Here's a contrary (and possibly even more unpopular) thought: some say spending inordinate amounts of time on child rearing is "doing it wrong". Some groups (orthodox jewish, for example) will argue that many parents helicopter too much to compensate for a lack of educational focus due to not having a well-established ethics framework to guide them.

Part of that narrative is obviously to promote certain religious frameworks, but it has a grain of truth: religious communities will generally agree among themselves on what's "right" and "wrong", and collectively impart that as part of social life, through religious stories and metaphors, etc painting the "ruleset" in broad brushstrokes, and then relying on things like natural consequences for granular learning, such that one specific individual does not need to micromanage every single aspect of their children's behaviors.

Older european descent folks might find an interesting correlation between being able to stay out as kids and family religious history. Obviously, it doesn't need to be based on religion. Japan is an interesting example where it's fairly common for both parents to work while relying on a strong collaborative social fabric nurtured from early school years.

But... bringing up special needs kids seems a bit disingenuous as a point when they're, I believe, a small minority of all children no?

In Australia, the (reported) rate of Autism in the general population is 0.7%. That's pretty huge, over 170,000 people. That's Autism alone.

My daughter for example has Type 1 Diabetes. It's much rarer than Autism. However, when you start adding all these up, it's significant.

“Trigger warning”

This is my experience from my wife, our friends, and my community & family. But it might provide some insight.

90% of women I speak to would love not to work and would like to raise kids (most men too). It’s more about the wage gap. Most of the people I speak with believe (and I agree) believe the lack of wage growth (since 1970-ish) was created by offshoring jobs and illegal immigration that drive down wages to the point both members of the household have to work. Further exasperating the issue is the prison times and the push for “independence”, which leaves many single women.

Everyone my wife and I grew up with had both (or one) parent working - none seemed happy. The happiest and smartest people I know have / are stay at home moms.

I force myself to spend time with my kids because of all the older people who say that they wish they had spent more time with their kids when they were younger. Many people I know who use work as an escape from family don't force themselves to spend time with their kids, and in 15 years I'll tell you who is happier...

Do you believe that labor is a market that does not generally behave like other markets in terms of supply and demand for price discovery? Do you believe that immigration did not increase supply by more than it increased demand? I’m trying to tease apart and understand your certainty that there is no downward pressure on wages from immigration.

You might believe that it will catch up at some point, but no body think this will take less than a few generations.

Who benefits in the meantime? The largest corporations, the ones whose size is only limited by the size of the country. So not your local restaurant.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/median-in...

While the issue is still hotly debated, the biggest causes for inequality and wage stagnation since the 1980s in order of impact is: skill-biased technological change (tech favoring skilled workers and amplifying their output, network effects, winner take all economics), globalization and offshoring, and China.

For comparison, the rise of China alone is believed to account for the loss of 20%+ of the manufacturing sector. Income taxes across the board are inequality decreasing in their effect.

I agree that more distribution is better for societal welfare, but “not taxing the rich enough” isn’t the cause of inequality

> For comparison, the rise of China alone is believed to account for the loss of 20%+ of the manufacturing sector. Income taxes across the board are inequality decreasing in their effect

This narrative comes from people who have no understanding of manufacturing and don't take the time to check their predictions. An incredibly simple test is checking if decreases in american manufacturing employment coincide with increases in chinese and other overseas production (hint: they don't) or if american production decreased at the same imports grew (they didn't).

The main factor in manufacturing has been process changes which have dramatically increased worker productivity. For example, in 1920 it took 3 man-hours to produce 1 ton of steel in the US, now in the US 1 man hour produces 300 tons. And the improved productivity was not limited to developed countries with expensive labor markets - comparable changes were seen in countries like brazil and south africa over the same period.

People imagine such technological changes to be things like robots and machinery automating low skill tasks, and it's easy enough to see that's not happening. However people rarely appreciate where the real cost is in manufacturing. Take for example a plastic extruder: it takes a whole team of skilled people to get it started up, but a single unskilled person can easily operate it while it is running. Simple changes that allow you to run that extruder for longer without stopping, such as switching shift times and online maintenance, significantly reduce labor requirements even though no tasks are being automated.

The fact is americans are producing more, but they're not being compensated more. There aren't immigrants, foreigners, or robots doing the jobs cheaper, the jobs simply aren't being done because they are unnecessary now. Really, the issue is that the costs of these goods and services which are now so much easier to produce should have fallen but didn't (despite that 1000 fold increase in steel production per unit of labor, inflation adjusted the price of steel has remained constant over the same time period).

Like I said: skill-biased tech change is the biggest factor by far, but China dominating manufacturing apart from those technological changes has had a major impact as well.

see: h1b visas and ultra pro immigration silicon valley companies

If we did the same for the entire top 1% we could give everyone around 100k.

We could do this exactly once, and it would destroy enough wealth (most of this money is in assets, whose value would be destroyed in the process) that the real value you'd get out of that number would be A LOT less.

The rich are not the source of the working man's problems no matter how many times it gets repeated. People are payed based on supply and demand. Supply and demand is a byproduct of private property. If you like owning things, you're stuck with capitalism and supply and demand.

If we take everything from everyone worth 2 million or more, and distribute it at 10% a year, that's still only 10k a year extra.

This clearly won't destroy the value of Tesla since they will continue making cars. They made good cars before Elon joined Tesla, and they will continue after Elon leaves Tesla.

Musk became CEO of Tesla in Oct 2008.

