In response to Suzette Elgin's comments:
It occurs to me that if you pay homemakers, and count these wages in the
GNP, you are therefore paying them to live. Which sounds like a wonderfully
utopic situation, and fairly fantastical. The reason housekeepers and
nannies and maids etc. get paid is that the wealthier folks who can afford
them are paying for the privilege of not having to live like everyone else.
The focus of our attention should not be on _money_, but on subsistence
(since that is what we use money to obtain). Every human being is involved
in obtaining subsistence through hir personal effort. The homemaker does it
at home, the day-laborer does it out of the home. The homemaker provides hir
own subsistence through hir efforts at home, the day-laborer simply has hir
subsistence provided through the intermediary of money. Why should the
homemaker get double subsistence?
I dunno, because I'm certainly very far from being an economist. I do think
that the amount of work American society demands of some of its working
population is excessive for the pay they get, and that this creates horrible
burdens on those who must both work and maintain the basics of the home. But
that's a slightly different problem than the above, it seems to me.
Wonderingly yours,
Heather
=)
hmaclean@kent.edu
http://kent.edu/~hmaclean
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