How women got more economical freedom - the biggest failure of modern politics?

[Rodion Romanovich]

As the topic title says. It's IMO complex problem. The only time I can think of when unemployment was a smaller problem was when most women stayed at home and only men worked. While this was perhaps unfair from a genus perspective, it granted employment for all who WANTED a work, without requiring a huge growth. In fact, it seems today that it's impossible to achieve a growth as massive as is needed in order to employ all who want jobs, because there's too little request for products and services, and salaries are pushed down by the competition over the few jobs that exist, so few can at all buy products and services and get the growth circle started. Another disadvantage of both sexes working is that instead of now giving men 8 hours workday and women 8 hours of household work, both men and women now get at least 12 hours because they both need to work and do household work, which causes stress and disease to increase, increasing the need for physicians and hospitals, which hurts the stately finances, and is gradually making governments abandon parts of the free healthcare.

Could the feminists, or whoever "solved" the problem of women not getting a chance to career or economical freedom have solved this problem in another way than creating massive unemployment, weakening the laborers compared to employers, lowering salaries and increasing health problems due to overwork and stress which a mimimum of 12 hours work per day results in? Finally, women are still discriminated with lower salaries, so the solution was hardly successful at achieving it's objective, outside creating so many new problems.

In my opinion, that women had few or no economical rights before this development was a problem that needed to be solved, but the way it was solved in is perhaps one of the biggest failures of modern politics IMO.

Opinions? Suggestions? How should it have been solved instead?

[Watchman]

The unemployement problem is a recent issue. Take one look at how much of it was around for example during the so-called postwar "Golden Era" (until the Seventies), or even as little as twenty years ago. Besides, women were present in force on the factory floors of the Industrial Revolution already...

Plus I've never ever heard of any other workable scheme that would allow women financial and hence social independence; a whole lot of thinly veiled reactionarism yes, but nothing worth the while.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Plus I've never ever heard of any other workable scheme that would allow women financial and hence social independence;

yes same here, and that's what I want to find - another workable scheme that would allow that. It's tragical how I'm seing good guys and girls turn from hopeful children into overworked tragical depressed patients because of the overwork, frustration, lack of works and lack of future. I find it fascistical how modern society discriminates and considers people who can't work 12 hours a day "weak" and "trash". And the weakest (in terms of how LONG TIME they can work) women who were worst oppressed before this change, are thus still oppressed.

[Watchman]

But isn't that overwork, stress et-multiple-cetera (at least in its epidemic form) rather more a feature of modern business practice ? Squeezing the employees dry in a quite likely misguided quest for short-term efficiency ?

I don't quite see what the sex of the employees has to do with it.

[English assassin]

IMHO all this stress and angst is because we don't have ENOUGH to worry about. (I exempt the Dutch, who are very concerned about sparrows and dominos.)

If I was Victorian no doubt I would have had eight children by now, half of whom would have died, I could catch smallpox at any moment, if I lost my clients I could quite literally starve to death, etc etc. Things like that probably took people's minds off more minor issues like whether they felt, yunno, personally fulfilled.

As for women working I think the basic premise is flawed. Size of the workforce should be essentially irrelevant. What, IMHO, you have overlooked is that by working, women both create new services and create the demand for (and power to buy) new services. The effect is seen on both sides of the supply-demand equation. The economy is not a zero sum game, in short. There may be short term transitional effects but by doubling the workforce yes, you double labour supply, but you also double demand because the women want to spend their wages) so overall the effect shiould be about neutral.

No doubt in real life its much more complicated as men and women have different working patterns, things like union membership will have been different, the transitional effects I airily dismiss may in practice be substantial, and so on, but I think I am right in saying the introdduction of women to the workforce should not have been the cause of the effects you describe.

The same arguments get put forward against immigration and they are wrong too.

[Watchman]

And, of course, it would be pretty difficult to explain in the context of modern open societies why exactly women who want to work should or could not... Personal freedom, right ?

[Rodion Romanovich]

As for women working I think the basic premise is flawed. Size of the workforce should be essentially irrelevant. What, IMHO, you have overlooked is that by working, women both create new services and create the demand for (and power to buy) new services. The effect is seen on both sides of the supply-demand equation. The economy is not a zero sum game, in short. There may be short term transitional effects but by doubling the workforce yes, you double labour supply, but you also double demand because the women want to spend their wages) so overall the effect shiould be about neutral.

