Thread by @MatrixMysteries

A generation ago, one paycheck bought you a house, a car, and a future.

Now, two full-time jobs can barely keep you afloat.

Here’s how they used feminism to double the workforce, slash wages, and turn two incomes into a necessity🧵

In the 1960s, a factory worker, teacher, or small business owner could afford a house, raise a family, and retire comfortably—all on one income.

Today, two full-time salaries barely cover rent.

What changed?

This story isn’t about equality.
It’s about economics.

And it starts with a simple fact:

When you double the supply of labor, you don’t double wages — you divide them.

Feminism was pushed as a movement of "empowerment," but who really benefited when women flooded the workforce?

🔹 Corporations gained double the labor supply.
🔹 Wages stagnated, as the market became saturated with workers.
🔹 Taxes doubled because the government now had two incomes to tax instead of one.

Before the 1970s, businesses had to pay men enough to support a family. But when women entered the workforce in large numbers, the labor pool doubled overnight and wages flatlined.

🔹 Costs soared. Two paychecks became the new baseline — not for comfort, but for survival.

What had once been a foundation for independence turned into a treadmill — families running faster than ever, going nowhere.

In the 1970s, a home cost 2–3× the average yearly income.
By the 2000s, that number hit 7–10×.

Banks, landlords, and investors adjusted prices to match dual-income households — wiping out the middle class almost entirely.

Homeownership went from being the hallmark of middle-class success… to a debt trap.

For many, it’s now completely out of reach.

Meanwhile, rent skyrocketed, eating the very second paycheck households had fought to gain — leaving both parents working just to survive.

For families with kids, there was another cost: time.

With both parents working, children were fed into an assembly line of daycare and state-run schools — institutions built not to teach, but to mold.

The classroom was the first conveyor belt, stamping out compliant workers for the machine that would own their future before they even had one.

And here’s the bitter twist — even the “college escape plan” stopped working.

Graduates took on historic debt, only to enter a workforce saturated with labor and short on high-paying jobs.

Unemployment and underemployment rose, even for degree holders.

To keep the illusion alive, consumerism was sold as happiness:

New gadgets. Credit cards. Vacations on borrowed money.

But behind the curtain was the same reality — work more, earn less, owe forever.

So, who really won?

🔹 Corporations doubled the workforce without raising wages
🔹 Banks created a nation of lifelong debt slaves
🔹 The government doubled its tax revenue overnight

And the average person?

Overworked, underpaid, and robbed of the comfortable life their grandparents had.

Thanks for reading.

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