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Comment by dkonofalski | Hacker News Reader

I once read on a crazy dude's website that corporations did exactly this to take advantage of feminism. They saw that women wanted to work so they dropped wages for men and then, on top of that, paid women less for the same jobs so that they could further undercut those looking for work. I thought that was crazy talk but maybe it's not too far off. That may not have been their motivation, but that's the situation that's happened anyways.

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Wages for men didn't drop but many things (like housing) slowly became twice as expensive. It's not some grand conspiracy; it's supply and demand.

Right. That was the point I was making. The conspiracy stuff was all nonsense, but somehow we still ended up in the same situation where no one can afford anything.

And we spend more on other things (like child care) because both adults are working.

This a great point. It's not a conspiracy. Housing prices trend to match median income in an area. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. If your income was significantly higher then current prices of houses you'd immediately buy a house, because why not, it isn't a big percent of your income and therefore isn't a huge risk either way. The moment prices reach what feels uncomfortable you'd think hard about renting vs buying. We are now in the later stage in several tech cities for tech wages.

Oh this definitely happened. Of course it did! I had an econ professor that gleefully talked about how he'd hire female architects to get lower wages / better quality at the same wage.

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