On Mon, 14 Oct 2013 07:40:42 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote
in Re Household goods
affordability:

On Mon, 14 Oct 2013 06:23:31 -0400, "dadiOH"
wrote:



Of course, that is "at home"expenditure, not total.

When I was a kid, eating out was maybe a once or twice a year thing and
there was no such thing as "fast food". Now, restaurants of all kinds have
proliferated and people eat out frequently; they patronize fast food places
even more frequently.

A few weeks back, my wife had a late doctor's appointment so we
stopped at a restaurant on the way home. This was a local chain, the
99, similar to Applebees and the like. It was a little after 5, just
enough time for parents to leave work and grab the kids from a sitter.
I was amazed at how many families were there. Like you, eating out
was a rare treat when we were kids. It was a big deal to go shopping
with mom and have lunch at the counter in Woolworths.

I think that eating out when we were kids (in the 1950s) was a big
deal because we had a father that worked all day and a mother that was
a "housewife" all day. There wasn't enough income to splash around
eating out and dinners were part of mom's job anyway.

Then by the 1980 we saw a metamorphosis to the "two-income" family.
That brought in more income to pay for a larger and fancier house, a
larger car (usually a gas guzzling SUV), a second car to support the
second job and childcare for kids that were too young for school
(which by then was nothing more than day care paid for by the state).
The two jobs don't leave time for preparing dinners, hence the
restaurant bonanza.

In effect, most husbands and wives decided to dump family living for
conspicuous consumption and debt. The debt comes from the second job
usually not bringing in enough after-tax income to pay for the larger
house, second and larger car and all its costs, day care, eating out,
etc. It just builds up on a credit card.

It would be fun to watch if it wasn't so pitiful.
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