Sunday, September 23, 2012

Economics of a family

I've been labeled many things so this post may label me as Anti-woman but that's fine.  It isn't a secret that nowadays parents no longer raise their children.  The children rearing is left to nannies for the rich and high school girls and/or day care for the not-so-rich.  This is almost exclusively caused by the feminist movement.  I'm hesitant to say that the latest generation is more corrupt and reprehensible than my generation or those above me because every generation says that about the subsequent ones.  Even Egyptian hieroglyphs have this message and a couple hundred years ago, Baldassar Castiglione wrote about it in "Book of the Courtier."  But if it is true, I think the lack of parents raising their children is to blame.  My question is, "Why is it chauvinistic to say woman should stay at home with the kids?" 
        I am an economist so I make simplifying assumptions in order to make sense of the world.  Today's assumption is that women are better than men at everything.  Fair enough assumption, I'm not being anti-women, and men are too cowardly to speak against this so there, we're off to a good start.  Women are better than men at work and at raising children but sometimes the woman can't do absolutely everything.  There needs to be teamwork.  So, what can a man help with?  In economics, there is a law called "The Law of comparative advantage" it states that if there are two countries in which one country is better than the other at making two goods, it is still beneficial for the countries to trade if the inferior country focuses on the item where the gap between ability is narrower.  For Example, if country A is much better at making textiles and slightly better at making computer chips than Country B, Country A should devote all it's effort to making textiles, and Country B should devote their efforts to making computer chips and then Country A trades textiles for computer chips.  When this is done, Country A and Country B have more textiles and computer chips than they would have if they divided their efforts amongst the two goods.  In this way, everyone gains and nobody loses, which in Ecomomics is called a "Pareto improvement."  Now, how does this law relate to a family?
         As we said earlier, women are better than men at everything; they can go to work and work the system and get promoted and bring home more money than men.  They are also better at raising kids and keeping a clean house than men are.  Now, we need to see where the gap is least.  I think it's fair to say that the gap in women's ability over men is far narrower when it comes to the workplace and earning a paycheck than it is for child rearing, and keeping a clean house.  Since men are closer in ability to woman at earning a salary than they are at child rearing and keeping a house, it would be advantageous for the man to devote his efforts to earning the paycheck for the family and the woman to take care of the kids and keep a clean house.  This way the husband and wife (again, assuming that all people with children are married, as I said before economists make ridiculous assumptions to simplify things) get more money and more child rearing and cleaner house than if they split the responsibility amongst the two of them.  I think the future generations would benefit if house wives stop looking at their duty as inferior to a man's, it's just simply logical for them to do it. 

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