing American social capital that the boomers had. Before these things occurred we had cheap urban housing because people weren’t afraid of their neighbors and cheap public schools. And homogenous urban environments have a lot of social capital for their residents. Also you had cheap babysitters because your neighbors were like you and you trusted them. Your kids could just go to the park alone. So childcare was free. I feel comfortable blaming diversity on rising housing costs (zoning the poor away from good communities) and for rising educational costs (falling public school quality).

So yes I think today’s generation is poorer in a lot of ways that really matter due to less social capital (but richer in other ways). And I do think the ways we are poorer today are especially bad for fertility where you now need to buy those goods in the market but they were free before.

The triumvirate of childcare, housing, and healthcare is the problem. This is pretty clear to me. These are all affected by genuine Baumol effects, but they are also severely compounded by government intervention.

Welfare makes everything more expensive for everyone who isn't getting welfare. Not only do we pay taxes (or inflation) for it, but also people who previously wouldnt have competed for a good, mainly those three + food, now compete and bid up the price of those goods. Heck, unemployed people now often have new SUVs via some magic. The working poor is basically extinct. They simply dont work. The stockers at my local grocery store make enough money to afford everything a person needs. A trustable babysitter for me to go see a movie with my wife is either several hundred dollars or its my in laws doing a favor. People who should be doing childcare and other trusty work now do crappy work because the crappy people just leech off the system and dont work at all. And we subsidize that, heavily.

Immigration also changed housing, of course. Along with your social trust points.

Crime changed things. Crime is now statistically quite low, but its more random. I have had my car burgled twice for, in absolute terms, basically nothing. They stole my quarters and my kids car candy. But, it feels unsafe to have kids in a place where people break into cars. So I had to move. Now my housing is more expensive and all my neighbors have ring cameras, I might pony up for one if it happens in the new place.

And I think affirmative action (and related, student VISAs/H1B) changed a lot of this too. In a world prior to it, me and all my siblings probably all get good deals to go to local universities. I certainly should have been offered a full ride scholarship to the flagship state school instead of having to forum shop the whole country given the fact I had a crazy good ACT and SAT and won the state chemistry competition. Instead they insisted I pay full freight. Same happened to my siblings, so now we live in 3 different states, because we went to schools in 3 separate states. My parents moved to where my sister lives(did she is moving). In a less manipulated world we probably stay together, at least in part. Perhaps one of us gets into an Ivy and takes a decade to move back to the area, or maybe never, but its still probably the one who left staying where their partner's home base is. A familial home base is awesome and now increasingly rare.

Lastly, for me, for now, is the just dumb things. I can populate this section with many things I think are just dumb, like most humanitarian aid (which I feel many people here are in favor of and will defend my position if questioned). But again its a tax. I will respond to any random program you think is good and tell you if I think it is also good or why I think it is not.

Two of your three cost disease categories are basically just the two income trap; healthcare is its own little world.

A nitpick as it's not his central point but, neoclassical economics is fantastical pseudoscience. There is no evidence for so-called «Baumol effects.» They exist as the result of a facile equation made out of thin air by an arrogant academic in the 1960s, not as the result of a real science. Childcare is not that expensive, people who have children just consume more of it because of dual income, housing is more expensive because of mass immigration, medicine is more expensive because of the selfishness of the doctor's guild and boomers overconsuming it. To really understand the situation, you have to understand why old people go to the doctor so much, why Western democracies politically choose demographic replacement, why feminism has progressed to the point of practically forcing dual income. None of these questions can be answer neoclassically. There are no pretty little neutral human-nature free Name Effects that give you an out from reasoning about human nature.

Childcare is not that expensive

This particular example feels like it's a function of rising income expectations: you have to pay the help Your daycare costs more than a few bucks a day for very foreseeable reasons. Childcare workers expect to be paid minimum wages (citation needed), and mandated child-to-caretaker ratios make the cost of infant childcare about a quarter of a minimum wage salary before even considering benefits, rent, or other business costs, which are probably nontrivial additions.

People's time is expensive, especially as living standards grow: it's perhaps not obvious, but why wouldn't worker-efficiency-capped services rise in cost at pace with (or more than!) average incomes?

but why wouldn't worker-efficiency-capped services rise in cost at pace with (or more than!) average incomes?

Strictly speaking, this is a pseudoscientific attitude. The burden of proof is on economists to show that this is a law, and that burden is not met by some facile equations lacking data, which don't model human behavior properly anyway.

Speaking less strictly, obviously Baumol effects became popular as a concept despite the terrible technique behind them, because they sound plausible. I'm not denying that. Most of neoclassical economics is like that. It has to be, since it's not a science. If it's not plausible-sounding, who will buy it?

I am making a mostly technical critique here, which is why I said it's a nitpick. But more substantively, I think there are subtle but important effects of this reframing. First, we reduce «Baumol effects» to «Baumol's hypothesis.». Because it is merely a hypothesis. With this we recognize the plausibility of something like it happening, without dogmatically assuming that it is the entire story, or that the details of Baumol's original writing were particularly correct.

Now that we can think freely, I will say it seems to me that if a hypothetical Baumol mechanism were to happen somewhere, I don't see why the price of worker efficiency capped services should rise systematically faster than average income. Causal inference and probability are the future of economics, alongside integration with human behavioral biology. So let's think under that framework. What should be the causal effect of productivity improvement in some sectors of employment on the average cost of the services across all the other sectors? It seems to me the causal effect should not be greater than the total increase in average productivity, although I don't know for sure. In fact I think only part of the productivity increase should trickle down, so I hypothesize it should be strictly less than than the average productivity improvement. In other words, I expect the services to get somewhat cheaper at least, although not as cheap as they would be if wages were capped and workers were forced to remain in the field.

But as scientists, this is just a hypothesis, and we should have a causal inference study to know for sure. Still, if the services get more expensive than the productivity gain, I start to look for exogenous shocks. In this case there are some obvious candidates for that, but it's controversial to talk about. What isn't controversial is blank-slate neoclassicism. The exogenous shocks I'm thinking of are controversial because they aren't blank-slate.

Strictly speaking, this is a pseudoscientific attitude.

Do you have a suggestion for how an above-board business that requires one employee per four paying customers (well, per infant the customers are paying for) can cost less than a quarter of a minimum employee salary for that duration? I was suggesting it as a pretty obvious bound from a business perspective, absent subsidies (which have their own bounds).

Nobody seems to be seriously considering AI and robotics to let a single human watch more than four infants at once, and frankly I'm not really sure I would either. But without that, the bounds apply.

I don't like how you sidestepped the entire substance of what I wrote. So I will just say I answered your question somewhere in the text above. Was I unclear at any point?

I wasn't expressing an opinion on Baumol more broadly than the one specific example, which I think has plenty of logic to show exists.

More comments

I will respond to any random program you think is good and tell you if I think it is also good or why I think it is not.

What about WIC?

Opposed, assuming it's the formula program I'm thinking of. While every welfare program will have success story outliers, one can not support self licking ice cream cones as a general principle.

Making extended family geographically remote comes with numerous costs (eg less socialization, lack of built in baby sitters, loss of safety nets, no informal matchmaking). This is one of those things that doesn’t show up in GDP but is a real cost.

This is one of those things that doesn’t show up in GDP but is a real cost.

On the contrary, it shows up in GDP as higher consumption of daycare services, digital entertainment, and dating app purchases! Which of course doesn’t imply that it’s a good thing

Perhaps one of us gets into an Ivy and takes a decade to move back to the area, or maybe never, but its still probably the one who left staying where their partner's home base is.

Yeah plus atleast in this case the one who moves out of state is pursuing an A+ education instead of 'random scramble for a B-tier education you get sent across the country'. Housing has similar impacts these days in a lot of metros where young people are just fishing for wherever they can live in the ring suburbs of a given metropolis, in my experience. My high school friend group ended up distributed an hour from the CBD of Melbourne at essentially all points on the compass in order to own starter homes, which has really killed easy socialization.

For a regular man, this implies that becoming marriageable now requires clearing exceptional bars: a degree (with the debt that comes attached) and an income well above the male median (also — 6ft, muscular physique, etc. etc.). Likewise social media has raised the expectations against which men are measured to make-believe levels. A working man in 1965 was marriageable by default in a way that his grandson is not. Again, all of this leverages tremendous economic pressure on men to overperform.

I will say this as a man, it really sucks ass having to compete with other men for stuff like good jobs, girls, etc. I'm in the gym 4 days out of the week, calorie deficit, I just got out of another 2nd round job interview, gonna do another tomorrow, hoping to get something high paying with the degree i got (in my lucky case, for free) and the certs. I've done damn near 4 -5 internships and a part time job. Thankfully i live in a city that actually builds housing so its not horribly bad, but I'm not anywhere near where I'd like to be in my life. I got lucky with a girl Im seeing by complete accident. Its just better to date as a man when you have your own place and a decent paying job, and those things are insane amounts of work to get your hands on. Im glad someone's validating my (and others) experience, instead being told about how "good" we have it now compared to the past.

I don't mind competing with other men in the abstract. Especially when the competition is "friendly" (i.e. they won't kill you to take your woman if she chooses you). I dislike that under the current norms, the competition is entirely opaque. She's got 20 other dudes in her messages and you have no clue who any of them are, what they look like, what tactics they're using. I can't be effective at competition if I don't know what I'm up against.

But the blackpill is realizing the pool of women you're competing for is heavily tainted, and the supply of women you'd genuinely want to marry is shrinking. Relative to the population of guys that want to lock her down, your base odds are pretty horrendous. I did a not-well-received post in the CW war thread on this topic. If you want though, any of the mainstream LLM's will run an up-to-date calculation for you!

So the thought that I might have to be physically fighting other dudes to the death for the few remaining marriageable women crosses my mind occasionally. Thankfully I trained martial arts while many other guys just went for general aesthetics.

The Vantablack pill is noticing that you're not just competing with your peers... but professional athletes, millionaires/billionaires, and various boomers who are sitting in various positions of wealth, power, and authority and are happy to also snag the occasional 20-30 year old for a fling.

Elon Musk is going around inseminating women seemingly at will. We have no legal or social guardrail on this, so assume other billionaires and high status males do something similar, which again cuts into the supply of attractive, marriageable women. Historically this is closer to the norm for humans. So you, regular middle class dude whose family doesn't have old money, whose job is not high status, who doesn't own a company or have power over thousands of humans, who is locked out of positions of power by older generations who view you as a rival... sorry bud, you just don't get to reproduce unless the random lottery draw for one of the last few decent women comes up in your favor. So sad.

Sorry, didn't mean to get THAT dark, but I think this is representative of where a LOT of guys heads' are at, (remember that spree shooter in Canada with the manifesto, last month?) and there's no discussion of real solutions on the social level.

There's a huge number of marriagable women that meet your standards if you expand your search globally.

That just pushes the problem off on those countries. What about the men that live THERE?

And, as I said not too long ago:

I'm reactionary enough to suggest that an average male shouldn't have to leave the country of his birth to have a prospect of finding a wife. That's a major social failure.

"We shouldn't work at solving this massive domestic social issue as long as men can travel abroad to avoid facing it" is, at its core, a STUNNING admission of impotence and/or dereliction.

