Category: Economics, Finance, and Political Economy

I don’t know how we got from husbands and wives, who for all intents and purposes, hire each other to produce the discount of the division of the labor of maintaining a household, and if possible children, who may care for us a bit in our old age, and if possible, giving our life some meaning, some purpose, other than consumption and tax paying, into “I marry someone to entertain me.” Now, I know it started in the 1970s. But what a disaster this experiment has turned out to be. The logical consequence is a return to marriage for the very careful intergenerationally wealthy, serial marriage for the rest of the top and middle, and no marriage and single motherhood for the poor. Because that’s what the data sure looks like. There really is no reason for marriage once the state has given us the means to escape having children. Once women can displace men in the workforce. And where displaced men can do next to nothing and live well. It’s a recipe for many poor households. And pervasive alienation.

I don’t know how we got from husbands and wives, who for all intents and purposes, hire each other to produce the discount of the division of the labor of maintaining a household, and if possible children, who may care for us a bit in our old age, and if possible, giving our life some meaning, some purpose, other than consumption and tax paying, into “I marry someone to entertain me.” Now, I know it started in the 1970s. But what a disaster this experiment has turned out to be. The logical consequence is a return to marriage for the very careful intergenerationally wealthy, serial marriage for the rest of the top and middle, and no marriage and single motherhood for the poor. Because that’s what the data sure looks like. There really is no reason for marriage once the state has given us the means to escape having children. Once women can displace men in the workforce. And where displaced men can do next to nothing and live well. It’s a recipe for many poor households. And pervasive alienation.