As of Sept 10, 2008, Tesla had delivered 27 cars to customers.

That's about as "technically correct and practically wrong" as I've seen.

I wouldn't trust a company cutting so many corners. Recent recall is another example.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-tesla-newera-insigh...

So, while it's technically absolutely true that "they sold cars before Elon joined", it's a literal rounding error.

Perhaps things differ outside of software circles, but at least here this isn't true. People used to have larger families on much lower incomes. It is that with do much opportunity now, the opportunity cost of having kids keeps increasing.

I don’t accept the “we” here. Who did what exactly to “destroy” it?

And thanks to supply/demand, it's now expected for both spouses to work if you want a regular lifestyle with regular jobs. So unless you are considerably richer than your neighbors, your chances are very weak.

I don’t understand what you are saying here. At the bottom end, sure it makes sense, but not when you are talking to a bunch of people in the tech industry.

If you have a household income of $200k/year you can live a “regular” $200k/year household lifestyle in a $200k/year house in a $200k/year neighborhood. That’s true whether that $200k/year comes from one earner or two. In fact, if it comes from one earner you are a little better off tax-wise (because of the social security cap.)

It’s true that you can’t live a $400k/year lifestyle if your household is only making $200k/year, but so what?

> I don’t accept the “we” here. Who did what exactly to “destroy” it?

Companies decided to outsource manufacturing jobs to third world countries and politicians accepted free trade in the name of some stupid theories about "greater wealth" creation, without pausing to think about a fairer distribution of that extra wealth. That led to stagnation of lower- and middle- middle class in the West while yielding vast gains to the rich Westerners and the newly middle-class people in developing countries.

Because of their high prices, competition naturally occurred in those international markets, which led to a downward pressure on USA product prices, and ultimately wages, and job offshoring.

Basically, the global economy is a cycle: the USA was, for the large part, first to benefit by selling "overpriced" (to other countries' standards) products, but markets have pushed those products out, before readmitting them at somewhat reduced prices.

It is to the benefit of the US production for wages and spending power to grow throughout the world, since that leads to increased exports at — now — affordable prices for the world! Heck, it's a tactic employed in both recent crises to get US products to sell (2008 and 2020, USD was at the lowest level compared to eg. EUR for a while): basically, by decreasing the international value of USD, you are increasing the spending power of other countries willing to buy US products.

The only thing uncertain is if we ever get to wage parity throughout the world (unlikely at 100%, but I think effects would be felt even at 50%), will we prosper or fall?

Wait. What? Where are you that does not have tax brackets? Is that common in the US?

In Australia you are substantially penalised for being a household that draws all your income from one person. It's not even close. And it's infuriating.

One salary $200k/yr, in pocket after tax = $135,333

One salary $100k/yr, in pocket after tax = $75,813 Multiplied by two = $151,626

That's $1,385.50 difference in available income per month.

Does anyone know what the requirements are for the non-working individual to be considered for joint filing?

Say if you're on a working visa, but your spouse is not, presumably you don't get the tax benefits?

https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/family/claiming-a-non-c...

"In general, resident aliens are taxed just like U.S. citizens. You would list a resident-alien spouse on your return and provide his or her Social Security number (SSN). If your spouse is not eligible for a Social Security number, he or she will need to apply for an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) from the IRS.

If your spouse is a nonresident alien, you can treat your spouse as a resident alien for tax purposes. If you choose this option, you can file a joint tax return with your spouse and have an increased standard deduction. You increase your standard deduction, but all your spouse's worldwide income will be taxed by the United States."

Reference on "Standard Deduction": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deduction

The married, childless middle class really does get a bit screwed when it comes to taxes.

As a general rule the Australian Government make it very difficult for families to have a stay-at-home carer. It's substantially more viable (monetarily speaking) for most families to send their kids to daycare, which is Government supported, and both work.

Instead we offer rather large tax rebates to people with children instead.

I also want to say that it's not necessarily good to have one person be the house spouse only and then come out the other end with no skills. That can be a trap and be especially bad if a divorce or other split up happens, not to mention when your a bored empty nester.

It's good to be have some skilled profession to come back to. Kids are time consuming from the start, but they start spending less and less time with you as they get older.

I don’t want to speak for them but I think part of the OP’s point is that this isn’t the takeaway we should have, but rather recognize and value the transferable skills one acquires in the role of a stay-at-home parent. It’s not unlike the trouble many military members had decades ago before there were as many resources to help employees and employers understand what skills transfer across domains

Of course it hasn't been a breeze and we've both atrophied in some personal areas of skill due to this specialization. I tend to talk to people like each future action is a step in a project to be completed, then relieve myself of the details of any task I don't play a direct role in. Sometimes useful, sometimes not. She gets a list of things done in the time it takes for me to make a plan of action but is overwhelmed more when considering the large and/or complex tasks and the time management involved, though is otherwise equally proficient. There's some synergy in there that we're still figuring out.

This puts you in an awkward position - it is really hard to get a half-time job, or at least a good half-time job - even if you can find one, you have almost certainly killed long-term career prospects because employers generally prefer full-term employees. And there is no point screwing up both of your careers by both going slightly part-time, so you easily end up in a rather awkward situation of either outsourcing a lot of parenting work that isn't ideally outsourced, or one of you giving up their career.

It is usually the person earning less who makes that sacrifice, so even a fairly small income disparity turns into a huge one.

Who says it's not a part time job for two people?

Who says our ability to cooperate in groups, the key to our success in practically every area, would skip this one?