Economy is structured for extraction, not compassion. If this wasn't the case, we would prioritize people taking care of their children over GDP (just one example, lots of other examples; consider states recently allowing children to work in slaughterhouses and other dangerous workplaces [1] [2]). The purpose of the system is what it does. Line Goes Up Cult.

Vote for people who support better policy, few alternative options that can lead to some amount of success. Good policy is not hard, just takes will (confirmed by a quick review of other OECD/developed countries).

But at least we're at full/maximum employment amirite? [3]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/27/us-leg... ("A meat processer killed a 16-year-old. Yet US lawmakers want more child labor")

[2] https://www.casey.senate.gov/news/releases/as-child-labor-vi... ("As Child Labor Violations Skyrocket, Casey, Murray, DeLauro Introduce Legislation to Combat Child Labor Exploitation")

[3] https://www.federalreserve.gov/mediacenter/files/FOMCprescon...

Bonus APM Marketplace episode: https://www.marketplace.org/2023/09/01/gdp-measure-of-econom... ("When it comes to measuring economic welfare, GDP doesn’t cut it")

Wellbeing Economy Alliance (mentioned in above episode): https://weall.org/

If people can't work, they aren't earning income. If they don't have extra income, they aren't buying anything. So the state isn't getting tax income from these folks. In fact, they are probably paying them welfare. God forbid they can't make rent... It's almost impossible for children who grow up in this situation to escape it themselves.

On the subject of policy, things like the expanded child tax credit and school lunches pay the government back incredibly well, so support for stuff like that isn't just helping your neighbor, it's helping yourself, too.

Why is this downvoted?

because it's assuming that a family that can't afford child care is on welfare.

Some people become stay-at-home parents because they can't afford childcare, have to get welfare, maybe can't make rent, and maybe their children grow up in poverty.

Other people become stay-at-home parents because their partner earns a six-figure salary, they've decided to have 4-6 kids which they can afford, and with that many kids a stay-at-home parent just makes economic sense for a few years. Their household income is substantially above the national median, despite being a single-earner household. Their children do not grow up in poverty - in fact quite the opposite.

Guess which type of person the average HN reader meets more often?

> If the economy wanted to extract anything from these people, it would make sure they were working.

If people don't raise people, there soon won't be people to economy. You have to invest in people (education, welfare, etc.) before they invest into the economy. These black-and-white deductions only make sense for spherical cows in void.

Because rich idiots don't want to feed poor kids.

Did you even read the comment you are replying to?

> On the subject of policy, things like the expanded child tax credit and school lunches pay the government back incredibly well, so support for stuff like that isn't just helping your neighbor, it's helping yourself, too.

I replied to: > Why is this downvoted?

And that comment is downvoted because rich people (even on HN) don't want to support free lunches for kids.

it looks like some people have interpreted it as being written from a conservative point of view blaming the poor for their own problems, and definitely some phrasing suggests this but there is other phrasing that suggests otherwise so I would say it is probably downvoted because people have decided to take the least forgiving interpretation of the comment.

on edit: looks like I'm getting downvoted now! How exciting!!

> some people have interpreted it as being written from a conservative point of view

Well, the comment in question uses a lot of conservative tropes: a) ppl not earning = on welfare b) victim blaming c) GDP uber alles

things that are not particular conservative tropes.

> It's almost impossible for children who grow up in this situation to escape it themselves.

Understanding that people cannot escape poverty by 'themselves'

>On the subject of policy, things like the expanded child tax credit and school lunches pay the government back incredibly well, so support for stuff like that isn't just helping your neighbor, it's helping yourself, too.

seem to support paying more taxes to help less fortunate people.

These things taken together makes me think the parts that sound uncaring are maybe just poorly phrased.

> a) ppl not earning = on welfare

"probably on welfare" is what they say, which if you "can't afford child care" it might be that you need some government assistance of some sort when one of the partners drops out of the workforce to take care of the children.

This is of course different than "the benefit of the partner working in comparison to paying for child care is negligible", which would be another reason for one to drop out and take care of the children.

For some reason everybody came with the example of "the benefit of the partner working in comparison is negligible" examples in contrast to "can't afford child care", which would be understandable if they said well there's another reason than just not being able to afford why people drop - but they didn't make that comment.

So for these various reasons I think the comment was reasonable compassionate but did have a GDP viewpoint on why the system should be changed to allow people to continue working and afford childcare.

to clarify "the benefit of the partner working is negligible" this of course hits those cases in which one partner basically earns for a full time employment something close to what child care costs anyway. They CAN afford child care but child care is NOT WORTH IT.

Just had to clarify what should be a simple concept, but sometimes I worry.

on edit: this is essentially the point michealt made earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38111884 but they made it evidently as a reason why the original comment should be downvoted.

Furthermore, if we care about a growing population, we need to encourage people to have children. Seeing children as a massive burden and a trap away from your ability to work (because of childcare needs) leads to people just not having kids.

All the talk about "we need more kids" is completely moot, if you want people to have kids, give them a reason not to fear it. I am thankfully in a position where a phone call from the school means I'll work the rest of the day from home. My neighbor has limited options because she can't afford to work and childcare while her husband is at work. So her only options are: Don't work, work such that she never shares any off time with her husband, and thus is effectively living alone and basically that's it. And her job prospects aren't such that most jobs will cover daycare + more. In fact most jobs will barely pay above the cost of daycare.

The policy of forced child birth in many states also looms large over this conversation.

Exactly. Because their solution is the whip, not the carrot. They are describing a very real need, people having kids, but they are absolutely going about it in both the worst possible way AND in the most malicious way.

They are not solving the problem, they are just pushing the problem onto people who's future will be destroyed. And it is causing many secondary catastrophes in our economy. And this article points out exactly one such. Healthcare is another. And food security is a third. There are others.

> So the state isn't getting tax income from these folks.

So perhaps resting our a bulk of taxation on income tax may not be a sustainable model. Especially when the corporate and high income wealth is so tax preferred (or evading taxes).

