> 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.