Women Who Do Housework Should be Paid For It.

[Tyrannical]

Any task that a housewife performs could be replaced by a near minimum wage housekeeper thanks to liberal immigration policies. If housewives were paid that rate for their work, they most likely would not be able to afford to pay their fair share of living expenses for the house they live in

In Merka, sure. In other parts of the world, the minimum wage is a liveable wage.

And Democrats in the US don't want a livable wage, they want to control people by requiring them to live off welfare to ensure they vote Democrat

[pErvinalia]

And black people are space lizards...

[JimC]

Evidence suggests otherwise, Jim. A basic income has been trialled and used in a number of places around the world and the results are usually an increase in work and economic participation and a reduction in entrenched poverty. This idea that there is a threat of spongers is simplistic neoliberal fear rhetoric.

Where has it been trialled?

The link is in the post following that one.

One consistent thread in the article is that conditional cash handouts (requiring children to go to school etc.) produced better results than unconditional grants.

[pErvinalia]

Sure. But unconditional grants still produce good results.

[JimC]

rEvolutionists wrote:

...If we did away with the whole welfare system and just payed everyone a set minimum wage...

Including the already wealthy, or are you going to have millionaires having the money for an extra bottle of Scotch given to them by the government?

[pErvinalia]

Well it's a cost benefit thing. It might ultimately be cheaper to give it to every adult without the reporting procedures and tax filing hoo-ha. And not having to deal with newly unemployed people. No cross checking or human interaction required.

[JimC]

Not going to agree on this one, rEv - one of the problems in the current system is people with more than adequate means rorting the system to get government money coming from my hard-earned taxes) that they do nor deserve.

[pErvinalia]

Are you against the idea in general, or just the part where rich people get the income too?

[rainbow]

What about henpecked men like DaveDildo?

Shouldn't they be paid as well?

[JimC]

Are you against the idea in general, or just the part where rich people get the income too?

The "idea in general", as you have stated it, means that everybody, without exception, will get some sort of basic income, which would be absurd in many cases; not only the millionaires, but people like me as well! (sure, it would let me buy more gin, but even then...) So, the idea in general includes inevitably people who don't need the money getting it.

I'm well aware that conservatives in Oz want people on unemployment benefits etc. to jump through hoops of ever increasing difficulty, as if to be punished for not having a job. One can get a vastly better system than this without a naively utopian universal income, IMO...

[pErvinalia]

Even if it was economically positive you'd be against it? If it wasn't economically feasible to give it to everyone, they'd have to retain the bureaucracy and red tape etc to make it economic.

[NineBerry]

Are you against the idea in general, or just the part where rich people get the income too?

The "idea in general", as you have stated it, means that everybody, without exception, will get some sort of basic income, which would be absurd in many cases; not only the millionaires, but people like me as well! (sure, it would let me buy more gin, but even then...) So, the idea in general includes inevitably people who don't need the money getting it.

I'm well aware that conservatives in Oz want people on unemployment benefits etc. to jump through hoops of ever increasing difficulty, as if to be punished for not having a job. One can get a vastly better system than this without a naively utopian universal income, IMO...

There is a big flaw in your thinking: The idea that you would have more money to buy Gin. You can only have a basic income guarantee when you at the same time increase the income of the state (via direct or indirect taxes). So in the end, most people of the middle class would have the same net income as before. If you have a clever taxation system (and hunt and shoot tax evaders) the rich will have a lower net income. They might receive money from the big, but they will have to pay more taxes.

This is comparable to a single payer health care system. You could ask: Why does a millionaire receive free health care when he could afford to pay for it himself? But he will on average pay more money into the health care system by taxes or social insurance contributions than he takes out from it.

You cannot make fun of Americans who oppose a single payer health care system but then use the same arguments against a basic income guarantee.

