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My Family’s Slave

theatlantic.com

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Re: My Family’s Slave

#541

Post by walljm »

anovikov wrote: post #383
creepydata wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>neither men nor women really have the option of just "being a housewife." We kind of both have to work....in most marriages, both people have to work. Says who? Sure if you take out a fat mortgage and car loans that require two incomes to repay then, sure, you need two incomes. But you can also just choose to live in a smaller house and drive cheaper cars instead. The issue is the lifestyle inflation that comes with…

I think you are typing this sitting at your comfortable 1% Valley workplace. Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'. It means endless misery and generational psychological poverty passed on to your children. Only reason of doing it is if your desire to exert psychological pressure on your wife is greater than even desire to consume. It simply doesn't sound healthy, and it i…

Almost anywhere outside of a major city will allow you to live on 55k a year comfortably. You would have to be diligent about budgeting, but this is doable. I lived in Saint Louis on 48k a year as a single guy, but i was also spending a lot on rent because i lived near the city center.

My brother lives in Saint Joseph, MO and is married and their combined income was close to the 50k mark. So this is doable.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#542

Post by Mz »

vacri wrote: post #472
Mz wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not readily finding citations, but I recall one of my history professors stating that the veil was heralded as a vast improvement for women in terms of freedom in some parts of the world because, historically, women in a lot of places left the house twice in their life: Once to get married, a second time to get buried. The veil allowed them to at least leave the house. I don't think you know as much about the hi…

> I don't think you know as much about the history of women as you think you do. Well, I know enough to know that 'women only left the house twice in their life' is an outlier, not a yardstick. You can just as easily point out nomadic herder groups where there is almost zero gender power imbalance, with the women and men sharing equal power, and it's just as wrong to suggest that that is somehow historically represen…

An awful lot of women have so little real choice that they are de facto forced into the role of mothering.

It boggles my mind that with all the years I have participated in good faith on this forum while largely failing to make the business connections I came here to make that men on this forum can say this sort of stuff to me with a straight face. I was one of the top students of my entire state in high school. I have six years of college. I worked for a Fortune 500 company for over 5 years. Yet I continue to be frustrated in my attempts to figure out some way to establish a successful and profitable business, but you are telling me women are free to choose something else at will in a world where men typically make more money than women and being a woman is a huge obstacle to breaking into business or otherwise having a serious career.

There is a reason an awful lot of women throw their hands up and either go along with marrying well or go into sex work. If my medical situation did not preclude sex work as a viable option for me, I would have thrown in the towel years ago and just moved to Nevada where that is legal.

The odds are very much stacked against women having career success like a man. To some degree or another, most women get a large portion of their money from a man they are either related to or sleeping with. Thousands of years of progress has not fundamentally changed that fact.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#543

Post by cmdrfred »

andrepd wrote: post #527
anovikov wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are typing this sitting at your comfortable 1% Valley workplace. Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'. It means endless misery and generational psychological poverty passed on to your children. Only reason of doing it is if your desire to exert psychological pressure on your wife is greater than even desire to consume. It simply doesn't sound healthy, and it i…

What? Are you for real? This a very clueless and entitled thing to say. I'll just leave this here: the world median income is less than $3k. Maybe reflect on this for a moment.

The average global income is half that number. 71% of the world lives on less than $10 a day.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#544

Post by lovich »

anovikov wrote: post #444
gambiting wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should stick your nose outside a bit more often? In Poland if you make ~$20k/year you are super rich, can easily afford to not just buy but build a new house. There's absolutely nothing miserable about it. Saying that "nowhere in the world" $55k provides a good life is just hilariously wrong. Even in UK, I make ~$35k before tax and I'm living a very comfortable life.

I live in Lithuania actually and spend about $140K a year. I don't scrap by, but no luxuries either, i fly coach and stay in 4* hotels. My kid goes to best private school, that's about the only luxury i can afford, and that's just because i am really determined to help her not live her life in same shit as myself.

I am curious as to what your definition of luxury or bring well off is

Re: My Family’s Slave

#545

Post by cmdrfred »

emodendroket wrote: post #322
mirimir wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thereby the term "wage slavery".

Yeah, but that one's been repeated so often people just tune it out.