Here's a question: Would you support an immigration policy that specifically EXCLUDED young males in favor of inviting in as many nubile fertile single women from abroad as possible?

Which group, do you suppose, might oppose this policy?

Part of its technology. When your social pool of people expands from your local neighborhood to the entire country, people aren’t going to think their backyard community of individuals will ever be good enough because they can find an image of their ideal man or woman only a few clicks away. People say assortative mating is still the way of the world and it both is and it isn’t. It’s always the case that you have to date or shack up with someone physically proximal to you (that’s kind of inherent in the relationship process…), but what the rest of the world inundates you with completely warps your perception of what people used to commonly think a relationship entails.

When your social pool of people expands from your local neighborhood to the entire country, people aren’t going to think their backyard community of individuals will ever be good enough

I guess I haven't heard so much about it more recently, but when I was a kid, the generational mentality of "Keeping up with the Jones'" was mocked frequently. I think it's funny that social media has really taken that to 11 all the while people still mock older generations for wasting so much effort and money for social status.

The title "Keeping up with the Kardashians" was not, in fact, ironic.

t really sucks ass having to compete with other men for stuff like good jobs, girls, etc. I'm in the gym 4 days out of the week, calorie deficit, I just got out of another 2nd round job interview, gonna do another tomorrow, hoping to get something high paying with the degree i got

Boomers didn't have to do any of this. You probably have to to the extent you live around strivers and immigrants from India and China. I didn't have to do much of this because I don't live very close to those places, and neither have my similar aged family. But the consequence is no flashy Silicon valley wage or job. I have come and gone from striver dominated places and every time I felt I was pushed to behave like this. They had dry dating pools, I ended up feeling pushed to lose tons of weight just to get matches that I could have easily gotten at home, the jobs were cutthroat but not very important, just like you experience.

You probably have to to the extent you live around strivers and immigrants from India and China.

My parents are immigrants, and that was part of it. But in their defense, not doing this is detrimental to the end goal of renting an apartment or owning a home with modern house prices, especially if you want to live in a decent area. If you want the kinda job that can pay for that you don't have much of a choice.

Conflating Great Migration and mass migration makes me think you’re reasoning backwards.

As I understand it, immigration slumped during the Depression and didn’t recover until Reagan. Wiki shows a different trend but still suggests the bulk of migration happened before WWI. So I find it unlikely that immigration could explain the effects you want.

Actually, when are those effects, exactly? Because I think it makes a huge difference if you point at the 60s vs 70s vs 80s. Depending on the specific point, I can think of a dozen technologies which have changed how people handle their kids, even without talking about demographics or gang violence.

It’s 10 PM. Do you know where your children are?

I think you’re skimming over economics in your rush to blame black people. Automation and the World Wars pulled more and more women out of the home. That alone should have had a bigger effect on childcare.

Do you disagree that a commons of free public schools has declined recently? Or were the schools NEVER good? I follow Moses Kagan on Twitter who I just affluent liberal in LA and I remember one of his tweets were that he would have just paid up for a house in a suburb because of how much it would have saved him on private school tuition. This seems like a common thought to people today that you can’t send your kids to public schools outside of the right suburbs.

What caused this?

I point to migration both internally and externally.

Urban schools being bad goes all the way back to the forced bussing cases in the 1970s, if not earlier. Whether they have got even worse since then, or whether they are less bad (but still not good) varies from city to city. But they haven't got dramatically worse recently in a way which would explain the current fertility drop-off.

In the UK, schools in London are noticeably better than they ever have been, and the primary schools are now some of the best in the world (where a "good school" is defined as one where a child with a 90-110 IQ and no special needs that the school can't manage will learn a lot). This hasn't affected the narrative.

Women were not pulled out of the home by economics. It was culture- male wages were steadily rising and the US did not experience prolonged unemployment during the period when it shifted from unusual to the default. That cultural shift had knock on economic effects.

I’m not thinking of an economic pull (I.e. needing two jobs to feed your kids). I was thinking about the push (more useful work to be done outside the home). Going off what I read before, the mass manufacturing of household goods, especially textiles, moved women from production into consumption (unless they went into the mills themselves). The same should be true for the midcentury wave of more advanced factories and more consumer goods.

@VoxelVexillologist

There was a definitely cultural shift, too, but i think it depended on the economics. In the Civil War it didn’t matter how many men were conscripted; women could not effectively fill roles in the ironworks or trainyards. Power tools and heavy machinery changed that. The growth of low-training jobs changed that.

The world was and is naturally very cruel. People died (or at least suffered from) starvation, disease, the elements, etc quite often. Most of history was not a place where even the surviving young children could get away without helping out with the crops or other chores, yet alone the able bodied adult women. The world was not kind enough for freeloaders.

Women worked. They did not work a traditional job, but they worked. In the peasant times, women milked cattle, tilled fields, managed crops, kept chickens, cleaned, made clothing (especially necessary at the time where minor scratches and infections could kill and no A/C or heating), hauled water, picked fruits and vegetables and various other tasks.

Many of those tasks are no longer relevant thanks to economic and technological innovations. We've gone from a time of vast malnutrition to vast overnutrition in the western world, having everyone grow their own crops and milk their own cattle is ridiculous now. Even the tasks that do remain like cleaning or cooking are made significantly easier now thanks to technology. Laundry is no longer a chore that one sets most of their day aside for. Things not only make less dirt (imagine the difference between a sooty fire and the modern oven for instance) but cleaning chemicals are also more efficient and don't take as much to make since they're also done by technology now.

Traditional women's work has just been largely automated away. For a short period of time some of the middle class women were in a social situation where working a job wasn't expected but the housework they would have traditionally been doing was also largely gone, so they got to spend more of their days doing stuff like watching soap operas or whatever. But the time of the lazy do nothing housewife was short lived, and it was always going to be short lived. The economic incentives and advantages to having two productive earners instead of one + parasite is clear and obvious. People with nothing to do will be given something to do, they will be productive as well. The world wars accelerated this, but it was always going to happen as long as people and families value money. It can not be reversed unless you change this fundamental desire for wealth part of humanity, good luck.

Women worked. They did not work a traditional job, but they worked.

From the accounts I'm familiar with before the Industrial Revolution (and even after, if to a more limited extent), there are plenty of women-coded "traditional jobs" that can be done from the house. Sewing, weaving, spinning, and knitting weren't always hobbies, and the results could be sold or done as services for others. Textiles are dirt cheap these days, but accounts from history often have budgets where the cost of clothing isn't that far from rent. Candlemaking comes to mind, too.

I always roll my eyes when I see someone object to the argument I’ve never seen anyone make when someone says “women haven’t worked,” as if it’s a stand in statement to claim the prevailing paradigm isn’t radically different from the way of the past.

No. Women haven’t always worked. Women have always labored, in some capacity. Women haven’t always had a traditional, 9am-5pm professional vocation, post May Day Demonstrations and Henry Ford. And it’s why the arguments that denigrate the value and labor of the housewife and SAHM never made sense. Oh and by the way, when you come home after a hard day’s work, dinner still has to get made and laundry still has to get done; so get on it.

And it’s why the arguments that denigrate that the value and labor of the housewife and SAHM never made sense, because when you come home after a hard day’s work, dinner still has to get made and laundry still had to get done; regardless.

See comment literally above yours:

The economic incentives and advantages to having two productive earners instead of one + parasite is clear and obvious.

That's referring to the "lazy do nothing housewife" thanks to the advent of automating away a lot of housework plus mass food production and the likes. Even though those lazy housewives would still be doing some housework, cooking, shopping, cleaning, child raising, providing sex for their husbands and so forth, that comment just goes "more free time + less manual labour = doing nothing, lazy parasite, of course they got jobs outside the home".

No. Women haven’t always worked. Women have always labored, in some capacity. Women haven’t always had a traditional, 9am-5pm professional vocation,

I think work is a correct term for this, we literally call it "housework" after all. But ok even if we draw a distinction in the terms, so what? Replace instance of "work" with "labored productively" and nothing changes.

And it’s why the arguments that denigrate that the value and labor of the housewife and SAHM never made sense, because when you come home after a hard day’s work, dinner still has to get made and laundry still had to get done; regardless.

But those things are far far easier now, because of technology! Fridges means you don't have to go to the market every single day and the things you buy are way fresher in general. Microwaves and ovens and stoves avoids the hassle of handling and maintaining and cleaning up after the fire. Laundry machines went from spending the whole day tending to clothes, to a few minutes hassle of putting clothes in, switching them over, and pushing a few buttons. Folding is really the only time intensive part of laundry left, and technology is looking to simplify even that.

It's not denigrating housewives to point out simple fact, housework is leagues easier today than the past. That's why people spend tons of money on all those aforementioned machines. Some are so insanely and undeniably useful that even the Amish use them like washing machines

Ah yes, you just put the clothes in and press a button. No sorting by colour/fabric beforehand. No taking out one load and putting in another. No hanging out clothes (if you dry them on a line outside) or putting them in the tumbledryer (if you don't). No putting them away afterwards. Just folding them and that's all! 🤣

I agree that modern automation and white goods has made a vast difference to housework (honestly, the dishwasher we finally got a few years back is amazing) but there still remains some work, and it's not just "five minutes a day".

In fact, for a while, housework went up because of automation and convenience products. Now instead of one day a week for laundry, you would be doing it every day because now you could change your bedsheets and clothing more than once a week. And now you would change clothing and bed linen and so forth more than once a week, because you weren't dirty and lazy were you? And now you vacuumed the house every day because you aren't bringing the rugs out to hang them on a line and beat them. Same with this - you do all this because you want to provide a clean, welcoming home for your family don't you? If they get sick (from unspecified illnesses) due to the dirty house you live in, well... what a failure as a wife and mother, yes?

(This also gave rise to the advertising staple of the clueless husband/man of the family who had to be guided through the tech wonderland of modern cleaning products. And also some that wouldn't fly nowadays).

So swings and roundabouts.

Ah yes, you just put the clothes in and press a button. No sorting by colour/fabric beforehand.

For the vast majority of modern clothes in modern washing machines, this is not necessary. Our detergents are a lot better and our dyes stick on way more.

No taking out one load and putting in another.

That's like, a minute or two.

No hanging out clothes (if you dry them on a line outside)

If you don't use the technology then it doesn't save you time.

Or putting them in the tumbledryer (if you don't).

Literally again, another few minutes (honestly probably more like a single minute if not less but let's count going to the laundry room and back)

No putting them away afterwards.

Again, another few minutes.

It went from a day of exhaustive and attentive work to barely anything.

In fact, for a while, housework went up because of automation and convenience products. Now instead of one day a week for laundry, you would be doing it every day because now you could change your bedsheets and clothing more than once a week. And now you would change clothing and bed linen and so forth more than once a week, because you weren't dirty and lazy were you?

Unless you have a massive family, you aren't doing laundry everyday. Five shirts, five pants, five underwear would not fill up my washing machine. What a waste. Put them in the laundry hamper and do it in batches like everyone else. We get 3 days worth I would say but obviously depends on the circumstances.

And if you choose to change bedsheets every day then you're overdoing it. That's just OCD.

And now you vacuumed the house every day because you aren't bringing the rugs out to hang them on a line and beat them.

Completely unnecessary unless you're tracking in mud.