Refactoring our tax system to a less extraction model may be the better approach. Wealth taxes, financial transaction taxes, more effective property taxes (ie, land value tax) could result in a more livable country for the vast majority of people (numbers will go down a bit for the billionaires).

I can't vote in the states that want child labor laws gutted. There are always loud voices in those states that say there's nothing wrong with it and that educating children as opposed to putting them to work is just governmental overreach.

https://allpoetry.com/The-Golf--Links

> Economy is structured for extraction, not compassion.

> Vote for people who support better policy

The problem here is that the latter is controlled by those in charge of the former because unlike those other OECD countries, bribery is pretty much legal in America.

It will take bribery to end bribery.

I mean, there is a lot being put but this isn't the path to good policy. Good policy is arrived at slowly, thoughtfully and with people who are engaging the part of their mind that handles executive function. Usually with some compromises.

"A meat processer killed a 16-year-old. Yet US lawmakers want more child labor" is very much not a headline chosen by someone who is aiming for good policy. It is a clear ploy to get an emotional response. There are two topics that are reliably used for that - the first is protecting children and the second is war and combat metaphors (after thinking that, I read 'combat' in the 2nd link with a certain ironic smile).

The world is a very harsh place, and a lot of people are going to suffer through it. Blanket banning people from working - even 16 year olds - is unlikely to get to the best place. There are a lot of young people who's best path probably was working very hard at a job to get away from their families. Issues like that should be considered at length - and calmly. Just because the idea doesn't sit well doesn't mean it is a bad one.

Amen. American business has to stripmine something, anything. Past generations put the brakes on doing it to natural resources so the tide has turned to human resources.

It's become particularly worse in the past 30 years or so as the cycle of stripmining has intensified. CEOs and execs and investors and private equity are quickly ransacking businesses and siphoning money. The idea of a sustainable business model has vanished as growth involves throwing billions of dollars into cornering and monopolizing a market so you can profit from the rent. It's even harder for new businesses to start up because costs are high enough that you NEED investment funds.

I wish I could do more than agree. I am pushing 60. The alarm was raised about wealth concentration and inequity from the time I was in high school. My generation and I didn't do enough to stop it. I'm not sure I did anything except sign the odd petition and vote. For the past thirty years wealth concentration has become the central dogma of the American economy if not the culture as a whole. Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and laissez-faire.

There are hundreds of thousands of regulations per-state; I don't think that's "laissez-faire".

That's why OP says the following:

> It's even harder for new businesses to start up because costs are high enough that you NEED investment funds.

Regulations did nothing about wealth concentration though, lobbying made sure of that

> Regulations did nothing about wealth concentration though

Wealth concentration implies that someone doing something valuable over there is making what I do less valuable. It's the wrong thing to think about, IMO.

A valid question might be: could we have higher quality lives if we made it easier for people to create competitors?

Another one might be: how do I have a much better life than a monarch of my country from only 200 years ago?

> lobbying made sure of that

Lobbying does nothing. People who write and enforce regulations are the ones doing it.

You seemed to take the wrong argument from my stance so I'll need to be clear: The rising costs of business isn't due to regulation but rather wealth concentration and depressed wages. Business costs went up with inflation, but actual wages have not kept up. Ergo, someone could start a business on an average salary in the 80s but now cannot afford to do so.

For example I as a software engineer do not have enough money to start my own business despite having worked for around a decade. This is because the salary I earn and the amount I've saved is not enough to keep me afloat and start a business.

> Another one might be: how do I have a much better life than a monarch of my country from only 200 years ago?

Most of those gains are from socialized benefits, or due to the regulations we've created due to our experiences with rampant corruption or issues with societal growth.

> Business costs went up with inflation, but actual wages have not kept up

Inflation comes from: policies making things more expensive to do; taxes making foundational things more expensive (e.g. fuel, which affects most goods); minimum wage laws, which bumps up costs of goods and services; inflating the currency, which taxes your savings; ever-more tax and trading laws, that require businesses to employ more people to keep on top of them, and pay auditors to make sure they're following them. Inflation isn't out of nowhere. Businesses try and get prices down, so they beat their competition so you choose them and not someone else. But they are fighting all those forces, and more, all the time.

Wealth isn't the same as money. Having a majority stake in a valuable company is wealth, but it doesn't affect your wages at all. The idea of wealth concentration is built on the false premise that "net worth" is in any way to do with money, instead of mostly just being silly headline fuel.

> Most of those gains are from socialized benefits

No, they're from inventions. Most things that look like societal benefits are downstream of technology and enterprise. I can take painkillers if I have a headache, wear glasses if my eyes are imperfect (or now, contacts, or laser eye surgery), have healthy teeth my whole life, not worry about Polio or the Measles, and for an extremely low sum due to continuous improvement, innovation, and competition.

Wait until you tell them that if no one has any more kids then the GDP will eventually go to zero.

I'm putting my money where my mouth is by not having any children.

Why do you think the borders are open?

Where are you talking about? In the US, borders are very much not open. Getting an non-employment based immigrant visa without the sponsorship of a family member is nearly impossible, and getting an employment-based visa is complicated enough that only large companies will even offer visa sponsorship.

Even assuming you have a good answer for that, what makes you think it matters? Birth rates are falling globally. Open borders only forestalls the inevitable.

You think undocumented immigrants aren't humans? Sorry, but I tried to abide by the HN rule to take the most charitable interpretation of your post, but I simply can't find one. You seem to completely dismiss the existence of this rapidly growing population simply because it's not one you belong to personally.

You're not trying hard enough. "Open borders" does not mean literally "people can physically cross the border." It's a statement about who is and isn't legally allowed to immigrate. Accusing me of denying the humanity of undocumented immigrants is extreme bad faith, and you should feel bad about it.

I really don’t think you’re making your argument in good faith. Is the artificial outrage really that necessary in this case?

> charitable interpretation of your post, but I simply can't find one

Most reasonable people would find one.

