On the positive side, President Joe Biden has suddenly acknowledged that the country’s record-low reproduction is a problem that needs to be fixed.
However, his proposed solution fails magnificently and fails to acknowledge the contribution parents make to the market and ignores their need to spend more time with their people.
The National Center for Health Statistics released its annual report on reproduction last month, revealing a record-breaking decline in the proportion of women who gave birth in 2023. The White House Council of Economic Advisors acknowledged that falling reproduction” creates major headwinds to economic growth, the fiscal sustainability of people gain programs, and the pattern of constant improvements in living standards” in an issue short released this month in response to the NCHS numbers.
The Biden White House believes that” building out the treatment economy,” which entails using state funds to pay some individuals to take care of their young children, can help solve this issue.
The White House supports this approach by introducing the following titling:
Living standards focus on production per person, which describes the content conditions of the average person. This is the economy’s capacity for production and consumption, adjusted for community growth. Output per person = output per employee * workers per person can be summed up as a straightforward accounting formula for a comparison of output per capita and living standards.
In plainer words, Biden asserts that increasing the number of people who work full-time would lift living standards.
Biden finally points out that while the percentage of women without young kids in the workplace is essentially the same as the percentage of men without younger kids in the workplace, the percentage of women with young children who are working is much lower than the percentage of men with young children who are in the workforce. In order to accomplish this goal, Biden points out that while the percentage of women without younger children in the workplace is essentially the same as the percentage of men with young children in the workplace.
Therefore, Biden concludes, if the government paid people to care for young children, then more young mothers could work full time.
But is our economy actually doing better in such circumstances? Has our standard of living been actually raised by giving our families care from other people?
Think of it this way: If a mother chooses to stay home and care for her young children, that is considered consumption. The work she does is not regarded as a job, and the care she gives her family does not appear in the gross national product.
However, if that same mother pays another woman to carry out the exact same duties as she did as a mother, all of that activity is suddenly regarded as output and a new position is created. No new real-world goods or services have been developed. Simply put, the government now declares that what was leisure is now work.
Let’s take this a step further. Let’s say that before they have children, one woman works as a cook, another cleans houses, and another provides child care. Three jobs would be lost if these women were to all leave the workforce to take care of their families, and those jobs would also lose their economic output.
However, if those same women united and shared one mother, one mother would clean up the house, and one mother would take care of the childcare, those three jobs would suddenly return, and that same woman’s economic output would be as a result!
All of Biden’s economic gains are based on accounting nonsense, such as using government funds to pay some people to care for others.
However, one might wonder if the services that women provide as workers are more valuable than those that they offer as mothers. That is frequently not the case, according to Biden’s own issue brief:” For some workers, leaving the workforce and taking on care burdens themselves may be more affordable than paying for child or elder care.”
If hiring someone else to care for your family costs more than hiring someone else, that is a pretty strong economic sign that the services you offer to your family are worth more than other economic tasks.
Finally, and this is the most important point, Biden ignores the fact that the majority of mothers, especially those with young children, prefer to work part-time to take care of their families as opposed to working full-time and paying someone to do it for them. According to the Pew Research Center, 53 % of married women with children under the age of 18 prefer to work part-time, and 23 % prefer not to work anyplace else. Just 23 % want a full- time job.
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Most unmarried mothers with young children prefer to work part-time ( 36 % ), or not at all ( 15 % ), compared to those who want full-time ( 39 % ).
Mothers want to provide care for their families. Instead of making it harder for mothers to get the work-life balance they want, not the work-life balance that Democratic Party radicals want them to have, the government should be making it easier for mothers to achieve.