Same with this - you do all this because you want to provide a clean, welcoming home for your family don't you? If they get sick (from unspecified illnesses) due to the dirty house you live in, well... what a failure as a wife and mother, yes?

Yeah this suggests you do have some sort of OCD issue going on then with it. It is not ordinary to change bed sheets and vacuum daily.

I know several women who do vacuum daily. I know several who change bed sheets weekly. As convenience improves, standards go up. Now that it's easy to do laundry, you should do laundry. Playing on fears of infection and social fears of being perceived as dirty or careless was a huge range of advertisements aimed at housewives from the 50s onward.

Today we don't give a damn if a shirt is ironed or not, but it was used as a tool of judgement - are you letting your husband and kids go out in clothes that are not sparkling white? Are you a proper wife and mother? Creating perceived needs and playing on them is what advertising is all about.

Folding is really the only time intensive part of laundry left

Do Americans not iron their clothes?

No, only formal wear, and not every time.

I can't remember the last time I had to iron my clothes. Modern "wrinkle-free" stuff (no longer even specifically marketed as wrinkle-free) is genuinely sufficiently wrinkle-free, unlike 20 years ago.

There's a gap where we do. Business/professional/formal clothing that isn't worth taking to a dry cleaners. But even then, most of my "business casual" attire is "wrinkle-free", and it only needs an ironing once every half-dozen wears. And dry cleaning is dirt cheap.

I think work is a correct term for this, we literally call it "housework" after all. But ok even if we draw a distinction in the terms, so what? Replace instance of "work" with "labored productively" and nothing changes.

That’s exactly the point I was speaking to. There is a value in discouraging women from participating in the “professional workforce,” that’s wholly distinct from the concept of laboring in general. That’s why I said (incidentally it’s also why Elizabeth Warren wrote the book The Middle Income Trap) once you’re done for the day at work and you come home, dinner still has to be made and the laundry still has to get done anyway. And that’s true whether you stay at home and raise the children or choose to go to work.

But those things are far far easier now, because of technology! Fridges means you don't have to go to the market every single day and the things you buy are way fresher in general. Microwaves and ovens and stoves avoids the hassle of handling and maintaining and cleaning up after the fire. Laundry machines went from spending the whole day tending to clothes, to a few minutes hassle of putting clothes in, switching them over, and pushing a few buttons. Folding is really the only time intensive part of laundry left, and technology is looking to simplify even that.

Exactly. So it should be even easier for them to stay home.

Exactly. So it should be even easier for them to stay home.

The exact opposite. The opportunity cost of staying home increases the less housework there is to be done, which just means more pressure to get out there and get a job so long as people want more wealth. And people wanting more and more wealth is a fundamental part of humanity that isn't being changed anytime soon. Automating housework was always going to end up with women getting out of house work. Two earner wealth > One earner wealth is simple, obvious, and undeniable. One has to change the very nature of our species to prevent it.

And we can prove this simply by looking at real world economies. There's not really any country that is civilized and automated that doesn't get the women eventually going out of their daily chores housework and into the workforce. There is not many real world examples where the average woman in the country sits around all day drinking tea and watching TV, they're either too poor to have automation (in which case the women is doing all the intensive and time consuming housework) or they're automated and the women are getting jobs.

The only possible exceptions I can think of are like, the gulf state nations rich off oil and immigrant laborers (and even those aren't entirely fair since we're substituting the housewife work with domestic underclass women work, so women are still working so there's still tons of women working). So I guess if you can get a nation that makes a substantial part of their money off pure luck, with repressive religious dictatorships that enforce their beliefs against their own citizens economic incentives and a super poor underclass that flows in to do work for them, you can get it.

Exactly. So it should be even easier for them to stay home.

That is not necessarily true. "Easier" can mean different things. Idle hands are the devil's workshop and whatnot. Suppose you've got a mother of three children, they are a baby, a three year old, and a five year old. In a traditional household, there would be washing day, when she and her neighbors go down to the stream to wash, you all bring your children, and the children splash around in the stream. You would have pastry making day, when your sister brings her kids over, they kick a ball around the street, and you make pastry together. You spend a lot of time making clothes, and your older daughter is gradually also learning to sew, and the younger kids are out watching some other kids kick a ball around.

(This was not true of the American West, but the Dustbowl West sounded like a uniquely nightmarish place to raise children)

Now, you can still invite your friend and her children to the stream, but you're just sitting around watching the children. You can still make pastry together, but you realize this is a bit futile, because the pastry at the store is both better and cheaper, and the children cannot kick the ball around the street, there are cars, and no other kids their age. You can sew with your daughter, but it's just a hobby, and mostly for cosplay. And so on. Armenians have Rug Beating Week, when they air out and beat their rugs, all at the same time. You're replacing a communal activity with having to make up activities to avoid boredom, which feels quite different.

The thing is, when a preschool organizes activities to enrich children, give them opportunities to play with nature, etc. it's a worthy job, economically beneficial, adds to GDP. When their own mothers do this it's unproductive.

I posit that even with modern appliances, there is enough work to be done in the hearth that would make up a full productive life for a stay at home mother. And in fact, we are seeing a lot of ills caused by a dearth of stay at home mothers. Maintaining the house, creating and implementing a safe environment for young children that still encourages them to stretch their capabilities, teaching children to read before 1st grade and tutoring them in their school work, reading to children good books that grow their soul, chauffeuring children to activities, planning and executing parties and social events, grocery inventory management and procurement, preparing healthy food, these are things that can fill in a calendar.

How much of the demise of socialization can be attributed to losing the free project management that unpaid homemakers provided to their communities?

Sure, their lives would be less busy than women's lives a century ago. A lot of the work has gotten less labor intensive. But this is also true of the jobs outside the home. Men used to work 12 hour days with physical labor, now they work 8 hours with largely mental labor.

It is also more possible for homemakers to check out, do the bare minimum, and watch soap operas. But I posit that this is also possible for lots of people with 40 hour normal jobs. Else why do Motte posts become more frequent during normal American business hours?

I would like for every household to own productive property, such that the household can be a productive unit again. Lots of people go in that direction with the Internet, 3D printers, drop shipping, etc. But it seems to me that there is enough for the average mother to do now at home that their lives aren't completely boring and pointless.

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They were pulled from the home by economic incentives, not economic need. As wages rose, employment became an increasingly attractive alternative to staying home.

I actually think this is only half truth. The issue here is with the welfare state and rise of taxation. The tax as percent of GDP was remarkably low in 19th century: between 1-3% of GDP. This changed after WW1 and The New Deal rising to 15% and 20% GDP, peaking at 30% by 1960s.

This is however artificial incentive. For instance today the average cost of elementary school student in USA is $17k a year. Imagine if family with three children can decide: wife stays at home, maybe creates a pod with other mothers and manages schooling and the government gives them $51k tax credit a year and they spend it as they want. Maybe children have to pass a test on par with at least with second lowest decile results compared to local public school. On top of that the wife can cook, she can take care of household chores and to other management such as driving and so forth. Also she could easily sell her surplus of cakes or jams on market or outside of house without constant government meddling with endless regulation. Her net contribution toward household could easily approach $100k a year.

This is the tragedy of the current situation. Women still take care of children, do the laundry, they do bring beer and sandwich to men, they still take care of elderly and sick as they used to do it in the past - in capacity such as teachers, maids, waitresses, cooks and nurses. Only they do it for strangers and not for their own family, losing value in the process. It is all just and illusion and scam.

Me ex left me about 5 years ago.

Previously we were splitting mortgage and utilities that came out to (for ease of calculation) $2000/month.

When she left, she got an apartment that cost (again, ease of calculation) $1500/month. I kept the house/mortgage/utilities and pay those fully out of pocket.

So I'm spending $1000/month more than I would be in the counterfactual where she stayed (was paying $1000 for housing, now $2000). She'd spending an extra $500/month (and I didn't even count utilities and such for her). We'd cumulatively have $1500/month 'extra' if we stayed together. Over a year that's $18,000. Over 5 years, that's $90,000. So I would, individually, be $45,000 richer (probably more! I could invest more!) in that counterfactual. That's several vacations, a new car, that's a new roof on the house or other major renovations.

I am doing well for myself. Salary is fine, debt is manageable.

I would be doing much better if I could find a reliable partner to shoulder either part of the bills or the housework or, ANYTHING really. Financially the 'hole' I'm in compared to the one where I'm happily married is getting deeper by the month.

And there are millions of people in similar situation, could be partnered but are not. Those folks don't, strictly speaking, show up in the economic stats as 'struggling.'

And that's before we talk covid-induced inflation and the attendant increase in prices of housing, vehicles (and insurance, and repairs), and medical care.

So yeah, there are some feedback loops out there that can make someone doing fine 'economically' still be struggling. Big one: difficulty finding affordable housing means more living with parents which means harder to find a partner, which makes it harder to afford housing, AND means there's more housing demand (if people start moving in together, that reduces demand on housing and lowers prices!).

And being clear, I'm not angry at her about it. I've processed and moved on. But I'm acutely aware of the price of being single, if for no other reason than to help me calibrate how much I should 'compromise' to bring a new woman into my life.

Having a partner can also be very very expensive. I'm easily $500k+ in the hole from paying all my ex-girlfriend's costs, who refused to get a job for 15+ years. (I'm extremely low-status in the dating market. I finally got out of the relationship, so at least I'm alone and miserable rather than paying through the nose and miserable.)

What's funny is that I wouldn't even have minded a trophy-wife situation where I at least got decent sex out of the deal. I know suggesting that makes me the worst kind of misogynist. We're supposed to pretend that relationships aren't transactional. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/communication-2

My ex was not the most frugal person.

Racked up student debt paying OUT-OF-STATE TUITION for reasons that read to me as asinine.

But at least it was a decent major. She had a tendency to just assume if you pay a lot for something it must be the best/high quality. Also had a tendency to throw out old things and buy new when something broke. Which, uhhhhh in hindsight was probably a warning sign.

I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.

This winnows out a LOT of the field very early. I was dating a girl the last few months who apparently liked to select fancy restaurants just to see if I'd blink at paying the bill. At least, that's the game as I interpreted it. She would also cook for me so I was curious to see where things went. A few hundred dollars later and I can't even get a text back now.

Getting $500k in the hole is an outcome I'd truly want to avoid, though. I think I would pull the chute when the costs hit $100k.

I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.

Good luck with that. Your best option is to look among new immigrants, preferably from some Asian country, modern US people are raised with attitude of temporarily embarrassed princes and princessess who feel any hint they should count money and consider the costs as mortal insult to their noble status and honor.

Imagine how Marie Antoinette felt when hubby told her: "Honey, you have enough palaces, you do not need another!"

The age of bourgeoisie counting every penny is over, the age of aristocracy is back.

modern US people are raised with attitude of temporarily embarrassed princes and princessess who feel any hint they should count money and consider the costs as mortal insult to their noble status and honor.

Sadly true. There was some significant reee-ing in the lastest doordash discourse on twitter (which kicked off with some guy saying you shouldn't be eating lunch out every day when you're making 70k in the US) with too many taking the position that taking a lunch to work was living worse than a medieval peasant.

I find the guy's point regarding eating out to be so trivially correct as to be unobjectionable, which proves I'm old and out of touch.

I mean, it is Twitter. Bringing lunch to work is extremely normal in the USA.

too many taking the position that taking a lunch to work was living worse than a medieval peasant.