Doing it the right way is, sadly, comically hard.

Coming to the border, making a (legitimate|illegitimate) asylum claim, being processed, given a Notice to Appear, and being released into the interior of the United States is as easy as a $1-2,000 payment to smugglers.

From there, either working under the table or working off of a stolen identity is the norm. Thankfully, the latter is hard because the United States has a robust identity verification system with the secure, secret identifier known as the Social Security Number and thankfully all states require employment verification to prevent abuse of stolen identities and the abuse of these workers.

>and being released into the interior of the United States is as easy as a $1-2,000 payment to smugglers

People are just walking over the border nowadays, not sure if smugglers are even needed.

I don't know about "open borders" but about a million people a year come into the US; about 400k humanitarian migrants and 400k non-working immigration visas in 2022.

I don't think you can say that that's "nearly impossible", and even if it is, the numbers are still very large; by far the most in the world.

US has been the melting pot of the world for centuries, so I'm not surprised it has the most in the world.

That said, this shrinking growth is a worldwide issue. Unless America imports more Africans (again...) and other 3rd world countries to try and balance things out, it's going to be a rough gen Alpha and beyond.

In the US, borders are de jure tightly controlled but de facto open. Anyone who sneaks across the border and claims refugee status can stay indefinitely. Very few are actually deported. Many of them receive temporary work authorizations, and even those who don't are able to find casual jobs for cash.

While the tone of this statement may be a faux-news talking point, it is correct to say that the US is importing people to maintain stable population growth because it can't generate a domestic quality of life in which people see a future for their children.

This is just, in an economic sense, another application of comparative advantage. If you can get paid more than your childcare costs, it's an economic loss not to do exactly that. You get what you measure.

How so?

Positive economic and negative economic externalities are too complex to factor in, at least of what I've seen.

So the net balance seems ambiguous.

We're agreeing. The issue is that what I've said is true _as defined_ (the value of work is what you can get paid for it; if hiring someone to do something costs X, and you can earn Y>X doing something else, then it's a deadweight loss of Y-X in economic terms to do X yourself instead), and you're pointing out that the definition of the metric has holes (which is true for all metrics). The consequence of management-to-the-metric follows.

Well it makes sense since you’re going from a 1:1 ratio to a 1:5 or 1:10.

Also we lose the value difference if the woman had a higher-paying job than the person working at the day care.

A metric isn't a value judgement and it's almost certainly true that childcare has enabled a vast amount of mostly women to enter the workforce and do highly productive work.

You can have different opinions on whether that's good or bad, and I personally think you can make a strong case for it being a good thing, but there's nothing wrong with the metric itself.

When the median household income is 75,000 and the average household size is 2.5, yes, a metric like this can be a value judgement of policies.

I have another kid on the way and daycare for both kids (when the new one is about 8-9 months old) is going to be around $3,700/month, or $44,400 per year. For my family we will spend more than half the median household income just on child care. The story is almost the same with nearly every parent I talk to.

So an average Kindergarden group of 10 would net the operation 220k annually? That must be some high cost of living area, where child care workers earn decidedly above the median income. Or someone is extracting massive profits.

At that age span, you're looking at 3-5 children per adult.

When we did the math on 2 kids in daycare, we hired a nanny. It was cheaper, more convenient and better for the kids. Plus, the nanny has become a lifelong family friend.

We did the same. And then did the math again and moved to Scandinavia...

A metric is literally a value judgement. Especially when it's talking about economic value. Now, there are other kinds of value, but those aren't so easily amenable to metrics.

Capitalism's goal is to enslave everybody into a wage. Can't afford having parents quitting the workforce to take care of their children, lest they also get time to think.

You could make an argument that something like that is an externality. But capitalism’s goal is closer to incentivizing productivity by marrying needs and opportunity for mutual gain.

That's the goal of governments who want an easier to control population.

Hat tipping Keynes I like to distinguish rentier capitalists from all the other types. In short capitalists that collect rents on stuff. Different than say an industrial capitalist the in the business of manufacturing and selling stuff.

The latter sort of understands that he needs workers to staff his factories. And consumers to buy. So he understands that children are tomorrows workers and consumers. The rentier capitalist is a financial parasite. He can't understand doesn't want to understand. Anything that reduces his rents like taxes to pay for school lunches pissed him off.

In the last 50 years rentier capitalists have managed to completely suppress the power of industrial capitalists and labor. And have managed to convince most people to think like them. So people think a parent spending time taking care of a child instead of working is 'a loss to the economy'

Ahh yes, versus the magical system where your kids get taken care of generous people for free.

What a low effort comment.

> Ahh yes, versus the magical system where your kids get taken care of generous people for free.

What an odd way to say 'family'.

Ahhh yes, the magical system where you family doesn’t have to work for a living.

Genius!

This is a made up problem.

People needing to work to support themselves is a "made up problem"?

This reminds me of those late night infomercials where someone is struggling to do something absolutely mundane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM4zMofsI7w

Is it possible someone somewhere is unable to successfully place socks on their feet? sure. Is it possible most people struggle with that? nope.

Mine is a comment that requires context, yours is the low-effort.

For example, prior to you being born, a family could survive on a single wage (typically the husband's) while the other parent raised the children. But societies were convinced that for our freedom, both parents should work, or be able to. And now you can barely even afford rent with two wages in many places, and often not afford both the rent and the family.

You can certainly survive off a single wage (I know many who do) if you’re willing to maintain a lifestyle similar to when single wage earner households were common - 1960’s.

Of course you’d have to live with all the healthcare, technology and housing (small!) like it was in the 60’s. But it’s absolutely doable.

Shocking how many people don’t make that trade off!

People complaining basically want their cake and eat it too. They want the lifestyle off a two income household but also the free time to raise kids without help. Life doesn’t work that way.

It’s formal vs informal. The “economy” is only the formal economy.

When people stay home the economy loses 1+1/N incomes where N is the number of children a day care worker can take care of.

