| >Well remember that prior to the 70s or so, it was normal for a single earner (the man) to be able to provide for an entire family, including the non-working woman. That is no longer the case and indeed often two incomes are often barely enough. There are several major factors here. One is more women having access to higher education, driven by increased social independence and the feminist movement in the 60s and 70s. Women want education and careers, I have two daughters so I know this. No corporation is telling them to do it. Another is competition for middle class jobs requiring an education, there are more jobs like this now in the developed world than ever before, and more educated people people seeking them out so competition is huge. This includes international competition, hundreds of millions of people in the developing world getting added to the global middle class has had a huge effect. It's meant a precipitous collapse in poverty, but devalued middle class jobs so that wages have stagnated. Another is housing competition. Everyone wants the nicest house they can get for their family, but supply isn't keeping up with demand. As a result all those people with dual household incomes are competing with each other, bidding up the prices of houses. As a result the older generations are now pretty well off overall, but most of their net worth is tied up in their house. >It doesn’t seem that far fetched to me that corporations care about more people being in the workforce and as consumers, than as family units with only one earner and spender. Whatever can be monetized will be monetized. How are they expecting to get more individual consumers if people aren't having children? That makes no sense to me. The incentive structure is all wrong, particularly for the whole swathes of industries that cater to families and children. >And if that wasn’t the case, why weren’t companies pushing for more flexible jobs (part time, etc.) that would accommodate working women and motherhood? Every company I have worked for has done. The company I'm with now offers flexible hours, subsidises child care and offers far more generous parental leave than required by law. My previous company also had a specific hiring programme to recruit and retrain women returning to work after having children. People make TV shows to make money. They'll make the show that sells, not ones that push some nebulous economic agenda that wouldn't even have any effect until a whole generation later. |
If this was a conspiracy, your point about not having consumers would make sense. But it’s not a conspiracy, it’s merely entities acting in their short term interests - which they are incentivized to do by the nature of the stock market.
Also remember that this is during the era of increasing globalization, when global corporations are in many ways more concerned with international markets than with local ones.
You also vastly underestimate how social attitudes have changed in the last 70 years, and how this is not at all just something that “naturally” happened.