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Actually, you can't. If you're growing vegetables, after taking out taxes, you still have a vegetable. If you're cooking, after taking out taxes, you still have
by meric 11y ago
Actually, you can't. If you're growing vegetables, after taking out taxes, you still have a vegetable. If you're cooking, after taking out taxes, you still have a meal. If you're hunting, you still have the meat. If you're making clothes, after taxes, you have some clothes. These goods go back into the economy as capital - the clothes on the back of labourers. The meal workers eat during lunch.
For childcare, there's only the adult's attention that enabled the child to mature one more day - but one could have stayed home and taken care of the child anyway, so there's no marginal gain to getting a carer unless the carer is really good and really imparts a tremendous positive impression on the child, or if one is a worker especially valued by the economy, such as one of a few nuclear scientists or doctor or software engineer.
If there's no tax effect, you only need to be marginally more productive at your job than the carer for it to be worth getting a carer. With the effect of taxes, you need to be a lot more productive.
Whereas if there's goods produced, it's almost always worth it for someone in the economy to be doing that, even with income taxes, because the resultant goods is capital that drives the economy forward.
- eru 11y agoIt seems like your argument would work for any service job?
- meric 11y agoAny service job where most people who are polite and literate can do the job well - there's no goods produced and no labor specialisation benefit, and so get hit more heavily by taxes.
- eru 11y agoThere's labour specialization benefit just from allowing parents to engage in more specialised labour, isn't there?
- meric 11y agoYes I mentioned those further up the thread. Childcare is unaffordable for workers who can be replaced by most people. or if one is a worker especially valued by the economy, such as one of a few nuclear scientists or doctor or software engineer.
- eru 11y agoWhat about higher labour productivity that comes from one adult looking after more children than their own family?
- meric 11y agoThat labour productivity as mentioned will have to be twice or three times as much to make it worth it. If you have 3 kids, sending them to childcare will cost as much as the wages that would be paid in a full time job, even though in the childcare centre one adult is looking after 15 kids, due to taxes and rent.