There is a distinction there, but the real economy is the informal economy. The 'formal' economy is just an approximation, constrained by what can be easily measured.

What? Deranged?

A statistic can’t be deranged, only what actions one takes because of it.

If a high earning person could take in more than the cost of child care, but chooses to stay home, it does impact GDP.

It still might be a fine decision.

It’s not just a values question, but a valid criticism of GDP as a measure. If you and I stay home and take care of our own kids, then that counts $0 to GDP. If we take care of each other’s kids and pay each other an amount that balances to $0, that contributes significantly to GDP.

If you think about what you wrote it doesn't actually add up.

If you're both staying at home and paying each other X then where did you get the money from to generate X.

You would've had to do some economic producing activity.

I hand you $100 and you hand me $100. We can do that until the paper currency wears out and generate huge amounts of GDP!

If you do this legitimately, you both slowly lose money to taxation.

Their partners’ respective salaries

The BEA has done some work to capture non-market activity:

https://www.bea.gov/data/special-topics/household-production

For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to have gotten much attention.

Thanks for the clarification. I guess everybody who stays home to look after a child should have their GDP contribution rated the same as a professional provider.

I'm surprised this wasn't taken into account long ago? Are homemakers really excluded from any GDP calculation?

>Are homemakers really excluded from any GDP calculation?

Yes.

Statistics where ranges have been removed could be referred to as "de-ranged."

It's a one-sided statistic, and it's completely pointless. What is it supposed to prove? That raising children costs money? Well, no shit. Let's just cut this useless expense loose and die off as a species, then. No species, no GDP, no problem.

The people who want to take care of their children already feel strongly about it. Mentioning the impact on GDP influences the people who think it doesn't involve them and/or assume that touchy-feely policies mean higher taxes.

The way the economy measures value is limited, manipulative, idiotic, and destructive.

I’d argue that the teaching of modern economics spreads a mindset that is a major contributing force to indescribable amount of unnecessary suffering and the destruction of our biosphere.

One of the healthier economic models is the Doughnut economics model.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doughnut_(economic_model)

Focusing on the multiple goals and limits seems like a much better way to measure the health of economies (or large systems). Is there any country that uses this model, or a similar one, as their main basis for measurement?

No country uses a single measurement.

It’s a number. It’s not good or bad it just is.

It’s like seeing “$3B was saved by eliminating duplicate work” and saying “what a deranged statistic when it improves when people lose jobs”

Why choose to explicitly mention that number? It becomes a focus point, which turns it into a metric to optimize.

It’s a new article that is desperate for clicks.

<Insert large number> grabs people’s attention.

Because some people who don't care about raising children do care about the economy.

I was answering to the post that it's just a number, which I don't really agree with. This topic seems to be quite emotionally loaded.

> Because some people who don't care about raising children do care about the economy.

This seems even worse for me than "it's just a number", since in the long-term is a contradiction that leads to collapse. The economy is a sum of human activity, and the future economy will be done by today's children. If you don't raise them well you're simply extracting value created by others that wasn't quantified just so you can pad your metrics.

Not caring about children when you're thinking about the economy is like not training any new employees, but only extracting maximum value from your existing workforce, but done on a societal level.

Tell me with a straight face that politicians, the media and people in general don't obsess over GDP growth.

It’s bad if it’s misleading.

it makes sense. One adult can monitor many children. With childcare a single adult can watch 10+ kids. Makes more sense than having each adult watch only their own 1 - 2 children.

I don't think there have been many societies in human history that don't have some kind of communal child care for that exact reason. It is actually pretty deranged that we have each parent raise their own kids in relative isolation (until school).

It’s not deranged for kids to be raised by their parents.

The deranged part is the parent being the only person involved in raising their child / raising the child being the parent's only activity. This level of separation from extended family and community is a contingent feature a certain time, place, and social bubble, not something natural or inherent to the human condition.

The commercial daycare center is hardly the ideal model, but it is at least something besides total individualism.

> This level of separation from extended family and community is a contingent feature a certain time, place, and social bubble, not something natural or inherent to the human condition.

in my experience, this is a feature of city dwelling. when people live in villages there’s a tendency to have the same neighbors for a lifetime, and so to form more lasting bonds, which allows the full expression of our humanity. i have lived in some french villages and the community i experienced there isn’t different from how anthropologists described community among primitive cultures.

It isn’t just city dwelling but the reality of trying to escape poverty.

My parents did the “right thing” and delayed having children until they could feed us. I delayed getting married until I felt stable. In previous generations, I’d imagine my parents would look after my children while I was out tending goats or tilling a farm but it would be incredibly unfair for me to expect my aging parents to look after a child.

I can’t make the math work no matter how I slice it. I had a very fortunate childhood considering the childhood my parents had. If I have children, I want to give them at least the same level of comfort and security which right now I can’t. I think people who are having multiple children without thinking it through are being extremely selfish.

My wife stays at home and this is simply not reality. Every day she and the kids are over at friends houses, playdates, hiking, etc. She basically hangs out with her friends while all the kids play.

The great part about this arrangement is that the adults get to plan all kinds of community events for families and kids. Parties, get togethers, camping trips, etc. Our lives are richer because of it and more communal because we're not all sitting in cubicles each day.

It's amazing and way less isolating than my own childhood of daycare. My kids get solid friends who they see almost everyday. We know the families well so they see their friends in more than one context.

Being a stay at home parent doesn't literally mean staying at home.

And to address the last point, my in laws live two blocks away, so my kids get a lot of time with them. And my parents live a short drive so we see them multiple times a week.

> The great part about this arrangement is that the adults get to plan all kinds of community events for families and kids. Parties, get togethers, camping trips, etc. Our lives are richer because of it and more communal because we're not all sitting in cubicles each day.

And it's an actually community. Not some "I care for your kids because I get paid for it".

I know you already know this.. but you intentionally misquoted GP. "In relative isolation" was very clearly an important part of their statement.

Kids in preschool or school are still being raised by their parents.

