The middle class moved; the male one‑earner family ideal stayed put—and turned highly punitive to rightwing males who bought into it as a sense of their social identity. That is a piece of the “affordability” meme- and vibe-cloud, but only a piece. And it is by no means the whole or even more than half of the piece, even though that is where Matt Bruenig wants to wind up. Matt Bruenig gnaws on the “affordability” question, and i think has smart things to say, but that he has hold of only one piece of a very large elephant—an ear, perhaps:
Matt Bruenig: Why Do People Feel Like They Are Falling Behind? <https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2025/12/05/why-do-people-feel-like-they-are-falling-behind/>: ‘[No] way to salvage Green’s actual argument. It’s too much of a mess. But given that so many… talk so… specifically [about] single-earner married families in the mid-[20th]-century, there may be some value in trying to tease out an argument that these commentators perhaps feel but can’t really articulate….
A single-earner family headed by [a 25-54] man [working 50 weeks] should be able to have a standard of living that is at least equal to their 1963 predecessor. But… the median family income of these same men….
In 1963 spouse’s (and other family members’ incomes gave a 20% boost above the male level for median earnings. By 2024 those incomes gave an 85% boost. Thus—and i think this is Matt Bruenig’s main point—in 1963 median prime-age full-time male earnings bought you a participation ticket to an American Middle-Class TradLife, with a stay-at-home spouse and roughly median family income. Now it does not buy you such a participation ticket. If you are a right-wing male you thus see yourself as being forced to accept one of two forms of status dérogeance:
Deal with the fact that you cannot look the real two-career American middle-class family in the face with respect to your standard of living.
Deal with the fact that your spouse plays a key role as a secondary (or primary) breadwinner along with all the other things she brings to the marriage, and that that has powerful implications for the balance of respect and within-family authority.
And the “but we can afford more stuff!”—2.5 times as much stuff, according to standard statistical measures (and as a follower of Nordhaus I believe that standard statistical measures are a substantial understatement and that it is fact much more)—does not make up for either fork of the status derogeance, no matter which one you choose.
All this is, I think, fine and smart and right on the part of Matt Bruenig. But it is incomplete: it covers only the right-wing TradLife slice of the
many people of all political stripes talk[ing] so much about… specifically single-earner married families in the mid-[20th-]century… [who] feel but can’t really articulate… their intuitions and feelings about the state of things… [that] often wind up grasping at straws that are “directionally right” but “actually wrong”…
What is going on with all the rest, with the non-rightwing non-TradLife aspirational reciters of the mantra “housing, childcare, college, medical costs”?
And why is the requirement among the rightwing male TradLife aspirational that you accept the status dérogeance so painful? I mean: not only is she a fox, and not only does female peer pressure focus here on effective and successful household management, but she also brings in a lot of money as well. It is surprisingly close to what the 1960s would have been, but with the overwhelming majority of women bringing a dowry worth 15 years of your income to the marriage as well. What, really, is not to like?
This is a complicate knot here. Let me try to cover a piece of it on the next three Thursdays, focusing on: (1) rightwing TradLife aspirational males, (2) distribution lower-tail males, and then (3) the “housing, childcare, college, medical costs” mantra.
But let me telegraph a good deal of what my conclusion from the whole series will be by noting that I wrote about this a week and a half ago <>, concurring with Paul Krugmana and Matthew Yglesias that most of the discontent and the discourse around #affordability is—after you get away from the rightwing male TradLife-aspirational nutters—simply levels of nominal (not so much real) prices that seem out of line, and a breaking of the contract society and the government made with you when it granted you your level of nominal income, particularly in “housing, childcare, college, medical costs”, but not exclusively or even primarily there.
Nordhaus, William. 1994. “Do Real-Output and Real-Wage Measures Capture Reality? The History of Lighting Suggests Not.” Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper No. 1078. New Haven, CT: Yale University. <https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/2022-08/d1078.pdf>.
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