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Comment by dmm | Hacker News Reader

A life devoted to family is antiquated. After all, what revenue can be extracted from a man whose primary source of satisfaction are his commitments and devotion to his wife and children?

A man who compulsively watches youtube(tm) videos on his ipad(tm) all night can be show many more ads than one who spends the evening reading to his kids.

Modern life is a constant assault of sophisticated propaganda(advertisements) imploring us to identify as consumers of brands and to be materially dissatisfied.

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Consume? You think we get to consume? What arrogance! What luxury! The New Capitalist Man shall require no consumption, none at all, only his Work! He shall need only his Work and Work without end, for the self-sacrifice of toil is the one thing that can bring true liberty! He shall pray each morning to his one god, "Work makes free!"

/rant ;-)

EDIT: /prophecy

That's amusing but really wide of teh mark. cosndier how heavily automated many businesses are these day, and becoming more so. Labor is a shrinking factor in the equation, and ideally one that many capitalists would like as close to zero as possible - after all, machines don't go on strike or sing protest songs about their working conditions or demand variety or fulfillment from their labor.

On the other hand, without demand, you can't sell your product, so as long as people are around then you have an interest in making them want your product.

The lack of demand for work is the entire reason why the worker has to work harder. Got to offer more than the competition, after all!

I think you're confusing national-socialism with capitalism. The former are professed enemies of the latter.

What made the Nazis' use of "Arbeit Macht Frei" so sickening in the first place was that it had been a moderately common German saying or proverb prior to that. It really was used to indicate that infinite labor brought spiritual freedom.

It was, at one time, a saying more closely associated with The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism than with Mein Kampf.

Point taken, thanks for the explanation.

You might be interested in this alternate take on the current Sheryl Sandberg mediascape:

http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because...

Kids are incredibly expensive, so this parody doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I beg to differ with this common, and very subjective point of view. "Expensive" is subjective value judgement in this case. A kid is way less expensive than maintaining a supercar or maybe even a run of the mill Porsche... Breastfed babies are significantly less expensive and healthier to their formula fed counterparts. Much of the expensive things are discretionary spending, $200 car seat vs a hand me down or 2nd hand $20 car seat. If you're thinking expensive as in the amount of time that a child needs, then you might have a point, but then again, you could argue that blogging, giving back to the community etc etc are "expensive" since you could be making money during that time. As far as college goes, that again is discretionary spending. I worked my butt off and have tons of debt, and my parents shelled out $0 towards my college eduction. So a blanket "kids are expensive" statement is too generals and often spoken by people who haven't had a kid (or had one and went crazy buying expensive stuff for the kid). To me, they're a very effective time/money investment as are the community & non-pofit stuff I'm involved in. The Porsche, not so much...

Health insurance for a family will far outstrip the costs of a Porsche and can give a supercar a run for its money. Hell, it can give a mortgage a run for its money.

True, unless you or your spouse has amazing healthcare from work. But that's a whole different issue. If you're unhealthy yourself, even without having kids, healthcare can be pretty expensive.

> "that's a whole different issue."

If you're making a sober economic assessment of the cost of children, it's not a different issue, it's a typically-very-large cost that must be considered.

You can argue the costs down from 'house note' to 'very-nice-car note' or even 'cross-your-fingers-and-maybe-it's-almost-nothing' -- one can certainly (effectively) self-insure with the same sorts of outome-roulette as not providing for your child's education.

But you can't just hand-wave away the issue.

Paying for childcare (or providing it yourself) until your children are old enough for public school is neither cheap nor discretionary.

Again, that depends. My wife and I work different schedules so the kids never really have to stay with anyone else. That is a benefit that not every career offers. I'm sure that babysitting for a certain income bracket is "expensive", but I know that if you're not making that much there are government programs that help, and if you are making quite a bit, it shouldn't hurt that bad.

I'm not saying that things are exactly the same as when you don't have kids, but it's not nearly as bad as some make it seem. Being socially well connected with family & friends help too. When we need babysitting, grandparents are more than happy to help. We tend to attend parties where other parents will be and the babysitting often gets older kids in the party. I've never appreciated having close community connections as much as I do now before having children.

Blanket expensive is not the status quo. But I must admit, if you're a single parent with little to no family and community support, it can certainly be expensive.

Most people I hear complain about how afraid they are of the expense of raising a child are more in my position where it wouldn't affect them that much. It's more reflective of the fear and negative bias then what the reality is. Having lots of money on kids is definitely nice though and will make lots of things in life easier for them, but it's not a must.

Even once kids are in school, they are only there between approximately 9 am to 3 pm, so if you're dropping off and picking up your kids, you are only free between 9:30 am and 2:30 pm.

Around $220K. Less than a third for a decent condo in major cities.

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