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> 1) taxing stay at home moms for the value they are creating That sounds incredibly distopian. Plenty of studies show the benefits of children being raised b

by zanny 11y ago

> 1) taxing stay at home moms for the value they are creating That sounds incredibly distopian. Plenty of studies show the benefits of children being raised by their actual parents. If anything, the bias towards staying at home is not strong enough, because it only has negative motivators - the taxes on paying childcare / having a career. That doesn't make it any easier to have either or preferably both parents actively raise the child where neither of them have to be absent from their life to provide food and shelter, but it does make it harder to have both parents working. But that hardship demonstrably does not outweigh the lost income, since so many households are two income with children in third party care services. I would hesitate to ever advocate trying to punish dual income households more for using child care services, since those are exactly the ones who often have no choice in the matter.

e12e 11y ago
>> 1) taxing stay at home moms for the value they are creating > That sounds incredibly distopian. It sounds a bit sexist (as if moms should stay home and their spouse, male of female should be employed) - but it's only dystopian if society doesn't recognize that the work not only needs to be taxed, but also rewarded. For example, with basic income - or simply by paying people to stay home to care for their kids. The problem with the latter is that it reinforces gender stereotypes in a job market where there is gender difference in pay (ie: all current real-world job markets) -- it makes financial sense for the one that makes the least above caregiver compensation to stay home. I'm sure there are other ways to combat this (say base compensation on whole-household income, so that the net will end up being roughly the same no matter who stays home) -- but it's not entirely trivial to figure out.
- eru 11y ago
  In Germany, you can juggle maternity and paternity leave as you please---the state only cares about the sum. In Sweden, there's fixed maternity and paternity leave of the same length. German fathers don't stay home for the kids much---it's almost all used by the mothers. Sweden's use-it-or-lose-it approach seems to work better if you goal is to get fathers to take time off.
- zanny 11y ago
  > It sounds a bit sexist (as if moms should stay home and their spouse, male of female should be employed) I never implied that. Preferably society would be rich enough both parents could raise their kids without having to fend for survival while doing so. I would hope we have advanced as a species enough at this point, generated enough wealth at this point, to enable that. And if that were not possible, I know classical sexism would drive the women to stay home, but preferrably whoever preferred their job would continue working and the other could raise the children, irrespective of sex. > For example, with basic income UBI is almost certainly the optimal solution here. I'd argue because it enables that joint parental rearing much more often - if parents have any financial assets they could potentially both drop out of the workforce to optimally raise their child, and depending on their wealth they could both withdraw for variable lengths of time. Even in the worst case scenario one successful careered individual in a family of two with joint UBI should definitely be able to have a stay at home parent and a working one maintain a working class lifestyle.

by zanny 11y ago

e12e 11y ago

>> 1) taxing stay at home moms for the value they are creating > That sounds incredibly distopian. It sounds a bit sexist (as if moms should stay home and their spouse, male of female should be employed) - but it's only dystopian if society doesn't recognize that the work not only needs to be taxed, but also rewarded. For example, with basic income - or simply by paying people to stay home to care for their kids. The problem with the latter is that it reinforces gender stereotypes in a job market where there is gender difference in pay (ie: all current real-world job markets) -- it makes financial sense for the one that makes the least above caregiver compensation to stay home. I'm sure there are other ways to combat this (say base compensation on whole-household income, so that the net will end up being roughly the same no matter who stays home) -- but it's not entirely trivial to figure out.

eru 11y ago
In Germany, you can juggle maternity and paternity leave as you please---the state only cares about the sum. In Sweden, there's fixed maternity and paternity leave of the same length. German fathers don't stay home for the kids much---it's almost all used by the mothers. Sweden's use-it-or-lose-it approach seems to work better if you goal is to get fathers to take time off.
zanny 11y ago
> It sounds a bit sexist (as if moms should stay home and their spouse, male of female should be employed) I never implied that. Preferably society would be rich enough both parents could raise their kids without having to fend for survival while doing so. I would hope we have advanced as a species enough at this point, generated enough wealth at this point, to enable that. And if that were not possible, I know classical sexism would drive the women to stay home, but preferrably whoever preferred their job would continue working and the other could raise the children, irrespective of sex. > For example, with basic income UBI is almost certainly the optimal solution here. I'd argue because it enables that joint parental rearing much more often - if parents have any financial assets they could potentially both drop out of the workforce to optimally raise their child, and depending on their wealth they could both withdraw for variable lengths of time. Even in the worst case scenario one successful careered individual in a family of two with joint UBI should definitely be able to have a stay at home parent and a working one maintain a working class lifestyle.