Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The nuclear family isn't working

mattbell.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 53 posts

Re: The nuclear family isn't working

#31

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

notch656a wrote: post #20
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so there's a confusion in regards to terminology. My understanding is that a nuclear family and a multigenerational family aren't the same thing. From Wikipedia: "A nuclear family, elementary family or conjugal family is a family group consisting of parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single-parent family, the larger extended family, or a family…

Search the dictionary for "subset." The nuclear family is a subset of larger families; if 3 generations live together the nuclear family is still present. ------- RE: >With that approach then all nuclear families contain subset single-parent and childless families as well. Yes, now you understand. Someone saying nuclear families do well is not saying extended families do worse. Your premise is completely a straw man.…

> No one said they were better because they are a subset, they're saying the superset of the subset is not said to be worse. That is, a nuclear family is not said to be worse than an orphan child. It's entirely an argument of your own making to imply one is saying the superset is worse than the subset, when nothing of the sort was implied.

There are no supersets of a nuclear family that are worse than the nuclear family? There are possibly properties of a nuclear family that only exist when it is a singular nuclear family and those don't necessarily extend to every superset, which is why I asked my original question.

Re: The nuclear family isn't working

#32

Post by alar44 »

adamesque wrote: post #29
alar44 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just can't have any sympathy for people who move to the most expensive places in the world and complain they're expensive. Get a different job elsewhere and you'll live like a fucking king if you have FAANG chops. Plenty of excellent places to live in the US that aren't SF, NYC, or LA.

Parent says that California is their home state. Some people are okay with leaving home but many, many people like to stay close, even if that happens to be a HCOL place. I dunno, a little sympathy goes a long way.

Not if you're earning a million a year. Figure it out. You can make 250k/year almost anywhere in the US and live lavishly. If people want to trade easy living for a cool hip city, that's their choice.

I've only been using HN for like a year, but some of the users here are living in a fucking bubble.

People in the Midwest can get by on $20/hr. Make a choice. Most expensive city, or, anywhere else. /Shrug

Re: The nuclear family isn't working

#33

Post by biomcgary »

EddieDante wrote: post #30
biomcgary wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't too much of a stretch given the article. Real wages have been dropping for decades. If current wages returned to the amounts of the past, when the nuclear family was the norm, the ruling class profits would drop instead.

Likewise, if family farms, businesses, and trades were still viable corporations would have to pay more to lure people into working for them.

Absolutely! "In the 16 years from 1998 to 2014, the small business share of GDP fell from 48.0% to 43.5%." - https://sbecouncil.org/about-us/facts-and-data/

Re: The nuclear family isn't working

#34

Post by s1artibartfast »

alar44 wrote: post #17
gleenn wrote: post #15

Something which my parents have a hard time grasping: we're at one of the first times in American history where children are doing less off financially then there parents. My parents met in the 70's where my dad was making a killing as a professional. He easily purchased a large house and got married and had two kids. Even with a FAANG job, I struggle to find any reasonable place to continue my career in a place wher…

I just can't have any sympathy for people who move to the most expensive places in the world and complain they're expensive. Get a different job elsewhere and you'll live like a fucking king if you have FAANG chops. Plenty of excellent places to live in the US that aren't SF, NYC, or LA.

Having been one of those people I do have a lot of sympathy but think you're right. Life is full of trade-offs. You can spend a lot of time doing nothing because there is no perfect option that meets all of your needs.

Re: The nuclear family isn't working

#36

Post by taylodl »

alar44 wrote: post #32
adamesque wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent says that California is their home state. Some people are okay with leaving home but many, many people like to stay close, even if that happens to be a HCOL place. I dunno, a little sympathy goes a long way.

