fixed costs

“In fact, between these fixed costs and the added expenses of a working mother (particularly day care and a second car), the average two-income family has less discretionary income-and is less financially secure-than its single-earner counterpart thirty years ago.”

The Audacity of Hope

“A number of other ideas were forced on these inventors by larger social forces in society, in particular the need to treat workers as fixed costs once it became apparent that hire-and-fire labor policies would be strenuously resisted by employees.”

Simon & Schuster: The Machine That Changed the World