Built for Two. Billed to One.
The economy didn't forget single people. It was specifically, structurally, almost lovingly designed to punish them. And nobody in government is losing any sleep over it.
Last spring I booked a solo holiday. A week somewhere warm, nothing fancy — a small hotel, flights, a hire car. The total came to just over double what my coupled friends paid per person for the same destination, the same week, essentially the same trip. They split a room. They split a car. They split a bottle of wine with dinner and still paid less per glass than I did ordering one by myself at the bar.
I did not split anything. I paid the single supplement. I paid it on the room, quietly absorbed it in the car hire, tipped generously at dinner because I felt self-conscious taking up a table for one on a Saturday night, and flew home slightly poorer and significantly more annoyed than when I left.
When did "I'd like one, please" become a premium product?
We talk about being single as a lifestyle choice, a chapter, a phase — something personal and internal. What we talk about far less is that being single is also, bluntly, an economic disadvantage engineered into almost every system we navigate. Tax law. Housing. Insurance. Travel. Healthcare. Pension structures. Grocery packaging. The entire built environment of modern life was designed around a unit of two — and if you show up as a unit of one, you pay extra for the inconvenience of existing outside the template.