Some elementary marital economics
Would
you calculate the value that your car provides to you by adding up how
much the same trips would have cost if you had used a professional
limousine service, concluding that your car provides you hundreds of
thousands of dollars of value each year? Probably not.
Despite this, one sometimes sees calculations that add up the cost of having professionals do all the housework and childcare work, and then go on to conclude that a husband should pay this much his housewife, or at least this amount should be counted towards the retirement benefits of the wife if she doesn't otherwise work. And of course, should the couple ever divorce, this calculation is used to prove that the ex-wife is still entitled to most of his husband's future earnings to pay off this "debt". Some figures that I have seen add up to something like $70K each year, which should be an obvious absurdity in a nation where the median annual income is something like $40K. So let's see if we could cut down this number a little bit.
First of all, the argument conveniently forgets that since the husband and wife jointly own the house and raise the children and get to enjoy the clean house, good food and well-behaved children equally, the wife ought to be responsible for half of these expenses, yes? So if the professional value of the housework is $70K, the husband has to pay half of this amount, while the wife is responsible for the other half. So if the wife in effect works as the professional maid/chef/nanny/chauffeur/etc, then she pays the $35K to herself, and the husband is responsible only for his half. So even with this trivial observation we have already cut the husband's "debt" to half.
Second, the calculation implicitly assumes that the wife will do as good work as a professional maid, chef or nanny. This is a dubious assumption at best. It might be true for some women who excel in these tasks and enjoy them, but it is certainly false for the average wife. Just think about it: if for some task you have two workers, one of whom essentially has a guarantee of lifetime employment no matter what she does while the other has to do a good job each day to be hired again for the next day, which one do you think is typically going to work harder and do a better job?
And even if we assume that the housewife really did clean the house and cook the dinner as well as a professional, the value of these services still cannot be assumed to be nowhere near that of the professional's, for the very simple reason that her services come with an additional agreement of lifetime employment with an extremely expensive premature termination penalty, whereas the professional's services do not. This is not a small difference at all. As an analogy, suppose that there is a restaurant whose food you would consider to be worth $20. But if having dinner in that restaurant meant that you legally commit to eat there every single day in the future until you die, no matter if the quality of their cooking decreases a few years from now, would you still be willing to pay $20 to eat there tonight? Even if right now it is a nice place to eat? Hell no, I know that I certainly would not, even if Wolfgang Puck was its chef right now.
The possibility to terminate the service and switch to a competitor is an essential part of the service that every real professional provides, and thus also forms a large part of its price. Since a housewife does not allow this possibility (except with a massive financial penalty), her services simply are not worth as much as the real professional's, even if today both women happened to clean the house equally spotless and cook the roast equally delicious.
So with these considerations, I think that we have cut the original price of $70K down to maybe $10K or so, at most. But hey, it's still money. At this point we could note that those who demand that housewives should earn retirement pension, unemployment insurance and other such benefits for their housework don't seem to remember that the money for these benefits does not grow in trees, but must first be collected from payroll taxes. So if the housewife believes that the work she does to benefit herself and her family entitles her to retirement pension and unemployment insurance and what else have you, then let the family also pay the appropriate payroll taxes from the husband's paycheck. This sounds fair to me: if you expect to get benefits for housework the same way that other people get for their jobs, then you also need to pay for these benefits the same way other people pay for theirs, yes?
Last but not least, there is the issue of how hard work housework is with its responsibility, which is why housewives "deserve" to get paid for this effort. Housework is hard work (if it weren't, this whole issue wouldn't even exist), but this is a total red herring. Unlike the leftists seem to believe, the physical difficulty of some activity or the effort that it takes does not itself determine its economic value. For example, when I next go on a treadmill for 45 minutes, I end up pretty tired and drenched in sweat. But even so, I wouldn't go on to proclaim that it was hard work for me and therefore I am entitled to and deserve to get paid for it. You get paid for doing something if you can find someone who is voluntarily willing to pay you for doing that something, and you get paid precisely the amount that you both voluntarily agree with. That's pretty much all there is to it. Or at least, that is how it used to be before socialism was invented.
Despite this, one sometimes sees calculations that add up the cost of having professionals do all the housework and childcare work, and then go on to conclude that a husband should pay this much his housewife, or at least this amount should be counted towards the retirement benefits of the wife if she doesn't otherwise work. And of course, should the couple ever divorce, this calculation is used to prove that the ex-wife is still entitled to most of his husband's future earnings to pay off this "debt". Some figures that I have seen add up to something like $70K each year, which should be an obvious absurdity in a nation where the median annual income is something like $40K. So let's see if we could cut down this number a little bit.