Except those parents that mainly teach from religious texts

I don’t think the OP is arguing against communal childcare rather the paradox of the way we choose to measure economic activity results in the same work outside of the home having more value than the work inside the home. Even if we were to assume efficiencies that would still imply that the work inside the home should have a value higher than zero.

> measure

It’s not about how we measure it, it’s about actual productivity. Having some sort of communal childcare which allows the majority of parents to work full time will always be more productive.

> work inside the home should have a value higher than zero.

And it does. You don’t spend money on childcare and other services and can spend it on something else (assuming you have it).

> It’s not about how we measure it, it’s about actual productivity. Having some sort of communal childcare which allows the majority of parents to work full time will always be more productive.

What's measured is the amount paid. Hiring exclusively 1-on-1 tutors is "more productive" than communal childcare. Paying more money for the same services is also "more productive."

> more productive" than communal childcare. Paying more money for the same services is also "more productive."

That’s not obvious, those tutors might be doing something else which is more productive instead.

Just spending money does not do much on it’s own. e.g. paying $100 for a good/service when you can get an equivalent for $50 doesn’t “increase” productivity it just means your money is worth less.

If children educated by private tutors are not significantly more productive than those from a normal school longterm that would only lead to lower productivity/higher inflation.

> And it does. You don’t spend money on childcare and other services and can spend it on something else (assuming you have it).

But you lose, at least in the UK, from tax. If a married couple works, they each get tax allowances; first 10k is tax free, each, and then the next 30k is taxed at 20%, and the rest (up to 100k) is taxed at 40%.

If one person works and the other doesn't, they exist in a world where most couples work and bid up house prices, and they're taxed more for it. It's massively disincentivised to have a parent who raises your own kids and does other community activities (e.g. be on PTAs/school boards), unless you earn so much you can push through it.

Where I live (~DC), daycare costs 2.2k per month. With two kids and a 35% marginal tax rate (including state taxes and Medicaid/etc) you would need to make $81k per year just to break even.

Add up extra food costs (vs cooking at home) and extra cleaning costs ($140 every two weeks so about $4k and the value prop of having one SAH parent doesn't look as bad (which is what several college-educated friends have done, sp the ones with 2+ kids)

Agreed, and if things are so busy people need to buy in food every night then their kids are probably seeing the worst of them, which to me is the main issue.

I suppose what I meant more would distinguish between valid services that you buy because it makes your life easier, e.g. cleaning help, and government-mandated disincentives to stay at home, e.g. tax brackets.

And what is the purpose of that productivity? Except for generating tributes to the rulers? Why should people sacrifice the most important thing in life for productivity?

>Why should people sacrifice the most important thing in life for productivity?

because it's becoming less and less viable to not give it up. That's why many simply don't have kids, or are having the later.

Then again, considering that many people already are just doing bullshit jobs, i.e. being employed for the sake of being employed, does it really matter if they are more "productive"? (as they are not really productive anyway)

Even on moral grounds I don't get the argument other than simplistic outrage for the sake of outrage.

It's more efficient but also better for everyone if kids to grow up socializing and interacting with others in a communal setting than alone at home with one single adult.

That’s because you’re still engaging with an argument about collective vs individual childcare not the one being advanced by the OP which is about the failure to measure some economically advantageous work just because of the circumstances in which it is performed. As I said in my post that you replied to even if collective work is more efficient that doesn’t mean the value of the same work in the home is zero which is what it’s currently measured as.

My mother did not work outside the home for the roughly ten-year span between my birth and my brother reaching school age. The communal setting, school apart, was called the neighborhood. This was the boom, so a given block could have quite a few kids on it.

Same here. Sometimes my mother would look after me and the neighbor kids, sometimes my neighbors mom would look after me and her kids and so on, for example.

It takes a village. But the village has lately eroded to "every family for themselves"

I guess I'm happy to be still living in a rural area, this is not the case here.

Yep. Also, the parent staying at home is in a very vulnerable position - completely dependent and having really hard time to become dependent when needed. And when society demands one parent at home, independence can become effectively impossible.

The divorce laws take care of that imbalance. From child support, alimony and a presumed equal division of the marital assets the risk is quite low for the stay at home parent. Since no fault divorce was brought in they don't even have to behave like they are married, go out and have dozens of affairs, lie, neglect the kids and the home and you still get half plus most of you living expenses covered until the kids are supporting themselves. The law makes no distinction between a housewife and a unemployed woman.

> The divorce laws take care of that imbalance.

They do not. 90% of US households have a total household net worth of less than $300,000. Even if you got all of that, it's not enough to make up for the lack of marketable skills. Similarly, a judge can award all the alimony and childcare in the world, but that does not help you if it does not get paid.

Then you'd be as poor as when you were married. At a certain point we need some level of accountability for the partner staying home, if you had a kid with someone who doesn't earn much money and you don't work yourself why would you expect to be middle class once you get divorced? You'll get your money, many men have most of their paycheck forcibly taken from them each week. You can't even get a driver's license in many states if you are behind on child support.

These insane expectations are part of the reason why marriage is a bad deal for the provider.

Well, it is reasonable for that person to want to be able to influence own outcome by having ability to actually earn. Instead of having to sue ex for money.

Also, alimony and child support are two different things.

What you call accountability for partner at home is not accountability. It is just complete helplessness and dependence.

Then get a job, but the idea that they are helpless is insane. They have the full force of the law behind them.

Go to family court as a woman, make up a sob story about abuse and provide no evidence and you'll have the power to prevent a father from seeing his children. That father is experiencing helplessness. Having to get a job isn't, that's accountability.

Employers do not want someone who was not employed for 10 years.

So, we are back to "actually it is loosing deal for one partner to stay at home. It puts you at massive disadvantage and makes you dependent. Hence, it is simply not good for you".

> Go to family court as a woman, make up a sob story about abuse and provide no evidence and you'll have the power to prevent a father from seeing his children. That father is experiencing helplessness.

