While I agree with much of your thesis, it seems that you might not be considering all factors. For instance, Wal-Mart may have the largest number of employees in New Hampshire, but the fact that you can’t drive between Boston and Nashua at speeds over 15 MPH (or from Boston to Hyannis for that matter) is not attributable to Wal-Mart cashiers going to work in the morning. Here in Louisiana, where things can be just as hard-scrabble as anyplace in backwoods Maine, it’s the same story. Retail stores are continuously popping up everywhere, and though they may not be Versace, the majority of their stuff can’t be bought on $5.15 per hour. even here you don’t see the smoking old junkers I saw as a kid (and we don’t have emissions testing). Everybody has a shiny car, and the European and Japanese status marques are in abundance.I think two parent incomes are a fact of a new attitude as much or more than necessity. When we were growing up (and until my father retired about 1986) there was one TV, one “stereo” and one car. There were no computers, CD players, DVDs, no Internet provider, no cell phones, no Disneyland vacations. The median cost of a new home continues to increase as does the median square footage. Home ownership is at an all-time high (most people in my grandparent’s generation rented unless they were on a farm).
We have far greater expectations about what constitutes “necessities” today, and we work many more hours to obtain them. Those extra hours are the ones that at one time might have been DIY time, but no more.
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