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Not the above poster, but their point appears to be that caring for the elderly doesn't CONTRIBUTE to the economy (i.e. as a transaction it adds to GDP, but in

Not the above poster, but their point appears to be that caring for the elderly doesn't CONTRIBUTE to the economy (i.e. as a transaction it adds to GDP, but in terms of value-creation it's near zilch. So while a blue-collar worker might add value by creating a product, an elder care worker adds only humanitarian benefit. (And unlike a doctor that can help those blue collar workers continue to work, there isn't even much INDIRECT value-addition to elder care). To continue my devil-advocacy, I'm sure the above poster wouldn't argue AGAINST elder care on humanitarian grounds, but is instead saying this is not where you want to redirect significant portions of your workforce, because you'll tank value-addition and harm everyone (including those elderly patients). Personally, I find the argument a little repulsive, but also an important argument to refute. So I'm glad it was raised. My rebuttal would be that with increased automation we're doing fine in value-addition, and the entire point of having positive wealth creation is to improve the overall well-being of a lot of people (I was going to say "as many as possible", but that might not be agreed to by some). If we skip the "reward" of a society's wealth-creation, why are we doing it again?

tptacek 10y ago
That was the "logic" I took from that comment too, but it still doesn't make any sense. We spend money on all sorts of things that don't "contribute" (in this weird, narrow sense) to the economy. But of course, most things we spend money on do in fact contribute to the economy: the money goes into the pockets of the people providing the service, who go on to buy things with that money and fuel the economy. That's what I meant when I said I didn't understand the reasoning of the comment --- like, at all, even a little bit.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  I'll ask you, then, to focus less on the GDP/value-add side of the argument and more on the "spiritually corrosive to individuals and society" side of the argument.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Are you conceding the economics? (You probably should, unless I'm missing some subtlety of your argument.) That's really all I care about here.
    - metaphorm 10y ago
      no, I'm not conceding the economics. I don't have any hidden subtlety here, it seems fairly obvious to me that elder-care is redistributive (money from old people to their servants) rather than productive. quite a lot of service jobs are like this, except in many other cases the redistribution is not from accumulated wealth from the past, but from newly produced wealth in the present. that might be of some net economic benefit anyway, purely on the basis of freeing up money that would otherwise be stuck in sequestration from the rest of the economy. however, I'm not sure what "flaw" in my economic claim you're trying to point out. can you be more explicit? I would ask you, however, to actually care more about the non-economic part of the argument. I believe that's the more important part.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        This isn't even wrong. In market transactions, there's no dichotomy between "redistribution" and "productivity". There's "redistributive" tax and economic policies that governments enact, by political fiat. Those policies are almost the opposite of market transactions. Using the definition you've proposed, it's hard to think of any service transaction, from doctors visits to architectural consults, that isn't somehow "redistributive".
      - shkkmo 10y ago
        I believe the general view is that 'non value producing' service jobs add value by saving the time of and thus amplifying the productiveness of individuals with 'value producing' jobs. If you are comparing the economic effect of a growing industry of elder care to a society where no elder care occurs, then I can see how you might draw the conclusion that growth in this industry is a waste because these are not 'value producing' jobs. In reality, a society where no elder care occurs is not the alternative as some form of elder care would be taking place. People who work doing elder care are amplifying the productiveness of the friends, family and neighbors who do have 'value producing' jobs. Personally, I think our current styles of elder care and our ageist biases waste a lot of economic potential and social value by wasting the time of our elders. I think that finding ways to tap this potential while providing better care for our elders would be the OPPOSITE of spiritually corrosive. As it is, many find working in elder care quite rewarding, especially when that elder care happens in less institutional and dehumanizing settings.
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  An economy can be based around digging holes and moving the dirt between them, if that's what people wanted to happen. We literally pulled an entire nation out of a depression in order to go to war. Fighting a war has to be the least "productive" activity imaginable for humans to engage in, yet we did it and it managed to do the opposite of break the nation's back. The only criteria is that lots of people need it and are willing to pay for it. The second bit doesn't even have to be economic, a society could simply make it a matter of politics and allocate tax revenue towards it.
  - temp-dude-87844 10y ago
    As an aside, fighting a war is actually one of the most productive things a society can do: it stimulates government spending and gambles that some of it will be offset by lasting post-war prosperity and the spoils of war. You can potentially eliminate unfavorable competition, acquire more land or resources open for exploitation, raid materiel and intellectual patents, all the while reducing the size of the working class and its proportion to the wealth-owning classes.
    - wolf550e 10y ago
      Only in the country-vs-country zero-sum-game sense. In the grow-the-pie global-economy sense, war is a broken window fallacy.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    If the holes are being put to productive use by the people demanding them, then sure. Given how little HN likely understands about agriculture, I'd be wary of trying to use "hole digging" as a kind of absurd example. But this also illustrates how dumb it is to single out elder care as somehow economically unproductive. We pay for elder care because we desperately want our elder family members to be comfortable. If there were labor shortages in this sector, we'd be taking on the work ourselves, at substantial opportunity cost. It's one of the great things about market economies that this work can instead be done by people who have chosen to specialize in it --- they do the work more effectively, at lower cost, and derive more personal satisfaction from doing it. There is a really weird undercurrent to this subthread that I find unsettling. The availability of elder care services in the marketplace doesn't constitute a "gerontocracy".

