The Weekly Screed (#672)

Going “nuclear”
By David Benjamin

TO: Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)
FROM: Me

Dear Senators Baldwin and Johnson:

One of America’s stickiest dilemmas, lamented equally by Republicans and Democrats, is the decline of the single-breadwinner household, in which there’s always a parent at home to see the kids off to school, to greet them when they come home, to keep house and cook meals, to set the family’s disciplinary tone, to heal scrapes and bruises with a kiss, to run the shuttle to piano lessons and soccer games, to be — in essence — the glue that holds the family together and provides safe haven for the breadwinning half of this classic partnership.

The prevalence today of the two-income household is lamented in many quarters, even while it has brought a measure of gender equality to the workplace. Yes, women are freer than ever to escape the house and forge careers for themselves. Likewise, the stay-at-home dad is no longer a pathetic, effeminate oddity, mocked by neighbors and laughed out of the cigar lounge at the Elks Club.

However, on balance, the two-income trend is a clear bellwether of inequality in 21st-century America. The “norm” portrayed in “Father Knows Best” and “The Brady Bunch” is now a misty relic of the past, an unsustainable post-war anomaly wiped out by economic forces that include de-industrialization, factory automation, the global outsourcing of jobs and the information revolution.

Liberals and conservatives agree that the rise of low-paying service jobs, the two-income (sometimes three- or four-job) household and the shrinkage of the middle class are all disruptive of family life. The nuclear family, whether myth or aspiration, has become a rarity in many American communities.

I have an idea for reversing this pernicious trend with a daring act of legislation, a startling concept which — if introduced by the odd-couple Wisconsin combination of Baldwin and Johnson — could crack the partisan barriers in Congress while improving the lives of millions.

On the liberal side, my idea carves out a significant role for the government in stabilizing family life, and requires a communal attitude among all Americans, whose taxes might be instrumental its implementation.

My proposal appeals similarly to conservatives by re-asserting and anchoring — as a fundamental principle of American civilization — the dinner-table family, supported by a single breadwinner, nurtured by a full-time homemaker and rooted both financially and demographically in the broad middle class that has been the backbone of our republic in its finest hours. Moreover, my idea’s conservatism is bolstered by its linkage of entitlements to gainful employment.

The basic ingredient of my proposal is a number easily calculated: the optimum income necessary to sustain a typical American family of four.

If Congress were to pass what I call the Breadwinner Bill of 2014, the federal government would be empowered to entice the typical two-income family into becoming a one-breadwinner unit, with only the father — or Mom — shlepping off to work every day. Subsidies would replace the family’s forgone income, up to a level determined — by a number of objective economic parameters — to be unequivocally middle-class and thoroughly bourgeois.

This number would, of course, vary according to the actual number of family members and by location. A comfortable middle-class income in Kansas, after all, isn’t the same as it might be in San Francisco.

I have no idea how much the Breadwinner Bill would cost. However, if it were to include among its potential beneficiaries the vast number of single-parent households in America, it could have the effect of uplifting these struggling parents from poverty into the middle class. Many single parents have been so badly burned by careless passion that they’re prohibitively skeptical about the perils of romance. But the Breadwinner Bill is ideal encouragement for getting back into what the immortal Mindbenders called “the game of love.” Its tangible benefits would motivate embittered singles to prowl the bars and scour the personals in search of a spouse, or domestic partner — or BFF — of either sex. The rush to the altar could become a stampede.

Businesses and services associated with Cupid would boom, from flowers, wedding caterers and polka bands to eHarmony and bachelor-party strippers. Divorce lawyers would become marriage counselors. Yentas would be tycoons. The frontier tradition of the mail-order bride (or husband) might spring back to life.

Of course, the law would need an administrative agency (I recommend the Social Security Administration), cost-of-living adjustments and periodic audits — to make sure couples stay together, don’t beat the kids, don’t moonlight and don’t get too rich to qualify for subsidies. But I’m sure you guys can hash this out.

On its face, the Breadwinner Bill of 2014 looks pretty expensive. But so did Medicare, the Vietnam War and that cockamamie “carried interest” loophole in the tax code. Actually, this crazy scheme might just turn a profit. Think of the economic impact of pumping millions of dollars directly into middle-class consumer-culture families. Most of them will immediately turn around and spend the money on everything from double-wide mortgages, boat loans, smartphone minutes and patio furniture to Christmas hams, prom dresses and orthodontia! 

This could the biggest, loudest stimulus of our lifetimes. Best of all, it could very well trigger a sort of social land rush, backwards to the Fifties. Millions of Americans would suddenly have an economic reason to rejuvenate a wholesome, square, tried-and-true domestic institution — one that has been, by every measure, unfairly battered and cruelly diminished by a dark host of forces (both Democratic and Republican) beyond the nuclear family’s control.

I look forward to hearing from you, and remain — of course — willing to discuss details of this game-changing inspiration. Until I hear from you I am

Yours truly,
David Benjamin