In these situations, when father contests, courts tend to side with father. It takes a lot for father to not be allowed around the children in reality.

The mother would be not as poor as before marriage but way poorer, because now she's older, she's been out of the workforce for a long time, and still has to take care of the kid(s) after the divorce. The father, by contrast, has accumulated professional connections and work experience. Single mothers end up in poverty way too often, and alimony is an attempt to rectify this.

As with any legal process you can find examples where justice has failed, but overall a world with alimony and child support is way better than the world we had before, where women were condemned to destitution after divorce.

The previous comment was about divorcing someone without money. In your example my argument holds as she would receive not only half of the current assets but a claim on his future earnings, no matter how she behaves in the marriage.

Great deal for women. Horrible deal for men.

I get what you're saying but it's plainly false.

Just look at the statistics: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/population-profiles/marital-...

In broad strokes: married people tend to be way wealthier than never married people, and divorced women do much worse than divorced men do. (Women are much poorer across the board also, of course). If your claim was true then the poverty gap between divorced men and divorced women would be much smaller, and we see that's not the case. If alimony/child support is such a raw deal for men it should be visible in the statistics.

Note the poverty rate for men who never got married vs men who got divorced. Marriage is not the raw deal for men you think it is.

Correlation is not causation. Women try to marry men with resources. Men without resources or ambition are ignored by women.

Per all stats, men do better financially after divorce. They feel more lonely then women however. On average, women do worst after divorce financially and are at bigger threat of poverty.

And still, in USA, women do file for divorce more, because simply that financial control is not enough to keep someone in. Funny enough, it tends to be be organizations dominated by men who push against no fault divorces and toward even bigger financial dependence of their female partners.

Per all stats men do financially better in virtually all situations. They also work longer hours at more difficult jobs and take less sick and vacation days.

That's a great theory, but it often doesn't work out that way. She's likely to settle for less half just to get out of the marriage. She likely doesn't have a good way to get her own future earnings.

Even if it goes to plan with her getting alimony and partial retirement, she's still dependent on her ex-husband which is a frustrating and often vulnerable position. It means he is still in her life. He can harass and badger her about how she spends money. He may pay, but he might often be late, or sporadic, which causes her bills to be overdue and have late fees. Maybe he starts hiding money, he could even tank his income for a year or two to have the courts change the agreement. None of this stuff is transparent and can be very adversarial.

The average age a woman gets married is 31. This concept of the virgin bride who can't care for herself is long dead. She provided for herself for a decade prior to marriage. She can handle a few late payments.

You are a victim of a common cognitive bias: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect

I had no thoughts of a young bride. I'm thinking of a woman that'll get married, then raise some kids for a decade and end up in her mid 40s divorced and have been out of the workforce for a decade. I think you're projecting your thoughts and biases into my statements.

> but overall a world with alimony and child support is way better than the world we had before, where women were condemned to destitution after divorce.

Maybe we could start with making the minimum wage a living wage again so this doesn't happen.

And I'm very ambivalent about this. The problem with "justice" here is that the govt. has no incentive to cut off alimony because it means the govt. foots the bill. That's why even some outrageous outliers like someone's sperm being stolen from a bank has resulted in that man paying alimony. Judges exist to cover edge cases like that and its just not being done.

They do not and can not. Because even with large alimony, one partner is completely dependent on their ex. There is still huge imbalance.

Also, currently alimony even as those are rare and requires years of being without income. At that point, you can defend yourself by divorcing partner that does nothing long before alimony kicks in.

Being at stay-at-home parent does not mean your kids won't socialize with other kids.

Also one could argue insofar this is actually "better for everyone". It will result in kids that are "more socialized" in some way maybe, but not necessarily socialized better. And it also doesn't take into account other developmental aspects.

If I look at young adults here (Europe) that have been more or less raised in daycare vs young adults that have been raised at home, I certainly don't see an advantage for the former (which might have many confounding factors of course).

If I charge my neighbour $100 to chop some wood and he charges me $100 to paint a fence then the economy booms.

If we barter it the economy doesn’t notice.

If we do the wood/fence ourselves the economy diesnt notice

If we charge $1000 each the economy booms more than charging $100 each.

> If we barter it the economy doesn’t notice.

It does. Of course it might not be properly reflected in the statistics but it still creates additional value in the economy.

The best way to generate value will be if you both get done for illegal trading of services without training licenses and generate a few hundred thousand to a million in GDP via the legal fees, plus remediation though approved service providers.

Now you're thinking with Line Go Up!

Not really IMHO. It only would if those goods get traded later on. One could probably even argue that it destroys value, as the labor is not bought on the market.

Right. People are mistaking the map for the territory. Barter absolutely is part of the economy, and benefits the traders to the same degree a monetary transaction would; it just isn't included in most economic measures, because they're imperfect.

That’s right. It’s because of taxes.

In the first example there are various taxes that you will pay. Income tax. VAT or sales tax. Maybe license fees.

These taxes go to the government, who in turn uses that money in some way.

In the latter two examples tax revenue does not go up.

Barter income is taxed at fair market value. Some people cheat on their taxes by failing to report barter income, but let's not conflate tax fraud with GDP issues. You can't legally avoid income taxes by asking your employer to pay you in firewood or diamonds or whatever instead of fiat currency.

https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420

You are technically right.

I don’t have the stats handy, but I am fairly confident that a large portion of the barter income is not reported.

Someone remind me, what's that joke about the economist who pays his friend to consume excrement and claims the GDP has increased?

Two economists are walking in a forest and they come across a pile of shit.

The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.

They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats a pile of shit.

Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, "You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can't help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing."

"That's not true", responded the second economist. "We increased the GDP by $200!"

GDP statistics include barter transactions at fair market value. However, sometimes small barter transactions aren't reported in a way that can be counted in official economic statistics.

childcare =/= raising kids. raising kids is done over the next several years of their lives, and schools, for example, play a big role here. childcare has traditionally been the job their parents. even in societies with communal activities: labor, rites, ceremonies, etc the onus still falls on the parents. see sparta for example. only when kids have attained a certain age can the rest of the community help in their upbringing.

