Good points!
All of this assumes I can go to paid work an ever-increasing amount, which is obviously not true. The amount of hours I can work in a week is fixed.
That is indeed the biggest fallacy I ultimately saw in me, friends and comments regarding this issue.
Re:The Money/Time fallacy
by stephengillie on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @12:47PM
(#4449540)
Transport, work clothes, work lunch, daycare and even rent/mortgage# must be paid simply to go to work.
I disagree on work clothes and rent, and transport to some extent. You must wear some clothes and have some shelter, and you eventually will need to travel somewhere, even if just to the store for food.
Let's say I make $100/hr at my job.
My car breaks down, and it's only $80/hr for a mechanic to fix it. Seems smart. Now my deck needs repainting, and it's $30/hr for someone else to paint it. Gardening? $20/hr. Washing machine broken? $50/hr. Daycare? $30/hr. Housecleaning? $30/hr... etc. etc. etc.
Because I'm a Software Engineer, pretty much every service in the entire world costs less per hour than I make, so following the logic, I should be paying someone else to do everything in my life for me. I should get someone to cook for me, drive me to work, and brush my teeth.
All of this assumes I can go to paid work an ever-increasing amount, which is obviously not true. The amount of hours I can work in a week is fixed.
UPDATE: Something else the article doesn't mention is that not only is the actual cash-in-hand dollar amount less due to tax, you should also consider the expenses required to earn that money. Transport, work clothes, work lunch, daycare and even rent/mortgage# must be paid simply to go to work. And those expenses come off after tax dollars. The amount you get in your pocket at the end of it all is a lot, lot less than your hourly rate.
#I say rent/mortgage because if you didn't have to go to work, you could live in a tiny little town somewhere paying a fraction of the rent/mortgage you are now.