First of all, the argument conveniently forgets that since the husband and wife jointly own the house and raise the children and get to enjoy the clean house, good food and well-behaved children equally, the wife ought to be responsible for half of these expenses, yes? So if the professional value of the housework is $70K, the husband has to pay half of this amount, while the wife is responsible for the other half. So if the wife in effect works as the professional maid/chef/nanny/chauffeur/etc, then she pays the $35K to herself, and the husband is responsible only for his half. So even with this trivial observation we have already cut the husband's "debt" to half.
Second, the calculation implicitly assumes that the wife will do as good work as a professional maid, chef or nanny. This is a dubious assumption at best. It might be true for some women who excel in these tasks and enjoy them, but it is certainly false for the average wife. Just think about it: if for some task you have two workers, one of whom essentially has a guarantee of lifetime employment no matter what she does while the other has to do a good job each day to be hired again for the next day, which one do you think is typically going to work harder and do a better job?
And even if we assume that the housewife really did clean the house and cook the dinner as well as a professional, the value of these services still cannot be assumed to be nowhere near that of the professional's, for the very simple reason that her services come with an additional agreement of lifetime employment with an extremely expensive premature termination penalty, whereas the professional's services do not. This is not a small difference at all. As an analogy, suppose that there is a restaurant whose food you would consider to be worth $20. But if having dinner in that restaurant meant that you legally commit to eat there every single day in the future until you die, no matter if the quality of their cooking decreases a few years from now, would you still be willing to pay $20 to eat there tonight? Even if right now it is a nice place to eat? Hell no, I know that I certainly would not, even if Wolfgang Puck was its chef right now.
The possibility to terminate the service and switch to a competitor is an essential part of the service that every real professional provides, and thus also forms a large part of its price. Since a housewife does not allow this possibility (except with a massive financial penalty), her services simply are not worth as much as the real professional's, even if today both women happened to clean the house equally spotless and cook the roast equally delicious.
So with these considerations, I think that we have cut the original price of $70K down to maybe $10K or so, at most. But hey, it's still money. At this point we could note that those who demand that housewives should earn retirement pension, unemployment insurance and other such benefits for their housework don't seem to remember that the money for these benefits does not grow in trees, but must first be collected from payroll taxes. So if the housewife believes that the work she does to benefit herself and her family entitles her to retirement pension and unemployment insurance and what else have you, then let the family also pay the appropriate payroll taxes from the husband's paycheck. This sounds fair to me: if you expect to get benefits for housework the same way that other people get for their jobs, then you also need to pay for these benefits the same way other people pay for theirs, yes?
Last but not least, there is the issue of how hard work housework is with its responsibility, which is why housewives "deserve" to get paid for this effort. Housework is hard work (if it weren't, this whole issue wouldn't even exist), but this is a total red herring. Unlike the leftists seem to believe, the physical difficulty of some activity or the effort that it takes does not itself determine its economic value. For example, when I next go on a treadmill for 45 minutes, I end up pretty tired and drenched in sweat. But even so, I wouldn't go on to proclaim that it was hard work for me and therefore I am entitled to and deserve to get paid for it. You get paid for doing something if you can find someone who is voluntarily willing to pay you for doing that something, and you get paid precisely the amount that you both voluntarily agree with. That's pretty much all there is to it. Or at least, that is how it used to be before socialism was invented.
Ilkka says:
Last but not least, there is the issue of how hard work housework is with its responsibility, which is why housewives "deserve" to get paid for this effort.
Moreover, a married couple are acting as an economic unit to achieve the goal of getting their offspring to the point where they are independently capable of reproducing.
Although, both will go on to assist their offspring beyond that point as well.
Posted by beenaround | 2:48 PM
Total 10,000 readers tonight.
You are the best! We love you.
Posted by Anonymous | 2:55 PM
In large part, I suspect that this whole issue of "housewives" being paid etc is a reaction to the observation that some women get dumped at some point by their husbands.
So, it is a strategy to ensure some form of economic independence for such women.
Of course, one has to ask why such women were making such poor choices in partners ... perhaps they didn't have much to offer themselves.
If I look at all my uncles, those that married, which is the majority, were married to one woman for their whole lives (until they died, or until today) regardless of the quality of their wives.
Perhaps some men have the faithfulness gene, and some don't.
Posted by beenaround | 2:56 PM
I can only think of one housewife who would command an economic equivalent anywhere near 70k/year.
She:
Cares for the 3 kids
Does her husband's books, permitting, taxes, etc for his small business
Homeschools their 3 kids (what is the cost of private school tuition for 3 children)
Does pretty much all of the cooking and cleaning, quite well I might add
Of course they have the happiest nonarranged marriage in my social circle, so the question of valuation for her services is probably moot.
Posted by Anonymous | 3:17 AM