> I don't think there have been many societies in human history that don't have some kind of communal child care for that exact reason

Yea its called multigenerational housing.

Which boomers hate with passion: they quitted their parents home as fast as possible, and kicked their children as soon as it doesn't yield tax benefits anymore. All while using real estate as an investment vehicle which led to unaffordable prices of today.

We are boomers at 49 and 47. Our responsibility for our children ended at 18. What we do/did (21 and 26 now) for them after that is out of the kindness of our hearts. It’s definitely not our responsibility to take care of of their kids.

This is our life now…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966

As far as housing affordability, there are plenty of affordable homes in the US. You just have to be willing to live there.

> We are boomers at 49 and 47

You're not. You're full on Gen X. Your parenty (probably) were boomers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_boomers

> What we do/did (21 and 26 now) for them after that is out of the kindness of our hearts.

yeah, other countries just call that "taking care of family" instead of treating it like a free handout. Beware that the US "kick the kids out the nest" mentality isn't a shared one worldwide, and even in the US is a fairly recent phenomenon.

>there are plenty of affordable homes in the US. You just have to be willing to live there.

maybe now, very recently with workplaces in tech specifically opening up to remote work. That wasn't the case when I graduated college as recent as 5 years ago. You don't get much negotiation for remote work and move wherever the job you choose takes you.

What you describe as a digital nomad lifestyle for you and your spouse speaks to your experience and value. Young 18-23 year olds don't get that flexibility in their new careers, nor have the savings lying around to start cosidering that.

Multigenerational housing sounds nice in theory. The reality is often rather ugly with constant conflicts over respect, authority, and household decisions. And as the grandparents transition from being caregivers to needing constant care themselves, it's often the wife who gets stuck with that work to the detriment of her sanity and career prospects.

Some families can make multigenerational housing work well, but it's not a realistic general solution for affordable child care.

Oh I wouldn’t do it. But it works in other cultures now and literally billions of people do it.

It only seems to work in other cultures because people are forced into it and have no other options. Very few people in the younger generation are actually happy with it. Hence the way young Chinese women now describe the ideal husband: "owns a home, owns a car, parents are dead".

I don't think it should be permanent, but the other extreme of "you're an adult now, good luck" is unreasonable too. It shouldn't be shamed to live with your parents after education and/or during early career. And if you can foot the bill to move out later in life after saving up, great.

Personally, it worked out for me. raise in my grandparents house until I was 12, but also grew up to see my parent go to military for ~6 years and my uncles getting kicked out later on as well. It's far from perfect but increasing divorce rates don't exactly show that being separated is better.

> With childcare a single adult can watch 10+ kids.

Not quite. The rule is generally 6-8 kids depending on what state you are in, and the younger they get the lower the number is. 3-4 under 5 years old and only 2 under 2 years old.

I'm pretty sure OP never actually had to deal with kids for a whole day.

Life isn't about finding the most optimised thing in term of resource usage. That's how you get Matrix style pods

> It is actually pretty deranged that we have each parent raise their own kids in relative isolation (until school).

The quality of communal childcare varies widely; and having seen some examples of under-stimulating and inattentive care settings, I’d say the choice to raise one’s own children can be more rational than deranged, particularly if you have a caring and empathic relationship with your own children. In my own n=1 experiment, the decision to leave behind an income in the mid six figures to stay home with my child during her early formative years was anything but deranged.

It was not a deranged decision, but a privileged one.

And that is the deranged thing. This should not be a privilege.

I would challenge the assumption that a single adult can actually care for 10+ kids in a meaningful manner. The word "monitor" speaks for itself.

I'm also pretty certain than in, say, more ancient societes, even if there was communal child care, it wasn't a 1:10+ ratio.

And even if. The decision is basically, would you rather be working for your children, or for "the man"?

>that a single adult can actually care for 10+ kids in a meaningful manner.

It's a good thing those daycare's aren't just one person renting out a large building, in that case. Real shame the people getting the most money out of it aren't doing any caregiving, though.

>And even if. The decision is basically, would you rather be working for your children, or for "the man"?

Sure, if most people could help it, they would never work a day in their life if they got 10m dollars (post tax). Not everyone, but I wager 80+%.

But that's not the fantasy we live in. While it was great to encourage women into the work force, the government took nasty advantadge of the 2-income households and made it the standard, all while spending power atrophied for decades. Now childcare is rising so much that it's more financially viable to NOT work for some parent's cases. It's all a mess.

That's certainly the case. It also seems to be an international issue - I'm living in Europe, but here as well, if we would both work, childcare and progressive taxes would eat up a good chunk of the additional income.

Not all of it, but enough to kind of not make it worthwhile anymore (even from a purely financial perspective, not considering factors that parents might actually want to be with their kids ;)

It's not about 'monitoring' them, it's about nurturing humans to adulthood (and giving them a wonderful childhood to boot). If it were all about efficiency, we could just put them in individual pens with auto-feeding slots or something.

> With childcare a single adult can watch 10+ kids.

1:10 is only valid for preschool age. It gets more expensive for kids under 30 months.

But the other benefit is that your kid has other kids to play with, and learns out how to interact with kids and adults outside of their own home (e.g. they learn how to stand in line and such). It is also a huge boon for the kids if their parents are less engaged (i.e. avoid excessive screen time).

As Arthur Cecil Pigou observed in 1920: "If a man marries his housekeeper or his cook, the national dividend is diminished."

For more complete context, https://archive.org/details/ost-business-pigou_0316_ebk_v60/...

