Review of The Company Men (2010) by Christopher M — 03 May 2011

Of course it's easy to feel contempt for someone with a 100K sallary, a Porche and an expensive golf membership. But we shouldn't focus on that, rather on the fact that so many family wage jobs, both blue and white collar, are quickly disappearing !

With high and quickly rising healthcare and education prices, it costs over a million dollars to raise a kid from birth to 18 years. And while some savings can be achieved by lowering or eliminating kids allowance and expensive gifts, that's a drop in the bucket, when it compares to non-discretionary expenses and emergencies associated with raising kids.

Any reasonable person today will abstain from giving birth to children, especially to multiple children, unless they are completely financially independent (i.e. possess millions in a bank account) or hold one of the few secured family wage job left (such as possibly is that of an experienced health professional).

Many of the men, myself included, are better off not to marry at all (at least until they are in their forties) since they can't support even a childless household. And hoping to marry women (especially young one) to afford paying rent (even in the presence of love) can lead nothing but marital trouble and discontent.

As the author Willard Harley notes in his popular book "His Needs, Her Needs", one of women's essential need is not having to worry about earning on essentials (which is typically food; shelter; healthcare; utilities; basic clothes, appliances, furniture & transportation; and for most women kids (i.e. basic childcare)).

Men jobs that can solely pay for all the essentials become rarer and rarer, and when they are found they are often unsecured and/or require working insane hours, which in turn leaves other essential female needs such as communication, affection and family commitment unfulfilled, putting the men into a catch 22 situation !

With the continuation of globalization, family wage jobs in US will not reappear in the foreseeable future. While after WWII with Western Europe in ruins, Eastern Europe in isolationist dictatorship & most of Asia, Africa and Latin America in chaos, US was able to enjoy an enormous economic advantage due to the lack of global competition. But that was an anomaly, now with most of the globe embracing free market of labor and goods, US wages have nowhere to fall but down.

Conservatives, who typically are ardent supporters of family creation, ironically vehemently oppose state's financial support of families.

In the absence of family wage jobs, family creation in US will come to a halt, unless the State steps in. More importantly than providing tax incentives, State needs to provide some form of security to most families in the form of subsidized healthcare, childcare and housing; as well as labor legislations providing for either more job security and/or better & wider unemployment benefits.

This can't be done without drastic budget reforms in the form of huge cuts to Defense budget, and big cuts to Medicare (yes, Grandmas would have to be plugged off Medicare-paid ventilators in their last months of life to provide enough money to raise new generations). The revenue will also need to be raised in form of a high VAT tax on luxury goods and other non-essentials (including gambling, recreational drugs and prostitution), higher EFFECTIVE tax rates on rich and very rich individuals, as well as corporations (especially multinationals).