tptacek 10y ago

That was the "logic" I took from that comment too, but it still doesn't make any sense. We spend money on all sorts of things that don't "contribute" (in this weird, narrow sense) to the economy. But of course, most things we spend money on do in fact contribute to the economy: the money goes into the pockets of the people providing the service, who go on to buy things with that money and fuel the economy. That's what I meant when I said I didn't understand the reasoning of the comment --- like, at all, even a little bit.

metaphorm 10y ago
I'll ask you, then, to focus less on the GDP/value-add side of the argument and more on the "spiritually corrosive to individuals and society" side of the argument.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Are you conceding the economics? (You probably should, unless I'm missing some subtlety of your argument.) That's really all I care about here.
  - metaphorm 10y ago
    no, I'm not conceding the economics. I don't have any hidden subtlety here, it seems fairly obvious to me that elder-care is redistributive (money from old people to their servants) rather than productive. quite a lot of service jobs are like this, except in many other cases the redistribution is not from accumulated wealth from the past, but from newly produced wealth in the present. that might be of some net economic benefit anyway, purely on the basis of freeing up money that would otherwise be stuck in sequestration from the rest of the economy. however, I'm not sure what "flaw" in my economic claim you're trying to point out. can you be more explicit? I would ask you, however, to actually care more about the non-economic part of the argument. I believe that's the more important part.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      This isn't even wrong. In market transactions, there's no dichotomy between "redistribution" and "productivity". There's "redistributive" tax and economic policies that governments enact, by political fiat. Those policies are almost the opposite of market transactions. Using the definition you've proposed, it's hard to think of any service transaction, from doctors visits to architectural consults, that isn't somehow "redistributive".
    - shkkmo 10y ago
      I believe the general view is that 'non value producing' service jobs add value by saving the time of and thus amplifying the productiveness of individuals with 'value producing' jobs. If you are comparing the economic effect of a growing industry of elder care to a society where no elder care occurs, then I can see how you might draw the conclusion that growth in this industry is a waste because these are not 'value producing' jobs. In reality, a society where no elder care occurs is not the alternative as some form of elder care would be taking place. People who work doing elder care are amplifying the productiveness of the friends, family and neighbors who do have 'value producing' jobs. Personally, I think our current styles of elder care and our ageist biases waste a lot of economic potential and social value by wasting the time of our elders. I think that finding ways to tap this potential while providing better care for our elders would be the OPPOSITE of spiritually corrosive. As it is, many find working in elder care quite rewarding, especially when that elder care happens in less institutional and dehumanizing settings.
vinceguidry 10y ago
An economy can be based around digging holes and moving the dirt between them, if that's what people wanted to happen. We literally pulled an entire nation out of a depression in order to go to war. Fighting a war has to be the least "productive" activity imaginable for humans to engage in, yet we did it and it managed to do the opposite of break the nation's back. The only criteria is that lots of people need it and are willing to pay for it. The second bit doesn't even have to be economic, a society could simply make it a matter of politics and allocate tax revenue towards it.
- temp-dude-87844 10y ago
  As an aside, fighting a war is actually one of the most productive things a society can do: it stimulates government spending and gambles that some of it will be offset by lasting post-war prosperity and the spoils of war. You can potentially eliminate unfavorable competition, acquire more land or resources open for exploitation, raid materiel and intellectual patents, all the while reducing the size of the working class and its proportion to the wealth-owning classes.
  - wolf550e 10y ago
    Only in the country-vs-country zero-sum-game sense. In the grow-the-pie global-economy sense, war is a broken window fallacy.
- tptacek 10y ago
  If the holes are being put to productive use by the people demanding them, then sure. Given how little HN likely understands about agriculture, I'd be wary of trying to use "hole digging" as a kind of absurd example. But this also illustrates how dumb it is to single out elder care as somehow economically unproductive. We pay for elder care because we desperately want our elder family members to be comfortable. If there were labor shortages in this sector, we'd be taking on the work ourselves, at substantial opportunity cost. It's one of the great things about market economies that this work can instead be done by people who have chosen to specialize in it --- they do the work more effectively, at lower cost, and derive more personal satisfaction from doing it. There is a really weird undercurrent to this subthread that I find unsettling. The availability of elder care services in the marketplace doesn't constitute a "gerontocracy".