What does this remind you of?

[pktechgirlbackup]

There's a book called the Two Income Trap that I haven't read, but have read enough references to that I'm fully prepared to pretend I understand the thesis and take the risk of being violently wrong. The author posits that women entering the work place didn't actually make society any richer, because middle class families just spent all the money bidding up housing prices in good school districts. Every individual family does better (financially) by working more, but the population as a whole has just spent a whole bunch of time and frustration on nothing. I don't think this story is completely true, because it assumes the number of good schools are fixed, ignores the increase in space per person we've observed, and because I don't think 100% of the new income went to housing. But I find it entirely plausible that some of the gains were burned on positional goods and other zero-sum pursuits.*

It's not the same, but I see a parallel between this and the fact that productivity gains in medieval Europe and Asia translated not into higher standards of living but into more people living at the same standard of living. It's not a positional good because you don't get more "absolute value" than a living person not dying, but still, they were essentially on a treadmill. I think there's a Thing here but I can't figure it out, so everyone take this as an open invitation to tangent, in the hopes that one of us will figure it out.

*Especially if you ignore the benefits that don't show up in the GDP, like increasing equality for women and their ability to support themselves in the event of divorce or spousal death

Comments

[squid314.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to mention that even though I've never commented before and will probably continue not to comment, your livejournal is probably the best and most consistent source of really rational analysis of important problems I have come across recently, even though I read a lot of blogs and official newspapers and stuff that try to do the same thing you are. I have no idea who you are or how I even ended up with you on my friends list, but please keep it up!

[pktechgirl.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much. I started following you after your excellent WW2 post, and I didn't say anything at the time because I thought that of course everyone knows when they do something awesome and one more congratulations was a waste of time. Then I started really writing and realized that it's really hard to know when you've succeeded. So when I say I've really enjoyed your writing as well, it's not a reciprocal compliment given out of obligation, it's just me finally realizing how valuable that sort of feedback is.

[lepid0ptera]

I've heard that idea before. The basic idea is if you double the available number of workers, but leave the economy's consumption the same, then the amount of work and money each person makes gets cut in half. Since women have to live and eat regardless of working, if they don't work they reduce that wage-lowering competition. The problem is that we're currently at something of a stable equilibrium, where if a woman chooses not to work her husband is still making half the amount of money he would otherwise. So for every individual women it makes sense to work, even though this means that we're all at work more than we need to be.

Obviously it doesn't scale perfectly this way; economies aren't that simple. But it's possible there is an effect of some magnitude.

The most interesting thing though is that this means that people have far more to fear, in terms of job availability, from women over immigrants. If an immigrant comes here to work, they're also consuming; they need food to eat and a roof over their head. If an American women goes to work, she's not consuming anything to create the demand for her work, since she already lives here.

[scythe-of-time.livejournal.com]

I am sputtering and stammering far too much to have a coherent comment on this. I've heard of this book before and recall having a similar reaction then, so I don't know if it'll get any better.

Oh, those damn women. Don't they just mess everything up when they're not pregnant and barefoot?

[pktechgirl.livejournal.com]

To be fair, the author, Elizabeth Warren, is a pinko commie liberal who I'm sure blames the ebul corporations for this, not women. You may remember her from such (IMO) flawed studies as the one that massively overstated the role of medical bills in bankruptcy. But it's possible that since every blog I read talks about her the same way they talk about Barbara Einrich (of Nickled and Dimed), whether that's praise or condemnation in their view, I may be conflating them a little.