These people, of course, were overwhelmingly self identifying as left, with bios full of symbols of correct current year, month and day causes.

Black lives matter! Trans women are women! Free Palestine! Cooking your own food is ableist, Doordash is human right!

But America is still land of opportunity, just follow teachings of the great guru Shagbark the Hobo King, and you too can find true frugal wife happy to live in shack and eat roadkill.

True trad Christian one, ofc, the atheist would want to do ..umm... nasty things to the roadkill, see the other current xitterstorm.

Usual example in "no god no morals, atheists owned!" eternal discourse is rape and murder, the xitter apologists recently upped the ante.

But America is still land of opportunity, just follow teachings of the great guru Shagbark the Hobo King, and you too can find true frugal wife happy to live in shack and eat roadkill.

I enjoy occasionally reading something by Shagbark because he is great at doing just what he did in that tweet: starting with a generally good point (many women are attracted to a man who has a vision of some kind and mission in life) and then taking it in a totally insane direction. "You should live where costs are low... so move to wasteland upstate New York, eat roadkill, and get by on $10k per year!" Etc.

I realized a while back that a lot of women were raised in McMansions with parents who basically paid for everything, from cars to clothes to fancy knick knacks, and of course university education, from the time she could walk.

And inherently, they will expect the same from their spouse. But that's impossible for a normal guy in early-adult stages to procure.

By becoming as wealthy as we have, we've now made it so that the general norm of "you, a dirt poor peon, marry another dirt poor peon, and gradually build your life up to a higher standard" a thing of the past.

Women who came up in prosperity would inherently have to accept a (temporary!) standard of living hit to marry a guy in his early-mid twenties, unless his family is massively wealthy. Women are generally wired to never, EVER accept a loss in status and standing and so this thought is probably vomit-inducing.

And there's now ample evidence that women, when given economic/financial advantages, tend to opt against having families/kids.

Again the solution is to economically boost men, or at least, stop the policies that are economically de-boosting them.

I realized a while back that a lot of women were raised in McMansions with parents who basically paid for everything, from cars to clothes to fancy knick knacks, and of course university education, from the time she could walk.

If only such support ended at HS or college. One occasionally meets a girlboss in their 30s who spends every dime on travel and clothing and eating out because her parents are still providing the apartment, car, and maybe even spending money. And she expects the future husband to be able to provide that level of living. Made for some entertaining first dates.

"Oh, I love Paris. I try to visit twice a year. How often do you travel abroad?"

"I've never left the US. My idea of travel is hiking and camping for 10 days without a shower."

Some Noticing from Capital One supports the online wrongthinker hypothesis that young women are racking up debt and/or are getting subsidized by boyfriends/parents so they can have the rightful FUN they deserve.

In one month, the average single American male consumer spends $4,114 or 85.8% of his income before taxes.

The average single female spends $3,862 in one month or 101% of her income before taxes.

Before taxes!

I can only imagine the spending to income ratio would be even higher for young attractive women, all else equal. Like Daniel Tosh remarked, being an ugly chick is like being a man: you’re going to have to work.

From what I’ve seen of a lot of young women, stuff like make-up, nails, new clothes are non-negotiable monthly expenses like food or rent, in addition to other FUN expenses like restaurants, festivals, and traveling.

Please note that this report conforms to terminology used in source data. In most sources, sex and gender terms are not clearly defined and may be used interchangeably. For example, both “male” and “men” may refer to cis-males or male-born consumers.

Tiresome status: It’s all so.

Before taxes!

Putting aside the female numbers (which confirm my biases and thus are obviously correct), how does that even work for the male numbers? 86% before taxes would still seem to be over 100% once taxes are included.

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On the one hand its a natural thing. If the parents are doing really well, making sure their kids are comfortable (and, more directly, making sure their beloved Katie never has to do porn or shack up with a drug dealer) is what they would do as an extension of their established role.

The second/third order effect of "Katie now expects to live in a 5000 square foot house and drive a late-model SUV and will reject anyone who can't offer that" is a little harder to see.

The very SECOND I hear that a woman has left the country on vacation more than once (with the exception of Mexico travel, I guess), I pretty much know my chances have dropped to negligible.

I guess maybe this is another thing where my background influences what I've seen, but as far as I can tell I've never been on a date with a woman who had this kind of lifestyle. Especially the "looking for a man to offer that almost seems like looking not only for a provider who can add meaningfully to the dual household income, but looking for a man who can bankroll an entire lifestyle, and I've genuinely never encountered that. Together we can afford these lifestyle choices is familiar to me; marriage after all has financial advantages. But this is the sort of thing that appears deep into a relationship, not up front.

Is this a lower-middle-class/upper-middle-class split thing? Regional? I've tended to date people who come from modest households.

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Imagine how Marie Antoinette felt when hubby told her: "Honey, you have enough palaces, you do not need another!"

Marie Antoinette was not responsible for the opulence of Versailles, and probably hated it. Her palace at Petit Trianon is the least blinged-out part of the whole complex.

I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.

Seems reasonable. Though, try not to get a new GF that just has a slightly different set of horrible traits! "This time I'm putting my foot down, arson is a hard no." Nobody's perfect, but as long as you're willing to consider "alone" as a viable option, it really does let you be more selective.

Getting $500k in the hole is an outcome I'd truly want to avoid, though. I think I would pull the chute when the costs hit $100k.

Yeah, most people would (and should). I've made a lot of bad choices.

This is kind of the problem. I'm familiar with the concept of 'tradeoffs' and accept that. If I somehow land a smoking hot redhead with DD's, I can accept she might be a bit profligate in spending, which I will corral as best I can.

But the women are generally lacking so many of the desirable traits I'd look for that there's not much to trade off against!

Reading you guys makes me realize I am significantly more of a naive or fatalist romantic than I would have credited myself as. Romance is something that happens, dammit, not the synthetic end result of a deliberate, cold-blooded process.

I mean, we don't live in the best or the worst of all worlds. There are some genuinely beautiful, selfless relationships out there. But not everyone gets one. My cynicism applies only to me and my future prospects (or lack thereof).

From "Unspeakable Bargains" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:

Once upon a time there was a man named Simon who was a successful junior trader at a financial firm in New York City, who was heterosexual and liked conventionally pretty women. Simon used to take attractive women out to swanky restaurants, and fancy theatres, and amusement parks on weekends, and buy them jewelry and clothing; and then they would go back to his place and have fun. One day, Simon decided to stop spending money on women.

Immediately after, women decided to stop spending time on him.

Simon was very depressed by this. "So they never liked me to begin with?" he bemoaned, clutching his hands against the lapels of his $4000 business suit. "They were just stringing me along for my money all along?"

"That's admittedly a possibility," said Noelle, a well-known author who wasn't conventionally attractive and could therefore go to expensive restaurants with Simon without sex entering into it. "But considering the sheer weirdness of what you just tried to get away with, we can't even conclude that much. I don't even know how to describe the exact mistake you're making. Why on Earth did you try that in the first place?"

"Numerous movies and TV shows have told me that if girls really like me, they'll like me for myself rather than my money," explained Simon.

"Honestly I sometimes find it a bit hard to really, deeply understand from a first-person perspective what it's like to make that mistake," said Noelle. "Admittedly, I'm privileged, because I attract people by being a famous author, and therefore I identify strongly with the aspect of myself that I market sexually. Like, anyone who only sleeps with me because I'm the famous author Noelle Smith therefore does like me for myself, as I define 'myself'. So it's hard for me to imagine the existential horror of needing to market oneself sexually using only wealth, physical attractiveness, sexual skill, and other characteristics that ultimately fail to distinguish you from millions of other people. But then I know that there's other famous authors who attract people and that doesn't seem to upset me. For that matter, I know that there's centillions upon centillions of perfectly identical Noelles elsewhere in our spatially infinite universe, and that doesn't upset me. I seem to have lost track of the thread of the conversation, where were we again?"

"I was being sad about the fact that all of those girls turned out to only be attracted to me for my money," said Simon. "Honestly, it wouldn't even disturb me all that much, except for the fact that all the movies and TV shows have told me that this is an inferior quality of love, which means that somebody else is doing better than I am."

"Oh right, that," said Noelle. "Yeah, and I was saying we couldn't even conclude that much, though there is a certain prior probability in play. Look, it'd be one thing if you were poor, but honest, and also extremely handsome. But if you're visibly wearing a $4000 suit and still trying to take the girl to eat at McDonalds, that sends another message entirely. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that at least Wendy, of all the women I was dating, said that she liked me for myself and that the restaurants had nothing to do with it!" declared Simon. "I'm genuinely disturbed that she turned out to be lying!"

"Oh, Wendy? Yeah, her I liked," said Noelle. "Simon, I don't think Wendy was lying. I think she was making a deep-seated error about how her own psychology worked, like, she was having trouble interpreting reality in a way that didn't seem horrible to her, so she slipped sideways into a nearby universe instead. Look, Wendy's model-level beautiful, right? She can date in the big leagues. 'Don't marry for money, hang around rich girls and marry for love,' as the saying goes. Wendy's pretty enough that she can afford to hang around with a hundred people in your rough category of socioeconomic status, and pick out one that she likes. She could still have been attracted to you more than other rich guys, because of the fine details of your personality or something. Like, she found it cute the way you snort in the middle of laughing, or whatever the hell it is you think it's acceptable for women to be attracted to."

"Yeah, but it's not okay that Wendy also cared about the money!" said Simon. "That makes her a horrible person, right? Or at least shallow. A woman with real depth to her wouldn't care about my money at all."

Noelle thunked her head against the wall of the restaurant booth they were in. "You know," she said, "even if we concede that this hypothetical quality would earn a woman 2.3 virtue points, which could in itself be debated, my mind is still going: 'But why would somebody that virtuous need to end up dating somebody poor and unattractive? Shouldn't she be able to score a wealthy boyfriend who's attracted to excessively virtuous women?'"

"I'm starting to wonder if I've gone to the wrong friend for consolation here," said Simon.

"Possibly," said Noelle. "I mean, I'm having trouble imagining a universe whose mating market ends up that far out of equilibrium. Like, I can't believe in the implied alternative to mating markets for long enough for me to become emotional about it, or something like that. But even so I feel you're being unfair to Wendy in calling her shallow. If you hang around 20 guys whose personalities attract you, and then you marry the one who takes you to the most expensive restaurants, there's nothing wrong with that. There isn't even anything shallow about that. Deep women can like Kobe beef too. There's nothing wrong with wanting to go to expensive restaurants at the same time as being with someone you like."

"Of course there is," said Simon. "Let's be realistic here, if you like 20 people for themselves, there's going to be some quantitative level at which you like them, and if you pick the wealthiest person from among those, you're going to end up sacrificing 0.3 liking points so you can get 10 wealth points. How is that not shallow? I know, I know, you think everyone just is shallow, and maybe that's true, but it's still sad."

Noelle thunked her head against the wall again. "See," she said, "I don't think of myself as being cold-heartedly cynical when I reject that way of looking at things. I don't think that kind of exchange is bad when it happens alongside everything else in life. I don't think that optimizing your own life and reaching up for things is selfish and bad. I don't think it's wrong for a woman to want jewelry and for that to influence her dating life, so long as that one consideration doesn't take over her life at the expense of everything else. And aren't you the guy who never asks out any woman he doesn't consider to be at least a 9 out of 10?"