With regard to the specific topic here: What would be the consequences of a big for gender equality? There are positive and negative effects. A negative effect is that traditional relationships where one person works and the other stays at home become more attractive than in the current system. A positive effect is that there is less of a barrier for non-working partners to leave a relationship. You leave and still continuously receive your big and don't need to battle out legal fights to receive alimony from your spouse before you get any money.

[Forty Two]

The gender roles are diminishing here in Oz at least. And not to mention that many mothers work full time too as well as the father.

Yes. Things are improving, but there is quite a long way to go yet. It seems that a lot of the time when the man of the dual income household returns from his hard day at work he takes the rubbish out once a week, mows the lawn once a fortnight, hangs a picture up once in a blue moon, changes lightbulbs as needed, then settles down in front of the teev to watch the footy. When the woman returns from her hard day at work, she is more often than not lumbered with the bulk of the cooking, cleaning and child-rearing, some of which she does before going to her place of employment as well.

There are exceptions, of course, and as I said things are improving, but at this stage the exceptions remain just that - exceptions. I regret not having been an example of such exceptions.

I find this to be nothing like reality for myself or any man I know that has a wife and kids.

You seem to live in an enlightened stratum of society. Turning from the anecdotal to the statistic view:

Later housework studies have found that women—especially employed women—are doing less housework than before and that men are doing somewhat more. Nevertheless, the average married woman in the United States did about three times as much cooking, cleaning, laundry, and other routine housework in the 1990s as the average married man. Household work continues to be divided according to gender, with women performing the vast majority of the repetitive indoor housework tasks and men performing occasional outdoor tasks (Coltrane 2000).

(Link) The article is 13 years old, but while conditions have undoubtedly improved between then and now I doubt the change is substantial.

I tried to ferret out concrete data. Unfortunately every study that looked promising is either behind a paywall or only available on paper. The closest I got to one was this study. Done in Italy, the numbers cannot be assumed to be the same as in the USA. The history and social fabric is different. However, like the USA, Italy is a modern, developed capitalist democracy. It turns out that when both partners work full time the female spends 226 minutes a day doing housework and 91 doing childcare, while the figures for the male are 87 and 50 respectively. When the male is unemployed and the female works full time the woman still does a little more of the housework (215) than the male (195), though a bit less time on childcare (41 and 70 minutes respectively).

If you can find recent statistics as they apply to the USA I would love to see them.

I've noticed in these studies that they are "self-reporting" which means that the respondent's report how much time they spend, which is not particularly reliable. Further, the studies tend to narrowly define "housework" into those areas of traditional or stereotypical women's work in the home. it's not fair to say women do too much laundry without looking at who still does various other aspects of work at home. And, typically, men still "are forced by cultural norms" (to use the Progressive lingo) to work more hours outside the home than women do, so it stands to reason that if one spouse is home at 5 and the other at 7, that one of them will be in a better position to deal with dinner and laundry.

But, alas, you are correct. I have no concrete evidence, and I must rely on what we have available which seems to say that women do more than men of the chores defined as "housework." Admitted.

[Forty Two]

Any task that a housewife performs could be replaced by a near minimum wage housekeeper thanks to liberal immigration policies. If housewives were paid that rate for their work, they most likely would not be able to afford to pay their fair share of living expenses for the house they live in

Oh, no. Just because hubby pays a salary to wifey doesn't mean wifey has to pay for rent, car, clothes, food, utilities, and entertainment expenses. What's hers is hers and what's his is hers.

[Forty Two]

Any task that a housewife performs could be replaced by a near minimum wage housekeeper thanks to liberal immigration policies. If housewives were paid that rate for their work, they most likely would not be able to afford to pay their fair share of living expenses for the house they live in

In Merka, sure. In other parts of the world, the minimum wage is a liveable wage.

You mean, in a very few countries the minimum wage is a liveable wage.

Not all jobs are worth a livable wage. It shouldn't be my obligation to support a family of 4 when I hire a guy to cut my lawn.