"Yet again, the services rendered by women enter into the dividend when they are rendered in exchange for wages, whether in the factory or in the home, but do not enter into it when they are rendered by mothers and wives gratuitously to their own families. Thus, if a man marries his housekeeper or his cook, the national dividend is diminished. These things are paradoxes. It is a paradox also that, when Poor Law or Factory Regulations divert women workers from factory work or paid home-work to unpaid home-work, in attendance on their children, preparation of the family meals, repair of the family clothes, thoughtful expenditure of housekeeping money, and so on, the national dividend, on our definition, suffers a loss against which there is to be set no compensating gain. It is a paradox, lastly, that the frequent desecration of natural beauty through the hunt for coal or gold, or through the more blatant forms of commercial advertisement, must, on our definition, leave the national dividend intact, though, if it had been practicable, as it is in some exceptional circumstances, to make a charge for viewing scenery, it would not have done so."

It is not taxable income. When a woman takes care of her own child, the government cannot levy taxes over that. The same when the parent fixes his own garage door. The government do not like these activities and that's why they'd prefer corporations which work people 8-6, so that the working potential of the population is fully available to them.

The incentives are not aligned. That's all.

This argument makes sense initially, but when you consider it more deeply it doesn't really. If it was only about getting tax revenue and considering no other factor, the government could just print money and let people stay at home. I say it's less about levying taxes and more about harnessing the productivity of these woman working outside the home. It is also clear to me that industrial nation governments have a higher goal of limiting population and physically eradicating the people of their nations, since most of their policies add to that trend.

This has always been going on through the history of civilization, but since nationalism became the strongest cultural force, the population no longer accepts being eliminated by foreign powers, so instead that work is being done by domestic rulers – focusing most of their efforts to exterminate the young to the benefit of the old.

> the government could just print money and let people stay at home.

This is your understanding of economics and you’re going around telling people they’re wrong. It’s okay to just admit you have no idea and ask a question rather than make a statement.

Your comment has no substance.

You can tax the money folks get as part of a safety net. Norway does this.

It's also completely backwards.

It's giving children your undivided attention that is ultimately way more productive than outsourcing it.

Or actually: life forces us to send them off, so every bit of additional parental attention is precious.

I dunno, man.

Other people help children too. Child care - especially pre-schools! - expose children to kids that are different than themselves, teaching them how to deal with others. They meet children that they would never meet through their parents. Other people also teach your children things that you might not consider or teach in a different way. Time away from one's caregivers is important.

You can insert something here about independent play: You really shouldn't give your children attention all the time. Helicopter parenting is bad. Young children? Stay close enough, but not hovering.

Not to mention that a stay-at-home parent is definitely not giving undivided attention. That adult still has to do adult things: Shower, make dinner, clean, etc and they will probably be expected to do a big share of it since they are home. Not to mention that most folks wind up socially isolated, especially if the other parent doesn't take the children and give the stay-at-home parent a break. Or if poverty prevents someone from spending time with others.

Quality time is precious: Time itself simply isn't the same.

It's an unavoidable result of the division of labour. If it's more valuable for those parents to be child carers, they should quit their jobs and become child carers.

Any derangement is as a result of trying to link economic value with personal value. It doesn't mean the answer is to ignore the economic reality.

But this isn’t about economic reality: we exclude from measurement the contribution of homemakers.

To say they produce “more value” letting others care for their children is an effect of what we choose to measure — and emphatically not a measure of their actual economic contributions, as defined by what goods and services are provided.

Case in point:

Two housewives caring for each other’s children increases GDP since the salary is measured — even though both families are strictly worse off.

Is child care paid with before-tax or after-tax money?

In the U.S., some of each, especially depending on whether the state provides deductions or credits similar to federal.

Yes, GDP is famously crap. It wasn't developed as a number to be maximised, and we've known it makes no sense to maximise it ever since it was developed.

Samuelson remarked along the lines that (old-fashioned gender roles alert) "if a man marries his maid, GDP falls".

Unfortunately, that hasn't stopped politicians and journalists using it to keep score.

Didn't know HN was so feminist! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_economics#Exclusion_o...

The limitations of GDP were known since its inception. It has little to do with feminism.

Well, that quoted whereever-it-comes-from number probably has a hidden undercurrent.

So "the economy" loses $122 billion from moms going home?

WHO is "the economy"? Well it's not the parents, because they are making the individual economic decision. Who could it be? The government? A bit, indirectly.... you know, like 15% of it, maybe.

Oh right, it's the rich/elites that rake in all the money, and set government policy. That phrase should actually be;

"The ultra-wealthy who control all the money and corporations lose 122 billion per year when their underpaid wage-suppressed mothers stop working, maybe we should throw them some more crumbs to get them back to work so we can collect that money back"

Where's the numbers about "overworking parents and denying childcare assistance so that people don't procreate, and 'costs' the US economy trillions?"

Related: The death rate for American babies is rising - https://archive.ph/ksrra

And America has a higher baby death rate than China, Russia, Japan, and the EU.

I wonder what all those countries have in common that we don't.

Probably universal healthcare, or at least one that's not so insane, with people avoiding treatment for simple problems fearing they will get slapped with a huge bill and go bankrupt.

I agree: The mindset behind this quoted thinking is disgusting.

May our children be our joy, our responsibility, our honor. I don't know the mindset that produced this, some form of "progressive" thought or outright communism (which is famous for this), but this must be countered wherever found. It is not Good or healthy.

Yeah, everybody knows that darn communism that optimizes for... maximum national income? Your comment is ridiculous and outright embarrassing.

This is a large part of why many economies of poorer countries look worse on paper than they really are. It isn’t that people aren’t doing the work, they just aren’t doing it for pay in a hyper-individualized way. The kids are taken care of, the food gets made, the sheep are herded, and no money gets transferred so GDP/capita languishes.

In this way economic measurements, investment bankers, the spooky IMF, etc are an active assault on community living. The Coffee-Cola Song comes to mind.

Having people to look after kids while parents are away is not some aberration in human history that’s it’s made out to be. “It takes a village” is simply a cliched description of how it’s always been and it’s not a negative thing in general.

Child care results in GDP being created. From a certain point of view, government gets a cut of GDP to fund itself.

"The us loses a trillion dollars a year when people decide to sleep on a regular basis"