"That's not the same at all!" Simon said indignantly. "I can't control who I'm sexually attracted to. It's not like I try to score women on the same scale that everyone else uses, the way that wealth is objective and measurable, and then I only try to score with women who score at the 90th percentile. I just can't control who my brain is attracted to, that's all--there's no choices involved."

"Well," said Noelle, "I have to admit that I'd feel a lot more sympathetic if you said that you were willing to date 6-out-of-10s in exchange for them being okay with you being frugal. As it stands, I can't help but feel like you're trying to be a barista who insists on still getting the $4 but not giving people the coffee. It seems to imply an asymmetry in how your mind sees people--that you see them being 'selfish', but not yourself trying to 'just live a better life' or however you'd put it."

"I didn't think sex was supposed to be this cold-blooded exchange!" said Simon. "And maybe it is, maybe there's no escaping it--but then it's okay for me to be sad about that, right?"

"I'm not sure exactly how to describe what mistake you're making," Noelle said, "but it has something to do with it being really horrible for some reason that something matters, and that thing clearly does matter in the real universe, so you don't want to live in the real universe anymore. And also something to do with you having trouble really taking on somebody else's perspective, maybe because that would force you to acknowledge that the thing is allowed to matter."

"Would it kill you to say that my feelings are valid?" said Simon.

"I'll say it if you pay me $50," said Noelle.

Simon shook his head. "I wonder if the reason we have a taboo against greedy women in the first place is that women like you ruined it for everyone else."

"No, see," said Noelle, "I feel like I'd want $50 in exchange for saying that, and my feelings are valid too."

Or, as Alpha Centauri put it:

"Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant."

– CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Centauri Monopoly"

This is why God gave us cats, so you could have a genuine meet-cute with a creature that will love you forever.

Cats? Those shameless, opportunist egomaniacs without a shred of loyalty?

The allergenic ones?

Well, God did not make the world to suit everyone.

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I am significantly more of a naive or fatalist romantic

My Brother in Christ (said completely without irony), that is who I am on the deepest level.

I fully expected I was going to marry my high school sweetheart. But we went to different colleges so you can guess how that turned out.

My entire relationship history is me trying my damndest to wrest a romantic happy ending from an increasingly cynical world. Each time I fail, I make some adaptation that hopefully improves my odds, and each time the reality of the situation proves I wasn't cold and calculating enough. So I become more strategically machievellian with the instrumental intent of finding someone to partner with and then GTFO of the toxic pool.

I've done everything I can in the past three years to maximize by 'social surface area' so I can have that chance encounter with the love of my life.

And unfortunately all this has done, now, is expose me to every single variant of dysfunction you can imagine. I've observed other people's relationships fail for the silliest, most avoidable of reasons, I've seen the very depths of toxic female behavior. I'm still fanning a small, candle-esque flame inside of me that believes a romantic happy ending is possible. But the stats are what the stats are, I won't look away.

If I were able to acquire the necessary power, I would radically restructure the social order enough to allow the sensitive young man to once again be competitive enough in the sexual marketplace that they CAN have their organic, fated encounter with their soulmate and expect the "live happily" to actually last "ever after."

I fully expected I was going to marry my high school sweetheart. But we went to different colleges so you can guess how that turned out.

happy_padme.jpg: She was fiercely loyal, regularly visited you, steadfastly refrained from partying or entertaining male attention, and you two eventually got married and lived happily ever after, right?

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Each time I fail, I make some adaptation that hopefully improves my odds, and each time the reality of the situation proves I wasn't cold and calculating enough

Do you think you may be overfitting here? If every time a relationship fails, you make an adaptation that would have ensured it worked, that does not necessarily mean you are becoming overall more desirable to the women that you want. Meanwhile, you are slowly giving up on something you value deeply.

I agree with the overall gist of it; Being the sensitive young man is endlessly disappointing, but that does not imply that meeting cynicism with cynicism of your own is a good solution that increases the odds of landing the relationship you want.

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I wouldn't even have minded a trophy-wife situation where I at least got decent sex out of the deal

500 k$ ÷ (15 a × 365 d/a) = 91 $/d

That's comparable to the cost of legal prostitution in Australia. But, unfortunately, prostitution remains illegal in the Land of the Free™.

Indeed, Canada went whole hog on marijuana legalization, but sex work is still quite illegal (and thus dangerous). Straight-up prostitution is probably TOO transactional for me, but I don't outright reject the comparison.

I'm almost afraid to jinx myself, because I have such a good thing going, but I'm eternally grateful my wife and I made it through so many trials and tribulations. We survived losing jobs, lockdowns, health issues, values drift, relocating. Then the usual things like having kids, buying a house, etc. I truly don't know what I'd be doing with my life without her and the life we've built together.

All that said, somehow, I'm making 50% more in take home pay than my last job, and yet with a stay at home mom and two kids, my budget is stretched thinner than it's ever been stretched before. I heard some random anecdote/joke on a woodworking channel. Dude knew some guy who had 6 kids, and he asks how he can afford so many. Guy says "Well 6 kids costs the same as 3 kids". Dude just goes "WTF?!" and guy responds "No matter how many kids you have, they cost everything". And that's about right. No matter how much money you make, there always seems to be something the kids "need", or in many cases need. Like being kept out of public schools run by fucking machines.

It’s because there’s a lot of talk about the devaluation of the dollar, and everything’s more expensive, etc., which is all true to some degree. I’ve continued noticed the cost of food prices steadily creeping up in ways that have caught me by surprise; because they haven’t plateaued yet; and likely won’t come down in the future. Input prices are becoming more expensive. What’s almost never acknowledged though is lifestyle inflation. Just consider the way people live today and what they expect from the world.

When I reflect on my life growing up, my sibling and I were spoiled pretty rotten early on by our extended family and especially grandparents. My father did quite well and made enough money for my mother to stay at home. She never had a job in her entire life. Taken care of by dad and then by husband. But my father was pretty tight with money and what he considered a “necessity.” Not really when it came to his own personal habits the way I saw it, but definitely where it concerned my sibling and I. Car needs to be fixed? Did it himself. Including changing the head gasket by himself. Home cooked meals every night. No eating out. I went to public school (hated it). We can get by without a fancy private school. Networking to move us into a place leased by a family friend. Rent was lower than the market rate. Across the board. How many people would you say on average operate with that kind of mentality today?

But my father was pretty tight with money and what he considered a “necessity.” Not really when it came to his own personal habits the way I saw it, but definitely where it concerned my sibling and I. Car needs to be fixed? Did it himself. Including changing the head gasket by himself. Home cooked meals every night. No eating out. I went to public school (hated it). We can get by without a fancy private school. Networking to move us into a place leased by a family friend. Rent was lower than the market rate. Across the board. How many people would you say on average operate with that kind of mentality today?

Lots about that life is now illegal or made impossible. Car needs to be fixed? Modern cars now transmit real-time diagnostic data wirelessly directly to the manufacturer. If you have an issue that needs to be fixed, you need to take it to an official shop because the manufacturer will not tell you what the diagnostic data says. Also, car electronics and machinery have been intentionally made difficult to repair without highly specialized knowledge.

How many fights broke out at your public school a week? My high school had about 3-5 fights a week in in the hallways and cafeteria. From my understanding, that number only goes up depending on where you live. And that was actually a pretty good school, where I was able to attend mostly AP classes and learn real things (though the graduating senior class was 2/3 the size of the freshman class due to dropouts.) A decent public school where your kids actually learn to read beyond a third grade level without being in physical danger is expensive. It costs a house that might be 2x the median home. Private school or homeschool is often cheaper these days.

It is hard to overstate the effects of enshittification on everything over the past 20 years. Would people have put up with a car that couldn't be repaired at home when you were a kid? But somehow today there are few options for cars without these electronic contraptions intentionally designed to make it hard to repair.

I fully acknowledge all of this, and I’m not suggesting that the world hasn’t become a more complex place than it was decades ago. What I’m saying is even back then, we weren’t a family that lived to the maximum of our income (and we could’ve lived quite a luxurious lifestyle in our immediate family alone). Not many people that I meet today who aren’t my age and don’t come from that kind of background assume the same mindset. Of course everyone’s case is unique, but the attendant, generational inflation in lifestyle is something that’s undeniable across the board.

I grew up in a place that was solidly middle upper class, with one side of my family who came from fairly rich and prestigious career driven background with a strong military footprint, and the other which came from grinding poverty but was extremely ambitious and self-educated, almost like something you’d see out of Good Will Hunting, and very unassuming from the eyes of other people. You’d never in a million years suspect they were that way, but they practically haunted the libraries every day of their lives. And when my father ultimately moved into the big cities, he climbed the career ladder during the dot com boom like it was a cakewalk. They just simply didn’t have money. But when our neighborhood defunded the local police stations due to budget cuts and we ultimately moved to the adjacent next city over (which still ended up being affected by things), there was a near instantaneous and overnight shift from an upscale community into one that’s made national headlines due to narcotics trafficking. I lived in a hood and on a cross street that was violently contested between two competing gangs, where there was violence almost every day and a reported murder practically every other week. My father was in a bind because he didn’t want to uproot my sibling and I from our deeply entrenched family connections and all the friends I had whilst at the same time, didn’t want us living in the kind of hood he grew up in.

I fully agree with most of what you’ve said here, but I’d implore most people who look at others who complain about their financial situation and just ask yourself, “Based on what I know about this person, how much of what they spend would I characterize for purposes someone should regard as desirable.” You’ll find for yourself they could downgrade and cut back on quite a bit.

Lots about that life is now illegal or made impossible. Car needs to be fixed? Modern cars now transmit real-time diagnostic data wirelessly directly to the manufacturer. If you have an issue that needs to be fixed, you need to take it to an official shop because the manufacturer will not tell you what the diagnostic data says. Also, car electronics and machinery have been intentionally made difficult to repair without highly specialized knowledge.

I think you either have a definition of 'modern' that's like ten years in the future, or are just wrong -- the newest car in my stable (wife's) is three years old and I can work on it just fine. In particular, engine-related jobs (eg. head gasket) are basically no different than they were in the sixties. (or the Grapes of Wrath, for that matter)

On-board diagnostic computers, while not without their foibles, actually tend to make life easier than in the past so long as you are prepared to spend fifty bucks on a scan-tool; furthermore Youtube + brand specific forums mean that the chances that someone somewhere has done the exact job you are contemplating and documented it in detail online are very near to 100%. (unless you are driving something really weird or it's been altered from the factory state previously)

On the whole, fixing your own car has never been easier -- and I've been doing that since high school in the 90s, dealing with vehicles produced ~1969-2023 and resources ranging from dusty manuals in the physical library to youtube and pirated factory literature from shady Russian sites. (most recently a full engine-out rebuild on my kid's 2016 -- precipitated by enshittification of engine design due to EPA fuel-efficiency standards, but I digress)

If you can get a scan tool it's not the same situation I'm describing. Lots of auto manufacturers now send data to their own servers instead of keep diagnostic information on the car. Then if an auto-repair shop wants to access it, they can't just scan the car, they need the auto manufacturer to provide it. EV manufacturers do not even have OBD ports. Other manufacturers like Nissan have blockers that keep you from clearing codes or running bi-directional tests. https://dobkinlaw.com/trapped-by-the-tech-why-congress-is-battling-automakers-over-your-right-to-self-repair/

I've also had a car where everything is poorly accessible, and that accessing certain parts of the engine require specialized tools or taking the whole thing apart. Increased safety measures have made crumple zones bigger and bigger, which means the engine, transmission, turbochargers, and emissions equipment need to be packed into a tinier and tinier footprint. The smaller the footprint becomes, the more things you have to remove between you and the alternator you're trying to replace. Audi designed many of its vehicles so that the entire front clip of the car must be unbolted and slid forward into a special "service position" before anything could be replaced up there.