Women bought a lot of stuff when their husbands did all the work. The basic idea of economical freedom for the women was to counter marriages because the man was rich. I claim that the size of the workforce does matter.

There are some ways of changing it. Either you pass laws which forbids workdays above 4-6 hours, or you make a system where for instance only one of the persons in a couple works, making it possible for a family to live on one wage (whether the woman or man works here shouldn't matter). Those are examples of solutions to the problem, but none are really satisfactory to most. You could also choose the Marxistic point of view and make smaller "teams" consisting of several familiies where the best workers work and those best at home are kept at home. And so on. But they all seem to restrict freedom and equal rights in some way or another. But letting the price of equal rights be to drive people ill, which is almost as bad as killing, is a too high cost for freedom of choice IMO.

This debate is a little unusual because I don't even have anything resembling a good solution to defend. All I can do is explain how the current ones are bad, and why they're bad, and encourage people to try hard and find better solution. Which one of the current, all bad, solutions is the best, I'm not intending to debate, as it's more a matter of opinion and which group you belong to - in such a case people end up simply defending their own group and wanting the others to take the damage. Such a personal debate was not my intention. Again, I ask, could we come up with a better solution?

I was for instance thinking that if maids for household work are employed more commonly, a couple will have the ability to both work, and still not get overworked. The problem is, the maids then need to make approximately half, or less than half, of what the employer of the maid does. So this can only be used in cases where the working couple have well paid jobs. The only way to solve the problem for other couples could be to have limited work time per day for lower salary jobs, but then we need tax relief etc. for those persons, in order for their salaries to suffice if they share it with others because of the shifts introduced. Perhaps a removal of vat on all food and finding a way to lower the costs of flats, apartments, villas etc. could compensate that, as the main things you need to use your salary for is accomodation and food. But won't that lower the salaries of workers in the construction and food sectors? Well, one of the reasons why houses are so expensive is the shortage of it, at least in Europe. The average couples live at home until around 30, or something horrible like that. Could someone continue this reasoning or point out flaws in it at this early stage?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

As the topic title says. It's IMO complex problem. The only time I can think of when unemployment was a smaller problem was when most women stayed at home and only men worked. While this was perhaps unfair from a genus perspective, it granted employment for all who WANTED a work,

Uh...except women, which is kind of the point.

Could the feminists, or whoever "solved" the problem of women not getting a chance to career or economical freedom have solved this problem in another way than creating massive unemployment, weakening the laborers compared to employers, lowering salaries and increasing health problems due to overwork and stress which a mimimum of 12 hours work per day results in? Finally, women are still discriminated with lower salaries, so the solution was hardly successful at achieving it's objective, outside creating so many new problems.

Well, there's an easy solution, how about we make it so you as a man can't have a job and you have to pick you spouse based on the amount she makes and if you find out you hate her you can't get a divorce because you have no money?

[Rodion Romanovich]

@Kanamori: an equation doesn't say much unless it can be shown where it comes from. Is it supported by statistics or a theoretical approach? I'm not ranting here, just curious and willing to learn, with a normal critical mind until I've seen enough proof.

Some other replies:
- 90 percent consumption was a little higher than I thought, but still proves my point. 90 percent is not 100 percent, so increase in consumption is NOT proportional to wage by a factor as large as one. So the basic axiom is wrong, which means any theses based on it may be, but aren't necessarily, wrong. Wherever the axiom is used it must therefore be a justification that the approximation error is neglectable.
- The greater import than export still seems illogical. Is this export/import rates made by government and ruling, or are all companies included etc? Which institutions are included in the study?

[Rodion Romanovich]

Uh...except women, which is kind of the point.

That is partly true, but I've also met many women who preferred the old style. Also, the new system gives women freedom to choose to work, but prevents them from working at home if they want to. The earlier system gave women freedom to choose to stay at home, but prevented them from working. Both systems contain as little freedom as choice as they possibly could. But like I said this old solution wasn't good in my opinion, and that was the point of the thread. I'm not debating a view, and searching for a view. I want a discussion of suggestions, judging all factors in society honestly and without letting personal opinions in individual political questions affect it, in order to solve this problem. Unsolved problems lead to society crises and conflicts, which are best avoided by solving the problems before the conflicts begin.

Well, there's an easy solution, how about we make it so you as a man can't have a job and you have to pick you spouse based on the amount she makes and if you find out you hate her you can't get a divorce because you have no money?