Because if you think critically about that concept for a moment it falls apart. If people didn't have to work to earn wages in order to survive and simply had their needs provided by society there would be little incentive to work, thus few would work, and thus workers would have to be compelled to work by the state. Thus slavery. It solves no problem.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#546

Post by creepydata »

anovikov wrote: post #383
creepydata wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>neither men nor women really have the option of just "being a housewife." We kind of both have to work....in most marriages, both people have to work. Says who? Sure if you take out a fat mortgage and car loans that require two incomes to repay then, sure, you need two incomes. But you can also just choose to live in a smaller house and drive cheaper cars instead. The issue is the lifestyle inflation that comes with…

I think you are typing this sitting at your comfortable 1% Valley workplace. Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'. It means endless misery and generational psychological poverty passed on to your children. Only reason of doing it is if your desire to exert psychological pressure on your wife is greater than even desire to consume. It simply doesn't sound healthy, and it i…

I don't live in the valley. I live in a medium sized house on the east coast. I live in a very average neighborhood which is close 99% of what I need - work, groceries, restaurants, beach, fun. I live in the kind of neighborhood that the average high income duel income couple would scoff at... No two car garage, no granite countertops, I have a small lot, I'm close to the neighbors, I don't always have to get in my car to go places.

We have one car even though we could afford two, we both share our commute to work, I drop off my husband on my way to work and pick him up again on the way back. Most couples would buy too cars but we feel that our money is much better used on fun stuff than a second vehicle. A second vehicle is a large money sink for a small amount of convenience.

I made $30k a decade ago when I lived in the Midwest ($36,000 in today's dollars) and lived very, very comfortably on that. Making more than double that now along with two incomes allows us to have the sorts of comforts and luxuries I couldn't have at $30k (homeownership, guest rooms, expensive travel, booze/restaurant money, coffee at DDs every day) while still saving.

We are happy and we are very blessed. We could buy more but we are happy with less. Part of why we save so much is to avoid being wage slaves as I don't feel that to be an ideal lifestyle.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#548

Post by emodendroket »

cmdrfred wrote: post #545
emodendroket wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that one's been repeated so often people just tune it out.

Because if you think critically about that concept for a moment it falls apart. If people didn't have to work to earn wages in order to survive and simply had their needs provided by society there would be little incentive to work, thus few would work, and thus workers would have to be compelled to work by the state. Thus slavery. It solves no problem.

It seems strange that for the vast majority of human history most people were not wage workers and yet now we're positing that there is absolutely no other way to organize a society.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#549

Post by monocasa »

creepydata wrote: post #317
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a male, I'd personally prefer to live a life filled with traditional housewife work. Kids are fun, and I'd like raising them. I like cooking. Cleaning is pretty fun. More than that, though, employment sucks. If you keep me fed, clothed, and with an internet connection, I'd be happy as a clam, even spending eight hours a day doing nothing but housework. I sometimes wonder if there are others who feel this way, espe…

>neither men nor women really have the option of just "being a housewife." We kind of both have to work....in most marriages, both people have to work. Says who? Sure if you take out a fat mortgage and car loans that require two incomes to repay then, sure, you need two incomes. But you can also just choose to live in a smaller house and drive cheaper cars instead. The issue is the lifestyle inflation that comes with…

> Says who? Sure if you take out a fat mortgage and car loans that require two incomes to repay then, sure, you need two incomes. But you can also just choose to live in a smaller house and drive cheaper cars instead. The issue is the lifestyle inflation that comes with two incomes, it is avoidable.

I mean, my SO and I are looking at the fact that we need two incomes simply to buy any house. We recently saw a 650 sqft shack go for ~$500k, an we don't even live in California.

There simply aren't 'cheaper houses' in places where we think we could get work.

Re: My Family’s Slave

#550

Post by monocasa »

andrepd wrote: post #527
anovikov wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are typing this sitting at your comfortable 1% Valley workplace. Nowhere in the world does $55K a year before tax provide anywhere like 'good life'. It means endless misery and generational psychological poverty passed on to your children. Only reason of doing it is if your desire to exert psychological pressure on your wife is greater than even desire to consume. It simply doesn't sound healthy, and it i…

What? Are you for real? This a very clueless and entitled thing to say. I'll just leave this here: the world median income is less than $3k. Maybe reflect on this for a moment.

The world median income is very very skewed by large numbers of subsistence farmers.
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