Other manufacturers like Nissan have blockers that keep you from clearing codes or running bi-directional tests. https://dobkinlaw.com/trapped-by-the-tech-why-congress-is-battling-automakers-over-your-right-to-self-repair/

"it’s the fast-approaching reality of vehicle ownership" (from the article) -- maybe, but I can't see anybody saying that this is happening now? (A quick google on "nissan blocks clearing codes" doesn't turn anything up, for instance)

A standard OBDC tool will still do most reasonable things on most cars -- whatsmore, it's actually way easier to get a factory-equivalent bidirectional tool than it used to be due to bootleg Chinese stuff that plugs into a laptop. For GM, you've needed a Tech2 for bidirectional communication for about 30 years -- these used to cost $10k, now you can get a $100 dongle from China.

EV manufacturers do not even have OBD ports.

Not sure this is true (a light googling seems to suggest that North American manufacturers use a standard port), but if so it's another good reason not to buy an EV (or that EV, if it's limited to (say) Tesla)!

I've also had a car where everything is poorly accessible, and that accessing certain parts of the engine require specialized tools or taking the whole thing apart.

This has been a common bitching point since sub-compact Japanese cars started replacing enormous American boats -- I don't love it, but the existence of drawling hillbillies on Youtube who show you the real way to do these jobs (as opposed to what the service manual tells you) has improved the situation immensely.

I'm going to display my ignorance for all to see but it serves a point. If this is so difficult for someone with the intellectual curiosity of the average Motte-goer, imagine how much harder it is for the the average schmuck.

About a year ago my 2017 Chrysler Pacifica started overheating after about 15 minutes of driving . We took an overheating problem pretty seriously so my husband brought it into the local mechanic. He's good, the best in my small town as far as everyone is concerned. He went over it, used a diagnostic thingy, did a couple tests, said it was one thing. Ok, he replaced that one thing and my husband drove it home. It worked ok for a while.

After about a week, it started overheating again. We took it back, mechanic did another look around, said something else needed to be replaced. That probably both things needed to be replaced to start, but the second thing didn't show up on the diagnostic tool until after the first one was replaced and the error cleared. Ok, we let him replace the second thing, all we had to pay was parts, he did the labor for free since he didn't get it right the first time. A week later, it started heating up again. We took it into the official dealership and a couple days later received back a car that hasn't acted up since.

Maybe we were taken for suckers by the most trusted and competent mechanic in town. That's a possibility. But the thing that seems more likely given the close-knit nature of our community is that the problem was too opaque and difficult to diagnose for someone in the top 1% of car mechanics in my town. And if that's the case, average schmucks have very little hope. Why should I bother trying to learning how to work on my car when someone who works on cars full time couldn't figure it out?

There's some factors about additional kids that are merely additive vs. multiplicative, I've heard. So whilst two kids is approximately twice as hard as having one, a third or fourth is adding less marginal complexity.

Obviously you can hand down clothes, toys, etc. Once the older ones are old enough to be responsible, they can supervise the younger to some extent. Once you have a minivan you just need proper seating.

I've got a buddy who has two kids... and a buddy who has FIVE. I hang out with both of them at the same time, and last time all the kids were there. It was wonderful controlled chaos, 4 kids playing Mario kart whilst 2 others cheered them on and a third was playing with the family dog. They keep each other entertained and they're all mostly toilet trained and know how to eat properly. In a certain sense, I could absolutely see myself raising 7 of the buggers simultaneous (no, not really, but aspirationally sure).

And both buddies live fairly comfortable lives, its just all free time is consumed by the kids' needs.

So yeah, I expect every spare red cent will go into the family, and I'll have to give up most of my bachelor ways, but I do not fear financial apocalypse.

You are talking about it’s cheaper to have essentially a roommate - a childless relationship.

I was highlighting how it’s much more expensive today to NOT be single but have a child bearing relationship. Costs sky rocket in that situation because you need to live in areas safe for families with good schools or pay for private school. Family health care is expensive.

A childless relationship is really just being single with a roommate. And yes that’s cheaper.

But I'm acutely aware of the price of being single, if for no other reason than to help me calibrate how much I should 'compromise' to bring a new woman into my life.

I have to work to remain silent when some of my longtime married friends complain about money. Several couples I know have been married since law school (so 20 years now, sigh), they have been sharing rent/mortgage/expenses since then, they bought houses during the 2015-2020 3% interest/lower prices sweet spot, the ones working for governments got some loan forgiveness during the Biden jubilee, etc. They are $300k plus ahead of people who married later and bought houses later (to say nothing of being way ahead of chumps who were foolish enough to pay off student loans). The world's tiniest violin is still too large when they complain about money.

My ex is the one who convinced me to buy a house, which turned out to be EXCELLENT timing. Closed in November 2019, right before Covid arrived and locked us all indoors and shot housing prices through the roof. Miraculous timing. That's a silver lining in the whole situation. Without her I'd probably even now be stuck without a house! Drastically different life course.

She also left right as interest rates were at their lowest, so I refied into an even lower interest rate (with the help of a good friend).

I am exceedingly lucky in this regard. My youngest brother just bought a house with his wife (and kid!) and his payment is twice what mine is. Its a good spot, though.

There's like six times in those previous 5 years where I might have ended up having to sell the property if things had gone differently, due to sudden expenses or dips in income. The immediate aftermath of a hurricane was a rough one for me. But I pulled it out each time.

It is only recently, like the last six or so months that I've felt like I'm not constantly 1 bad month away from a serious lifestyle downgrade.

It really sucked at the time.

DINKs get no sympathy from me.

I bought my first house in July 2008, so basically the top of the market before the housing bubble burst. Sold it 5 years later for basically the same amount, which considering the overall housing appreciation trends of the past 30 years is REALLY sad.

Part of why people are single is that women expect a provider in a marriage. If they are asked to pay half the rent they will naturally leave much more. Dual income marriages are not really an option under normal human nature and so being dual income is not the solution to the problem. It's more like a huge part of the problem itself, that people think it should even be needed.

I absolutely love to take on the provider role, but there's some additional authority that I expect to come with that that a lot of women ALSO don't want to grant. I.e. I will make final decisions on any big spending, I will dictate how the house is used, I will get a final say in how she dresses and maintains herself.

I have had a life insurance policy in place for the past two years on the off-chance I met someone worth keeping, because its just the responsible thing to do while I'm healthy. I embrace the job of ensuring she is never left destitute.

In 'exchange' I abjectly refuse to have a 'man cave.' The whole house is indeed my castle, she can have a "woman cove" and do whatever she wants with it.

I see this arrangement as utterly fair and equitable for any woman willing to help raise my kids.

At the time we split, ex and I were making probably about the same amount of money. She went on to a pretty high-paying job so I know she's doing fine in the abstract, but I've managed to build things up to the point I'm certain I make more than her now. Or, more to the point, I can easily afford to keep a SAHM if she's got "realistic" expectations as to how often and where we vacation and the level of luxury we can maintain.

The real problem is that many, many women are fully inculcating the expectations for wealth that they received either from their parents/upbringing or social media.

I generally agree that the two-income expectation has created a lot of the exact problem we're seeing.

I will get a final say in how she dresses and maintains herself.

I know probably two handfuls of couples that engage in trad gender roles, where the man is the provider, both lefties and righties. I think this is probably the biggest dealbreaker I've ever heard. There is a charitable interpretation that is barely acceptable in regards to a joint physically fit lifestyle or jointly modest/religious lifestyle but I think this is going to be a huge constraint for you. People just don't like others having control over their bodies. You are better off looking for values a partner should have that would lead them to converging to your "final say" rather than explicitly trying to exercise the control.

I see this arrangement as utterly fair and equitable for any woman

I'm sure, most people think they are giving folks grand ol deals.

Does it make it any better that I'm willing to reciprocate in that regard? I don't ask for standards I can't reach, myself.

I don't know how else to describe "don't go out and get any tattoos, drastic hairstyle changes, or plastic/cosmetic surgery without my approval somewhere in the loop."

The whole problem is that objectively speaking, a huge majority of women have chosen obesity, wacky haircuts and hair colors, and tattoos and ever increasing numbers of piercings.

All are factors that make them look horrible.

And all this whilst marriage and relationship rates are in the toilet.

Why do you suppose that is?

Here's the deal. Your wife will put on weight when she's pregnant. This weight may take time to come off, especially if she gets pregnant again within a couple years. She might spend most of her child bearing years overweight. If you try to control this or punish her, you put her health and the health of your children at risk. This comes across as really severe.

If all you mean is "Don't get tatoos or medical procedures without telling me first" then that's fine. But there's a spectrum between that and "I will track what you eat, how much you exercise, and select your wardrobe" which is how it kind of came across the first comment.

I've said it before (though I can't find the link at present), if she's willing to bear and raise my children, she will receive my reverence eternally even if her looks slide.

Indeed, that's part of the point. If she is willing to accept the travails of pregnancy, I will dig in deep to my provider role, and will accept the tradeoffs to her personal appearance because the outcome we're achieving is SO mutually beneficial I can't imagine deciding against it. My consent to her gaining weight is both implicit in the act of getting pregnant and I will happily make it explicit and praise her to the heavens for the sacrifice.

I'm mostly seeking the parts of a good and compatible personality that happen to correspond with keeping oneself healthy and aesthetically pleasing... while not overindexing on that measure.

Because guess what, those are traits I'd like to pass on to and inculcate in my kids! Its all tied up in the same ultimate objective.

"I will track what you eat, how much you exercise, and select your wardrobe" which is how it kind of came across the first comment.

Yes, and I'm suggesting you should interrogate a bit why you jumped to THAT interpretation from the rip rather than asking clarifying questions. "I will get a final say in how she dresses and maintains herself," to me, means closer to "she's making decisions independently (or with my counsel), but I hold veto power when I think it necessary." Tracking how much she eats and exercises sounds like a freaking DRAG, man. Although maybe more possible with AI agents. She wants to get ice cream for dessert I will provide without blinking. She wants to eat ice cream for every meal... imma put my foot down.

I try to be as specific as I can and avoid ambiguity in my language, and don't always succeed, but man, if I wanted to say "I WILL CONTROL ALL HER FOOD INTAKE AND WILL PHYSICALLY RESTRAIN HER FROM GETTING A HAIRCUT" I would have said that.

And whilst I can SEE how you could get to that interpretation, I would suggest that isn't the most charitable or straightforward takeaway unless your priors suggest any signal of wanting some control in a relationship indicates being a micromanaging overbearing control freak.

Hopefully I've given sufficient clarity now.

A lot of the language you used implied very strict control against a woman's wishes.

