Misleading stats: ...“in 1960, only 20 percent of mothers worked. Today, 70 percent of American children live in households where all adults are employed.”
"All adults"? That's a nice way of obscuring the fact that we have a lot more single parent households (with 100% of the adults working) than we did in 1960.
One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not.
I'm not sure why it is so obvious. 80% of the poor don't work at all (another 10% work only part time) and they enjoy a standard of living similar to the average 1950's American. For example, as of 1950, only 75% of the US had a flush toilet. Today (and even as far back as 1980) >99% did.
Misleading stats: ...“in 1960, only 20 percent of mothers worked. Today, 70 percent of American children live in households where all adults are employed.”
"All adults"? That's a nice way of obscuring the fact that we have a lot more single parent households (with 100% of the adults working) than we did in 1960.
One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950 (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not.
I'm not sure why it is so obvious. 80% of the poor don't work at all (another 10% work only part time) and they enjoy a standard of living similar to the average 1950's American. For example, as of 1950, only 75% of the US had a flush toilet. Today (and even as far back as 1980) >99% did.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:fuZGrQqyd9QJ:w...