Issue #1 for the Democrats. According to Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, interviewed on Salon, “Today's two-income family has 75 percent more income than the one-income family had a generation ago, but by the time they make four basic payments and their taxes they have less money to spend than their one-income parents.” One consequence of which is that “Being a parent is the best predictor that a person will file for bankruptcy.”
Here is a long-term realigning issue for American politics. (One which I happen to appreciate particularly well because I'm a parent in a two-income family.) The traditional story is that people become more Republican as they get older and wealthier. But lower income taxes and better crime prevention aren't the key issues for those parents going bankrupt. Whomever can address the issue of economic security for today's twenty-, thirty-, and forty-something working families will have an important piece of the 21st-century governing coalition.
[Werblog]