Hi ACF. The popular rumour these days that in the good old days, a wage could support a family, but these days it can't is untrue.
It is true in that it can't keep people in the way in which they wish to become accustomed, but if they lived as in the 1950s, with no tv, no car, no swishy clothes, riding bicycles, going barefoot [I'm talking about New Zealand], having holidays in tents, eating vegetables grown in the back garden, building and maintaining one's own, small, house, with no takeaways [other than fish and chips] and no restaurants and no electronics and no overseas trips, no lattes, booze, baccy, no computers, cellphones and no this that and the other, then one can very easily live happily and healthily on 20th percentile incomes. Actually, 10th percentile would do it.
<where 90% of the workforce had good agricultural jobs, paying a living wage that could support a family. >
Wanting material possessions and keeping up with the Joneses means a normal wage can't support a family. All a baby takes is a cardboard box [to sleep in], a few nappies [not disposable], a tit and a mother eating a bit more than normal. When it turns one, all it needs is the cardboard box to play in, a bigger cardboard box to sleep in and a balloon on its birthday.
Infants don't need the circus of junk that parents these days bury them in.
Mqurice |
