Rent is indeed the real killer, it takes waaaay to much of the budget. It's the only thing that has not gotten more affordable. Maybe even worse over the year.
This is the irony. If people worked 4 hour days for the same salary, some would do two jobs to earn more, and then buy/rent bigger. This leads to an increase in rental costs a which means that working 2x 4 hour jobs is essential to get what 1 4 hour job used to get.
The same phenomena has been seen over the last 30 years. When a parent (usually the mother) stayed at home houses were affordable on a single income. After both parents started working prices shot up, now it's essential for both to work, just to pay the extra rent/mortgage. This pushes childbirth later in life, if at all, and means that children are brought up as a factory process rather than parenting.
In the UK this is explicitly encouraged by tax breaks for outsourcing childcare, taxpayer funded childcare, and penalising single working parents through the tax system (60% marginal tax on £50k household income with 1 earner, 33% on £50k household income with two earners, but no way to share tax subsidies)
isostatic|8 years ago
The same phenomena has been seen over the last 30 years. When a parent (usually the mother) stayed at home houses were affordable on a single income. After both parents started working prices shot up, now it's essential for both to work, just to pay the extra rent/mortgage. This pushes childbirth later in life, if at all, and means that children are brought up as a factory process rather than parenting.
In the UK this is explicitly encouraged by tax breaks for outsourcing childcare, taxpayer funded childcare, and penalising single working parents through the tax system (60% marginal tax on £50k household income with 1 earner, 33% on £50k household income with two earners, but no way to share tax subsidies)
cableshaft|8 years ago