"additional authority... that a lot of women ALSO don't want to grant" "I will make final decisions...I will dictate I will get a final say in how she dresses and maintains herself"

So yes, control over her physical appearance, which would require control over her food and exercise.

"The whole house is indeed my castle," good luck with that when you get small kids. It's clear that you think of yourself as a benevolent dictator, but your still describing a dictatorship.

"fair and equitable for any woman willing to help raise my kids." Language imply that this control persists after she's had kids, and that the kids are yours (singular) not yours (plural).

I'm glad to hear that your expectations are not quite that severe but the language you used did encourage a more severe interpretation.

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will accept the tradeoffs to her personal appearance

It doesn't work like that. I mean, maybe you're the level of advanced autism where it does, but for a psychologically healthy man, you'll see those changes happen so continually and slowly that it'll barely even register. By the time you really notice she'll be the mother of your children and the reverence will come naturally.

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a huge majority of women have chosen to be obese

I wouldn't really consider it 'choosing', at least in any sense narrower than that in which the victim of a mugger 'chooses' to hand over his wallet.

I use that term more deliberately in the age of GLPs. I myself am down quite a bit of weight, because I didn't like where the number on the scale was headed, and technology to address the issue was easily available.

So obvious steps were taken. I wouldn't hold anyone else to standards I myself can't adhere to.

Now that's an insult to anyone who ever got mugged.

The reason it comes across as weirdly controlling is that women in happy relationships don't suddenly dye their hair and get a new tattoo that they know their husband will hate. That's already a sign that the relationship is on the rocks, without any control rhetoric. This is true of most things (getting fat less so, especially after some children). If you say "wow, those huge pants that are trending sure are ugly!" And she goes out and buys the ugly pants you hate, that is already a sign that she doesn't respect you. That's less the case with things like getting fat and cutting her hair after bearing your children, because small children really do like pulling hair with surprising intensity, and all things cooking and exercise related can become harder.

The reason it comes across as weirdly controlling is that women in happy relationships don't suddenly dye their hair and get a new tattoo that they know their husband will hate.

Except when they decide the relationship ISN'T happy and, rather than actually discuss the matter with their spouse, they opt to listen to their local divorced friends or tiktok or a feminist podcast crew and just go full "my body my choice" and dares the husband to object.

Which, legally speaking, there's not much he can do but bear it, or divorce.

The risk exists, and men are not ignorant of this.

I will flip your point to its obvious corollary.

If the woman expects that the relationship will remain happy and trusts her husband's decisionmaking, then THE THOUGHT OF CHANGING HER APPEARANCE WITHOUT ASKING HIM SHOULDN'T CROSS HER MIND.

If the marriage is happy then why should she ever feel the need to challenge his authority on this point! It shouldn't even be an issue to start with! It can just be two parties who have mutually agreed that they are made better by the others' presence, and thus neither feels the need to disrupt things for the other party without discussing it. The woman going behind his back to change herself is a failure mode.

The only reason the man needs to exercise control in that fashion is that the woman has, for SOME reason, decided to test it! You say the control would be unnecessary in a happy marriage. I say that the acting out and drastic changes is also unnecessary in a happy marriage.

Basically, I find your logical construction of the situation incomplete.

See, this is what I mean by reciprocal. I CONSTANTLY hear that men who have expectations, standards, and want to exercise control over their local environment (i.e they one they acquired through their efforts/money and are charged with maintaining) as abusive or narcissistic.

And in some cases this may be true. But as per usual you never hear critiques of women who randomly decide to flout expectations and reject standards and act out of control when they had no actual reason to do so. If the woman finds herself in a good situation, it behooves HER to not act out in ways that demolish the status quo.

But this implies that she has to accept correction from SOMEWHERE.

So I just put the question to you: If a woman starts to act out and threatens to upend an otherwise happy, successful marriage... WHO aside from her husband, should be tasked with corralling her behavior?

Or is the thesis that nobody is authorized to correct such behavior?

I'm doubting the premise that 1) a woman in a happy relationship would disfigure herself in ways she knew would piss off her husband, or 2) if she did, whether him going on about Authority and Correctness and the he's got to corral her behavior, would do anything except make the situation worse.

Do you know many conservative women? The main danger is that they'll start wearing frumpy t-shirt dresses and let all their makeup expire, such that it become very difficult for them to dress up nicely, which is what I thought your initial comment was pointing to. If they're going full midlife crisis, I don't know what the solution is in that case, probably a change of social group. Perhaps an internet free religious retreat?

Mostly its a sign the husband forgot to block social media sites on the router, as is his patriarchal responsibility.

All that shit is a social contagion and not a sign of anything except gas lighting.

Lol. Controlling the internet settings is a more reasonable and trad position than controlling your wife's fashion choices, anyway.

You are supposed to look for women who value their husbands opinions, and they themselves don't value those things. Then give your opinion, but leave the ultimate decision authority to the individual. The problem is that what you've stated in this comment and the previous comment around "control" aren't really the same thing. This is pretty much the same thing as women who date abusive deadbeats, it's about vetting. You need to vet women for a propensity to do the above, and even if you have this meager dating pool, toss out the ones that would... have some standards.

Authentic choice is the most costly signal of all.

Authentic choice is the most costly signal of all.

Ain't that the truth.

This is more of an aside, but it’s tangentially related to signaling problems.

Women who are trad lifestyle oriented are looking for signals that predict convergences to negative outcomes for their specific locality’s. Global red flags are a thing but local, contextual red flags are more tightly watched for. When you talk about control you evoke that local contextual red flag for trad behavior. Even if you never say it out loud those sort of ideas have a way of leaking into social responses that women are far more intuitive at picking up. I’d recommend you change your mindset about around it, let go of your own desires for control and converge to value-basis belief.

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That part stood out to me as well. I couldn't imagine what it even meant. Sure, he could divorce her is she got too fat or something, I guess, but otherwise I'm simply confused.

Right but that would violate the sanctity of marriage that I am assuming he values. It's a rock and a hard place. I've observed he feels powerless about it. Leading to control issues creating a negative feedback loop. The ironic thing is that this would easily be resolved by just filtering for women that already have a similar outlook/values system. No need for the control if they already agree with and value your opinion.

I feel obligated to point out that a person can share a house with someone who is not his romantic partner.

There was a period I was renting out one room to a friend who was thankfully a good roommate.

Just understand that living with roommates is undeniably a reduction in living standards, which still appears as 'struggling' (relative to the previously-expected norms).

I enjoy having my living space to myself, I enjoy a big yard, garage, etc. So I'm just not inclined to share the space with someone I'm not banging and raising kids with. I am willing to pay for this solitude, and thus far can afford it.

I'm also the ONLY one of my local friend group in my age range who owns a house at all.

In my experience once you age out of college/grad school finding new roommates is hard. It's like dating but with a harder cutoff. After 30 they either can't pay or are intolerably insane.

I live by myself in a big two bedroom apartment and wouldn't mind a roommate but my luck with the last few has been bad and rent has gone up so much in the last 5 years (I'm grandfathered in with an old lady landlord.) that I wouldn't save any money downsizing to a smaller place (plus I'd have to spend time and money moving), so I have a spare bed and bath that collects dust.

Bingo.

I wouldn't let someone who didn't come vetted in my house with access to all my stuff.

Sure an extra grand or so/month would be nice. But I've done enough landlord tenant law (read: ONE CASE is all it took) to realize the downside risk is appreciably large.

I like how being poor is referred to as house hacking.

The Funko Pop economy is booming.

Actually, Funko Inc. is doing quite poorly. According to its annual SEC filings for years 2025 and 2022, it hasn't turned a profit since year 2021.

I guess it really has been a hard time. Now that I think about it It's been a while since I saw subscription box videos on YouTube. But looking at the data, the market has been growing...

Edit, looks like it's the general geeky and more frivolous 'loot box' side of the equation that has crashed. But people still sub for makeup and razors at a growing rate.

I feel like the loot box thing is going strong, but Funko's gone from having a first-mover advantage to like every form of consumer good now tries to bring in as much lootboxification as possible. Every time I walk through a toy store with my daughter, like half of the products are in some form of blind box packaging.

They rattled off some stats on the radio about young people's spending habits. Spending over half their food costs on eating out, etc. Don't have money to save for a mortgage but instead spend profligately in ways gen x and boomers did not.

Source

For consumer units of one person in 2023–2024:

Age (a)(Food away from home + entertainment) ÷
income before taxes (%)		Food away from home ÷
food (%)
0–∞8.639
0–2415.252
25–349.150
35–448.047
45–546.540
55–647.536
65–749.430
75–∞9.631

There is nothing more pathetic or soul crushing than cooking for one. For two is better but not by much. With childlessness and loneliness epidemic it is no wonder that people order so much food.

As a person that knows what is it to put a big Christmas dinner because this is our tradition and sit on it alone - at some point you really want to go full Kurt Kobain.

I miss cooking for one. I could make something nutritious but not amazing, like lentil and onion stew, and I would eat it for two meals, and it would be fine. Now I get to say things like "you can't have a snack because you didn't eat your mashed potatoes and fried chicken strips!"

It's hard to get much out of one snapshot like this compared to, say, comparing this against the stats from 2013-2014 and shifting the age groups by 1. 0-24 is one I'd like to see broken up further, since that includes every child but also people up to 6 years into adulthood.

It's certainly interesting that eating out as a proportion of eating in general keeps going down almost monotonically as the age group goes up. I can see the point that older people tend to spend less time socializing at bars and restaurants and more time at their homes which also tend to be more comfortable. But also, older people tend to be more wealthy, and restaurant food is much more expensive than home-cooked ones, and so it's not a priori obvious that this is the force that would have won out.

It's also almost shocking to me that a whopping 50% of 25-34 and pretty close to it of 35-44 food-eating is done away from home. That's likely around 10 meals a week, which is 2x per weekday. Lunch at work accounting for 5 of those makes sense, and then perhaps another 2-3 for an occasional dinner, but the median or mean person in these age groups hitting 5+ extra dinners/breakfasts/brunches (on top of assuming eating lunch at work all 5 days) when, among adults, these are likely the lowest-paid, least-wealthy groups (discounting the child-including 0-24 for now) is somewhat surprising to me. It indicates to me that there's a lot of fat to be cut (no pun intended) in a median/mean 25-44 year-old's food budget.

It's hard to get much out of one snapshot like this compared to, say, comparing this against the stats from 2013–2014 and shifting the age groups by 1.

For consumer units of one person in 2013–2014:

Age (a)(Food away from home + entertainment) ÷
income before taxes (%)		Food away from home ÷
food (%)
0–∞9.542
0–2416.257
25–349.751
35–448.250
45–547.842
55–648.635
65–7411.839
75–∞9.132

0–24 is one I'd like to see broken up further, since that includes every child but also people up to 6 years into adulthood.

These statistics look at consumer units, which are basically the same as households. The definition of "consumer unit" doesn't have an explicit minimum age, which is why I didn't put one here—but you probably can assume that a consumer unit is unlikely to be led by a person younger than 18.

Thanks, the shift from 2013-2014 to 2023-2024 does indicate that young adults are being more disciplined in terms of eating out compared to to 10 years ago. To be fair, the whole "Avocado toast" argument is like 10 years old as well, so the same sort of phenomenon could have been happening 10 years ago. But it certainly seems that gen Zs do have grounds to complain to millennials that their relative financial struggles aren't due to relative food irresponsibility.

