If people wanted to have their material goods and educate their kids at a 1950’s level , they could certainly do it on income after taxes. Smaller houses, cooking from scratch, one car (if that), no mod cons… let us rush back to the good old days. Damn, now I’ve got this urge to spend about a week canning.
Or, I could work for a week somewhere with air conditioning and bad coffee and earn more than enough to buy my canned goods for this year. Even if it wasn’t such a no-brainer financially (I’m single. I don’t aspire to run a self-sustaining homestead.), I’d take option B every time.
For the most part, YOu are not contradicting what I said, I said: "This is what everybody wants(an expensive government that provides a lot of welfare and services) "
Women working( to pay the huge current tax burden), is what most of us want. Few wives earn more than today’s family tax burden, which is why we dont have mothers at home making cookees waiting for hubby and the kids to come home . The women of the 1950’s preferered to stay home and not have to work to pay taxes, the women today, would rather work and get all the benefits of huge government spending.
The only thing I criticise in your post is that you seem to imply that a bigger house, 2 cars, and mod cons are the result of the wife working, but you quickly forget that all of the wifes income is offset by the increase in taxes from the 1950’s to now. None of the benefits you mention is paid for by the wifes income after subtracting out the difference in the family taxes from then to now.