The point of the thread was to find a better solution for preventing this to happen for women or men. In a way, if there's fair wages for the sex that works, then it doesn't matter for a person of the other sex which person of the first sex he/she chooses. The problem then remains only for singles. If they'd recieve some kind of support the problem would be almost solved. That's what I meant with that the old system wasn't a complete failure. But I still agree that it was a failure.

If there's one OPINION I'm holding here, it's that all existing solutions to the problem in question are bad because they always involve oppressing someone, they only differ by who is chosen to be oppressed.

[A.Saturnus]

Why do the USA have full employment and enough demand? Because they can sell their goods abroad.

The country with the highest export to import ratio is Germany, yet it has high unemployment.
As a psychologist I content your assertion that people with higher wages safe more because of their need of savety. If you have a high wage, savety is not a concern for you because of steady income. If your wages are low, you worry more about savety and think how you can save some. I´m not saying that higher wages correlate perfectly with spending - because I don´t know that - but your reasoning is flawed. Besides, saving is a good thing. Saving means financial stability. Someone how saves now, spends later. In the end, he will give out more money than someone he spends all and gets into financial problems. Also remember that saved money works of it own. Unless you hide it in a sock of course.

[Rodion Romanovich]

The country with the highest export to import ratio is Germany, yet it has high unemployment.
As a psychologist I content your assertion that people with higher wages safe more because of their need of savety. If you have a high wage, savety is not a concern for you because of steady income. If your wages are low, you worry more about savety and think how you can save some. I´m not saying that higher wages correlate perfectly with spending - because I don´t know that - but your reasoning is flawed. Besides, saving is a good thing. Saving means financial stability. Someone how saves now, spends later. In the end, he will give out more money than someone he spends all and gets into financial problems. Also remember that saved money works of it own. Unless you hide it in a sock of course.

I didn't say that. I said that extremely low wage is all consumed to cover the basic needs. Slightly higher, and people can start saving, and will do so because they have such a small safety margin. The poorest would also like to save, but can't. You need to get much higher wage before you start spending a larger percentage of your wage again.

As for your economical argument, saving is a bad thing if you want the growth which is necessary for a capitalism to avoid huge unemployment. If there's not enough demand, i.e. consumption as opposed to saving, the capitalism results in unemployment.

Finally, I again ask what kind of exports and imports these statistics are measuring. Is it only governmental import/export, or are also companies involved, or are only companies and no governmental affairs included? It matters a lot.

[Watchman]

Uh, Legio ? By which token does the modern system prevent anyone from "working at home" ? Indeed, to be literal about it, much of the "outside" work nowadays *has* to be brought home because otherwise you don't have enough hours in the day... But between assorted household machinery (the washing machine being perhaps the most important of them), to my knowledge the average home remains quite livable even if there's only one person both bringing in the bread and keeping the walls standing.

Or at least ours did. Us kids just had to learn to be a little flexible and self-sufficient (which is proving quite useful now that mom's moved out, but anyway).

And if someone wants to play the housewife/-hubby, then he or she is entirely free to (bar, perhaps, odd looks from friends and relatives, but those aren't the point) - assuming the spouse is able to foot the bill just by his or her job. And many do, out of either choice or necessity (read as "unemployement"). Sounds like as much freedom of choice in the matter as can be expected; AFAIK nowhere there exists any law against it...

[A.Saturnus]

I didn't say that. I said that extremely low wage is all consumed to cover the basic needs. Slightly higher, and people can start saving, and will do so because they have such a small safety margin. The poorest would also like to save, but can't. You need to get much higher wage before you start spending a larger percentage of your wage again.

But then there´s no point here. Only a small part of the population have so little income that they can´t possibly save any and this part is the least affected by emancipation. The point is that due to higher wages, the average household will be less concerned with saving money and by consequence, spend more.

As for your economical argument, saving is a bad thing if you want the growth which is necessary for a capitalism to avoid huge unemployment. If there's not enough demand, i.e. consumption as opposed to saving, the capitalism results in unemployment.

I find that too simplistic. Saving is - most of the time - a form of investment and investments are good for the economy. Less spending is bad if the people don´t have money to spend but if they just use the money in another way, the money is still in the economy.

Finally, I again ask what kind of exports and imports these statistics are measuring. Is it only governmental import/export, or are also companies involved, or are only companies and no governmental affairs included? It matters a lot.

As far as I know it´s the total amount of export of the entire economy. Anyway, it´s a simple truth that America is an import oriented country and Germany an export oriented one and Germany has higher unemployment.