And if we presume 0-24 is mostly reflective of 18-24, that's actually a really striking outlier. Perhaps the youngest adults have trouble adapting to being responsible for their own food and make large mistakes in their first 6 years which they learn from fairly quickly.

Speaking as a millennial who was out and about in the mid 2010s I ate out more then because I had a lot more free cash. I was kind of a loser and kind of broke but my base expenses were low.

Gen Zs today have a right to complain because in my experience a lot of base cost of living stuff is more expensive. I make more money than I did back then but I shop for groceries at Walmart now and mostly only eat out if the boss is paying for it because I'm somehow still broke.

Between 18-20 a large portion of my meals came from a dining plan that was a mandatory part of my mandatory dorm housing.

Between 20-23 I ate "out" but it wasn't expensive stuff. I'd pick up a slice of pizza for 2 dollars or a pastry from a coffee shop for around the same. Costco hot dogs were great.

I don't know how much college and graduate studies is impacting this.

Also, dating. When people go on dates it means they eat out usually, especially at first. After you're married and settled down maybe you make a nice dinner at home.

It's been a while, but when I was single it was far more common for me to work an extra hour or two on a hard project then pick up dinner on the way home. Also, when cooking for 1 there tends to be more wasted food unless you're very vigilant about meal prepping or freezing ingredients. So eating out is relatively less costly than the alternative.

Eating out is egregiously more expensive than cooking at home.

More comments

Doesn't look like the youths are spending so much more on eating out that it is a big factor, the way I read this.

Ah, the ol' "Avocado Toast" argument again?

I have young employees making less than $20 per hour who probably spend $5k per year on Doordash Wendys and shit.

I think there is a disconnect where some people just entering the workforce expect to treat their entire income as "disposable fun money" while still enjoying the amenities and lifestyle afforded by their parents 30 years of accumulating equity.

I got that talk by an uncle who was an engineer. When I knew him, he was a stately, well-off older gay man with significant assets and investments. But he told me that he got that way because he woke up hungover a few years into his career, and had a crisis about the fact that he hadn't saved up any kind of a buffer or nest egg. He'd just been spending his whole paycheck on partying.

Advice to drop the avocado toast was never about the avocado toast. Unfortunately those who understand that don't need the advice.

It wasn't intended as actionable advice - it was a crass comment by an Australian real estate developer with a sideline as a professional right-wing troll.

Australia, like the UK and California, is a place where the young can't afford housing because of deliberate supply restriction.

It's used as a stand-in for actionable advice, more commonly rendered as "make your coffee at home" or "skip the Starbucks." Again, it's widely mocked and used as a strawman among those who would benefit most from changing their mindsets along those lines, because it really does start to add up.

Sorry about your bad government, though, whichever of those places you're a subject of.

If they are spending over half their their total food costs, then it could well be valid. Many times per week splurging, yet somehow too poor to save money.

Now the "Doordash" argument. You can disparage it, but the math still maths.

I liked the "Sex in the City" version; it turns out Carrie Bradshaw had spent enough on shoes that if she hadn't, she would have had a down payment for her apartment. Doordash is cheaper than designer shoes, but bought more often so it's the same order of magnitude.

In all fairness who shoes based on her writing career were from semi-escorting….the milder version of gifts from guys. But of course NY TV shows always have unrealistic spending by there characters. In real life her background would be rich girl from midwest or boyfriends are paying for it. Boyfriends don’t normally give down payment money.

The underclass is gonna underclass. As if they didn't blow all their money on gambling, alcohol, and clothes back in the 1980s. The fact remains that at the mean, young people are poorer for BS reasons.

It's not the underclass using Doordash.

Using doordash is strongly anti-correlated with income, actually.

Who do you think is taking out Klarna loans to get Taco Bell delivered? Upper middle class people?

In my professional opinion as a risk manager, if I were Klarna I would not accept Doordash as a merchant. Irresponsible lending to irresponsible people is a self-punishing crime, as Angelo Mozillo and Dick Fuld learned in 2008.

The underclass is gonna underclass.

And that's why the entire planet and every major religion has imposed strict social conditions on our sovereignty everywhere people have lived. Plenty of people ruined their lives via drugs, gambling and so on, but there was enough friction and existing social structures to save the rest. If it was only that you had to go somewhere and do something, that saved a lot of lazy, scared people.

People are actively destroying those speedbumps in the name of an absurd, bankrupt idea that's basically "well, they'd do it anyway"

I have low impulse control. But I watch TV and see the gambling ads and just thank my lucky stars my addictive personality is seemingly too busy gorging on other things to care. It's obscene that someone with a problem is incapable of following major sports without immediately being told how much they could be winning or losing if they just jumped off the wagon.

Zvi Moskovitz has pointed out (in the context of online sports betting, but the principle applies more generally) that there is a specific problem in the US with the current interpretation of the First Amendment in a world where smartphones and targetted in-app advertising exist - in effect any legal activity can be aggressively marketed to vulnerable people in a highly-optimised way beamed directly to their pockets, so the option of keeping vices legal (to avoid the costs of prohibition) but on-the-downlow (so randos who don't go looking for them won't be sucked into them) is not available.

You also have to consider that boomers were insane.

I was listening to some older female comedian talk about her experiences going to a school that underwent busing during integration. And the raw facts of it were a wave of violence was imported into her otherwise peaceful school, and she and many of the other white kids spent the next few years getting the shit kicked out of them. But her parents, teachers, and most of the other adults turned a blind eye towards it for "the cause". And she ends on a positive note about becoming more ghetto herself and getting along with her abusers by her senior year. The story is supposed to be some feelgood bit of "See, we can all get along" that, in my eyes, did not remotely tell the story she was trying to tell.

Most boomers fed their kids to the jungle, outcomes be damned. A brave few protested, and they've gone down as history's villains. So now the rest of us have to pay thousands per child on private education that has no obligation to accept antisocial behavior, "desperate impact" be damned.

Boomers were the kids being bussed, (and those being bussed to) not the parents. Who was, like, 8-17 years old in the early-mid 1970s? Boomers, obviously.

Whatever your views on integration and the civil rights movement, it was clearly a product of the ‘Greatest Generation’ and to a lesser extent the older members of the ‘Silent Generation’ that came after them (I think MLK himself, who was younger than a lot of the politicians, was on the border between the two).

1968 and the sexual / cultural revolution was more organically boomer - it still had much older proponents like Hefner, but a lot of student activists and Woodstock types were the very oldest boomers born 1945-1948. The anti-Vietnam movement was more boomer. Certainly the anti-nuclear movements were boomer. You really have to go through to the WTO stuff to find the first Gen X heavy protest movements (and those still had a LOT of boomers).

Boomers were the kids being bussed, (and those being bussed to) not the parents. Who was, like, 8-17 years old in the early-mid 1970s? Boomers, obviously.

By current Z and Alpha standards, yes. By standard nomenclature, no, those were mostly X.

Boomers were born 1945-1964, Gen X from 1965-1981, millennials 1982-1997, zoomers from 1998-2009, alpha from 2010-present ish. The main bussing crises / conflicts were in the early-mid 70s so mainly affected boomers as kids. Bussing nominally existed through the early 80s but it was largely intra district and voluntary, white flight was mostly complete by then beyond a few holdout communities.

In the US context, if you were too young for the Vietnam draft (1955 birth year or later) you are a noncentral example of a Boomer. (Despite Strauss and Howe's capacious definition). The term "Generation Jones" used to be used for the later Boomer cohorts, but has fallen out of fashion.

Forced bussing applied to all age groups, so some early Xers would have been bussed in elementary school.

But I agree with the key point @2rafa is making, which is that the Boomers are not the adult generation at fault for this one. The leadership on both sides of the civil rights struggles mostly came from the Silent Generation, and it was Silent parents who either acquiesced in bussing or fought it.

I've said this many times before, but cultural generations of the 20th century make a lot more sense if you start Boomers at 1940 and GenX at 1960 -- in both cases (also to some degree with Silent and Millenials) the trailing five years seem to end up a bit lost; Boomers as usual try to be special about it with "Generation Jones", but I'm pretty sure it's a general thing.

It's most obvious if you look at musicians -- you will struggle to find Boomer rock icons not born between 1940 and 1945, and similarly central GenX grunge people are strongly (though less exclusively) born 1960-65. The argument could be made that punk rock was a GenJones phenomenon though...

So yes I think today’s generation is poorer in a lot of ways that really matter due to less social capital (but richer in other ways).

Only richer in ways that are shared by the old, namely tech. Housing, food, and culture are all much more expensive / worse than 40 years ago for sure. If you buy into simple supply and demand, it must be immigration to blame. When the population drops, housing demand falls while demand stays fixed. Therefore housing becomes cheaper. Farm land stays fixed while food demand falls. Food becomes cheaper. Culture stays very similar if the gene pool is not being radically flooded with new genotypes. The old people voted for this though so I don't blame the immigrants themselves. They need immigrants so their house appreciates, so getting it reroofed is cheap, etc. They preferred to destroy their homelands than give their children their fair share.

Housing, food, and culture are all much more expensive / worse than 40 years ago for sure.

Expensive yes, I agree, but not worse. Part of the problem is that our standards have risen and regulations have gotten more strict.

Where I live, a modern house is so much better it’s ridiculous. A 40 year old house means practically no insulation, an inefficient oil boiler instead of a heat pump, much smaller room sizes than what most people are used to, and generally awful interior design choices. But the 40 year old house would be now illegal to build, and it’s now mandatory to add a heat pump, all the latest insulation technology, environmental and safety inspections, etc. for a new build. If housing feels worse now, it might be that old run down properties are the only thing left that’s borderline accessible, but modern houses are really so much better if you can afford them.

Farm land stays fixed while food demand falls. Food becomes cheaper.

Harvesting is mostly done by immigrants of various legal statuses doing the work for much less than Americans. The effect of increasing wages for farm laborers on food prices is left as an exercise to the reader.

Food is soooo much better than 40 years ago, in general. Here is an example. Soft Batch Chips Ahoy are kind of gross, though less gross than other Chips Ahoy. In the 90s, there were a revelation. Restaurants are also drastically better than the 80s and 90s. Maybe there are some arguments that some produce could be worse, but a) don't forget the rise of bioengineered tasty brussel sprputs and b) lord knows few people were not just garbage cooks back then.

Farm land stays fixed while food demand falls. Food becomes cheaper.

IIRC we have quite a bit less farmland than a couple generations ago, but produce quite a bit more total with it because of efficiency scaling. There is a lot of no-longer-under-plow land out there, although much of it wasn't very good for farming anyway.

Food is still cheaper, although I don't think your point is completely wrong.

IMO land isn’t a limiting factor in America. Segregated by price housing is rare in America but we have a silly amount of land to build on in America. Farming in America is not limited by available land but more like fertilizer prices for the international commodity market clearing price.

Chicago might be the easiest way to visualize Americas land abundance especially since it has water. The city could easily 10x its side. The reason some neighborhoods are expensive and some are cheap basically comes down to how easy is it for gun violence to come to you.

My gut would also guess food is cheaper today than decades ago. Far too much food tech improvement.

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