Not if you're earning a million a year. Figure it out. You can make 250k/year almost anywhere in the US and live lavishly. If people want to trade easy living for a cool hip city, that's their choice. I've only been using HN for like a year, but some of the users here are living in a fucking bubble. People in the Midwest can get by on $20/hr. Make a choice. Most expensive city, or, anywhere else. /Shrug

You can live well anywhere in the U.S. making $250K per year, you're just not going to make that kind of money in most places in the U.S., even if you're FAANG-class material. I live in the U.S. Midwest and if you think housing is cheap here, think again. Oh sure, it's cheaper than NYC, LA and SF - no doubt. But in my town alone modest apartments in meh, not great, neighborhoods are now renting at $1,800 per month. By "modest" I'm talking about a 600 sq/ft two-bedroom townhome with no basement. Housing? Well, houses in the neighborhoods where people are getting violently murdered on a regular basis are going for $150K. If you want to live in a neighborhood where you don't have to lock 'n' load every time you leave your front door then it's going to cost you $300K. Oh, you wanted good schools too? That'll be $500K. That's in the Midwest.

But you're right, if you make $250K per year you'd live great here. You're just not going to make that kind of money around here. The going rate for experienced, good developers around here is roughly $120K per year. Inexperienced and you're looking at $80K. Granted, that'll give you a better quality of life than you would have working at a FAANG and living on the coast, but you're not going to be living lavishly.

Re: The nuclear family isn't working

#37

Post by gleenn »

alar44 wrote: post #17
gleenn wrote: post #15

Something which my parents have a hard time grasping: we're at one of the first times in American history where children are doing less off financially then there parents. My parents met in the 70's where my dad was making a killing as a professional. He easily purchased a large house and got married and had two kids. Even with a FAANG job, I struggle to find any reasonable place to continue my career in a place wher…

I just can't have any sympathy for people who move to the most expensive places in the world and complain they're expensive. Get a different job elsewhere and you'll live like a fucking king if you have FAANG chops. Plenty of excellent places to live in the US that aren't SF, NYC, or LA.

I understand your sentiment, I could move with the tides, but I think my point (even if I'm somewhat stubborn) is that I don't think enough people point out how much harder it's gotten for everyone, especially for newer generations. I'm a very high earner yada-yada but I wonder how others who make more reasonable salaries are surviving at all here. And I think the kicker is just hearing older generations not really understanding how much better it was for them in the same location.

Re: The nuclear family isn't working

#38

Post by sheepybloke »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #12

The most interesting piece here for me was that parents aren't having as many kids as they want: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/11/birth-rates... I also wonder at what salary level does it make more sense for a breadwinner household over a dual income household. Childcare is expensive, and likely scales with your standard of living. I net of increased tax rates, child care costs, and time spent navigat…

This was actually something my wife and I are talking about as we think about having kids. In most of the jobs she's been working, we would be paying more than what she would be making in childcare if she wanted to continue working. At that point, it makes more sense for her to be a stay at home mom. I definitely feel lucky though that we can just live off my salary and that it's even an option for us.

Re: The nuclear family isn't working

#39

Post by AnimalMuppet »

gleenn wrote: post #37
alar44 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just can't have any sympathy for people who move to the most expensive places in the world and complain they're expensive. Get a different job elsewhere and you'll live like a fucking king if you have FAANG chops. Plenty of excellent places to live in the US that aren't SF, NYC, or LA.

I understand your sentiment, I could move with the tides, but I think my point (even if I'm somewhat stubborn) is that I don't think enough people point out how much harder it's gotten for everyone, especially for newer generations. I'm a very high earner yada-yada but I wonder how others who make more reasonable salaries are surviving at all here. And I think the kicker is just hearing older generations not really u…

But your "same location" is the location that had the single greatest inflation in housing costs in the country. You're drawing your conclusions from an outlier - the outlier, in fact.

Re: The nuclear family isn't working

#40

Post by alkonaut »

jjoonathan wrote: post #10

The nuclear family used to contribute 5/14 person-days per week to the workforce. Now it contributes 10/14 person-days, which leaves only 4 person-days a week to raise kids, which isn't enough. Birth rate plummets -- who could have seen it coming? We should use the hours-per-week overtime threshold to control the aggregate supply/demand for labor (this also will require removing exceptions, of course). Proposal: the…

You are confusing “nuclear family” and “sole breadwinner households”. Nothing about nuclear family requires a homemaker parent. It only means 2-generation household with 2 parents and 1..N kids.

And working 10 days of 14 works great and is possible to combine with a decent fertility so long as there is cheap care options as the article suggests.

Post reply on HN