5 ms·

If you're dis-incented to work, that may allow you to lead a better life on less, say one partner earning instead of both, whilst someone who needs a primary in

If you're dis-incented to work, that may allow you to lead a better life on less, say one partner earning instead of both, whilst someone who needs a primary income will take that higher paying job. Don't underestimate the beneficial effect of one person being able to stay home, look after a house, cook fresh food, save on childcare, consume less fuel etc etc.

CWuestefeld 17y ago
That sounds like the broken window fallacy to me.
- nostrademons 17y ago
  Having a parent at home is a broken window?
  - CWuestefeld 17y ago
    See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window In a nutshell, it's the story of kids playing baseball and accidentally hitting a ball through someone's window. The fallacy is that by breaking the window, they've helped out the economy. The homeowner will now pay the glazier to fix it, whose wife will now have money to buy a new dress, etc. It's a fallacy because it ignores the productivity that the money would have resulted in had it been used for its original intent. Perhaps his car needs new tires, or whatever -- but there was something that the homeowner would have preferred but for the necessity created by the ball. By analogy, perhaps the hypothetical second parent, who is now staying home, might instead be a doctor helping people, or a teacher, or even a garbage collector. Whatever, it's something that we would have gotten had it not been for this disruption.
    - Retric 17y ago
      I suspect the broken window fallacy takes place, but in the other direction. If a parent stays home and takes care of their children there is zero apparent economic activity, or less if the stay at home parent cooks. No childcare, less eating out, no maid services etc. However, the stay at home parent is doing that work which benefits the family and is probably also doing a better job of it than low cost help. PS: This also depends on how much the primary income is, how much time it takes, and how old the children are. If a family with three young children is supplementing a 140k primary income with a full time job that pays less than 50k it’s probably of little net benefit. If on the other hand it’s 40k and 40k and the children are in school it’s probably a significant net gain. Time is also a factor; one of the better and more common setups for families with school age children is a teacher parent. They share the same breaks, and the added stability can be a huge help.
    - Psyonic 17y ago
      Or maybe a daycare worker, taking care of someone else's children, instead of her own...? You think that taking care of and raising your child is inherently unproductive?
    - sokoloff 17y ago
      And if they do that, then they aren't working as a full-time child-care provider, cook, cleaner, errand runner, concierge, etc. The broken window fallacy says that purely destructive actions don't actually stimulate the economy in a useful way. In no way is one adult staying home to perform "home work" logically equivalent (at least, not in my opinion).
      - CWuestefeld 17y ago
        I think that everyone is missing the point of the broken window fallacy. It's not that something is destructive. It's also not that something involves monetary transactions or not. The point is that some external agent forces someone to change their plans, foregoing what they originally intended. (Economics deals with making choices between the available alternatives; money is only the tip of that iceberg) In the parable as I outlined it, the employment of the glazier is presented as a positive outcome, while ignoring that the homeowner is now unable to buy his new tires, and thus the homeowner has lost the tires and the garage has lost that business. In the stay-at-home-parent scenario, there's a visible gain of a parent giving the child a close bond and (presumably) good upbringing. But the fallacy hides the fact that had someone else not meddled, that parent would be doing something else that also has a positive outcome (else an employer wouldn't be willing to pay for it). We can see that in both examples, the person whose behavior was forced now must be satisfied with a plan that is inferior to their initial intent. And assuming that all are rational actors (as economists generally do), then we can conclude that the total utility thus delivered (over the entire economy) is lower than that of the initial intent.
        nazgulnarsil 17y ago
        separating preferences from their environmental context is also a fallacy. there are no ideal preferences that would exist if only some outside agent hadn't interfered. life is a long series of outside agents and our response to them.
        timwiseman 17y ago
        This is true in the general sense, you cannot remove all outside agents and still say anything meaningful. But it is not true when dealing with any one particular agent. You can often say what would have happened but for one particular agent.
    - nostrademons 17y ago
      I'm familiar with the broken window fallacy, I just question its applicability here. The broken window fallacy is usually used to highlight the importance of opportunity cost and unintended consequences. In the parable, the broken window results in some very visible benefits - the glazier has money, his wife has a new dress. But it's a fallacy because we don't know what the glazier would be doing otherwise. Perhaps he would've created a beautiful stain glass window, which causes his business to spike up afterwards as his skills increase, which means his wife can afford a series of socialite parties, which bring together people who would never have met, etc. As Retric points out, I think the fallacy is more likely to work in the other direction here. The benefits of working are very obvious - you get more income, you can afford to buy more things, you live more comfortably. The opportunity costs are more subtle - perhaps your kid grows up hating you, perhaps they fall in with a bad crowd and start doing drugs, perhaps they never make it over the mathematical hump that prevents them from being a famous physicist. It's different for every kid, and you won't know for years. Good economists admit that there are things that count that can't be counted, and recognize the limits of their models.
  - billybob 17y ago
    Choosing parenting over work is great. But it doesn't mean we should devalue work in order to get it. Better to have people choose between two good options than to make one option lousy.

