As child care costs soar, more parents may have to exit the workforce

Re:As child care costs soar, more parents may have to exit t... by adw on Wednesday November 01, 2023 @10:36PM (#38108306)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:As child care costs soar, more parents may have to exit t... by MichaelZuo on Wednesday November 01, 2023 @10:39PM (#38108323)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:As child care costs soar, more parents may have to exit t... by adw on Thursday November 02, 2023 @01:16PM (#38116863)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]