There's something deranged about a metric when deciding to take care of your own children, rather than pay someone else to do so, results in a worse number.
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/
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.
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 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.
on edit: looks like I'm getting downvoted now! How exciting!!
Well, the comment in question uses a lot of conservative tropes: a) ppl not earning = on welfare b) victim blaming c) GDP uber alles
> 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.
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.
on second edit: of course assumption is the other partner earns a lot.
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.
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 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).
> 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.
"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.
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."
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.
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).
The commercial daycare center is hardly the ideal model, but it is at least something besides total individualism.
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.
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.
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.
And it's an actually community. Not some "I care for your kids because I get paid for it".
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.
It does. Of course it might not be properly reflected in the statistics but it still creates additional value in the economy.
Now you're thinking with Line Go Up!
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.
I don’t have the stats handy, but I am fairly confident that a large portion of the barter income is not reported.
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!"
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.
To put it clearer: The law makes no distinction between a housewife and a unemployed woman, both get half even if the actions that resulted in the divorce were her fault and she engaged in them continously. Keep that in mind if you are unmarried.
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.
These insane expectations are part of the reason why marriage is a bad deal for the provider.
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.
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.
Otherwise said, being at home makes you very vulnerable and puts you at risk of poverty. The longer you stay, the worst off you are. I am not the one pushing for the system where one parent has to sacrifice his or her independence when kids are born. I am just saying that if economy requires one of them at home, that person is being put at risk.
> 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. It is simply not true that a single sob story would made course side with mother.
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.
Great deal for women. Horrible deal for men.
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.
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.
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.
You are a victim of a common cognitive bias: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women-are-wonderful_effect
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.
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.
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).
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).
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."
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Yea its called multigenerational housing.
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.
You're not. You're full on Gen X. Your parenty (probably) were boomers.
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.
Some families can make multigenerational housing work well, but it's not a realistic general solution for affordable child care.
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.
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.
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.
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"?
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.
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 ;)
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
People are just walking over the border nowadays, not sure if smugglers are even needed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The incentives are not aligned. That's all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 "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?"
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.
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.
It’s like seeing “$3B was saved by eliminating duplicate work” and saying “what a deranged statistic when it improves when people lose jobs”
<Insert large number> grabs people’s attention.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.bea.gov/data/special-topics/household-production
For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to have gotten much attention.
I'm surprised this wasn't taken into account long ago? Are homemakers really excluded from any GDP calculation?
Yes.