CWuestefeld 17y ago

That sounds like the broken window fallacy to me.

nostrademons 17y ago
Having a parent at home is a broken window?
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window In a nutshell, it's the story of kids playing baseball and accidentally hitting a ball through someone's window. The fallacy is that by breaking the window, they've helped out the economy. The homeowner will now pay the glazier to fix it, whose wife will now have money to buy a new dress, etc. It's a fallacy because it ignores the productivity that the money would have resulted in had it been used for its original intent. Perhaps his car needs new tires, or whatever -- but there was something that the homeowner would have preferred but for the necessity created by the ball. By analogy, perhaps the hypothetical second parent, who is now staying home, might instead be a doctor helping people, or a teacher, or even a garbage collector. Whatever, it's something that we would have gotten had it not been for this disruption.
  - Retric 17y ago
    I suspect the broken window fallacy takes place, but in the other direction. If a parent stays home and takes care of their children there is zero apparent economic activity, or less if the stay at home parent cooks. No childcare, less eating out, no maid services etc. However, the stay at home parent is doing that work which benefits the family and is probably also doing a better job of it than low cost help. PS: This also depends on how much the primary income is, how much time it takes, and how old the children are. If a family with three young children is supplementing a 140k primary income with a full time job that pays less than 50k it’s probably of little net benefit. If on the other hand it’s 40k and 40k and the children are in school it’s probably a significant net gain. Time is also a factor; one of the better and more common setups for families with school age children is a teacher parent. They share the same breaks, and the added stability can be a huge help.
  - Psyonic 17y ago
    Or maybe a daycare worker, taking care of someone else's children, instead of her own...? You think that taking care of and raising your child is inherently unproductive?
  - sokoloff 17y ago
    And if they do that, then they aren't working as a full-time child-care provider, cook, cleaner, errand runner, concierge, etc. The broken window fallacy says that purely destructive actions don't actually stimulate the economy in a useful way. In no way is one adult staying home to perform "home work" logically equivalent (at least, not in my opinion).
    - CWuestefeld 17y ago
      I think that everyone is missing the point of the broken window fallacy. It's not that something is destructive. It's also not that something involves monetary transactions or not. The point is that some external agent forces someone to change their plans, foregoing what they originally intended. (Economics deals with making choices between the available alternatives; money is only the tip of that iceberg) In the parable as I outlined it, the employment of the glazier is presented as a positive outcome, while ignoring that the homeowner is now unable to buy his new tires, and thus the homeowner has lost the tires and the garage has lost that business. In the stay-at-home-parent scenario, there's a visible gain of a parent giving the child a close bond and (presumably) good upbringing. But the fallacy hides the fact that had someone else not meddled, that parent would be doing something else that also has a positive outcome (else an employer wouldn't be willing to pay for it). We can see that in both examples, the person whose behavior was forced now must be satisfied with a plan that is inferior to their initial intent. And assuming that all are rational actors (as economists generally do), then we can conclude that the total utility thus delivered (over the entire economy) is lower than that of the initial intent.
      - nazgulnarsil 17y ago
        separating preferences from their environmental context is also a fallacy. there are no ideal preferences that would exist if only some outside agent hadn't interfered. life is a long series of outside agents and our response to them.
        timwiseman 17y ago
        This is true in the general sense, you cannot remove all outside agents and still say anything meaningful. But it is not true when dealing with any one particular agent. You can often say what would have happened but for one particular agent.
  - nostrademons 17y ago
    I'm familiar with the broken window fallacy, I just question its applicability here. The broken window fallacy is usually used to highlight the importance of opportunity cost and unintended consequences. In the parable, the broken window results in some very visible benefits - the glazier has money, his wife has a new dress. But it's a fallacy because we don't know what the glazier would be doing otherwise. Perhaps he would've created a beautiful stain glass window, which causes his business to spike up afterwards as his skills increase, which means his wife can afford a series of socialite parties, which bring together people who would never have met, etc. As Retric points out, I think the fallacy is more likely to work in the other direction here. The benefits of working are very obvious - you get more income, you can afford to buy more things, you live more comfortably. The opportunity costs are more subtle - perhaps your kid grows up hating you, perhaps they fall in with a bad crowd and start doing drugs, perhaps they never make it over the mathematical hump that prevents them from being a famous physicist. It's different for every kid, and you won't know for years. Good economists admit that there are things that count that can't be counted, and recognize the limits of their models.
- billybob 17y ago
  Choosing parenting over work is great. But it doesn't mean we should devalue work in order to get it. Better to have people choose between two good options than to make one option lousy.