61–70 of 109 posts
Meanwhile, in the US and Canada, you are forced to sign clauses that gives your employer full ownership of anything you invent ever while employed and you have to ask your ~parents~ employer if you could please do something else on the side. Good for Sweden, these feodal rules are dragging everyone down.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Male real wages have been stagnant since 1973, and that's without considering the situation around health care, where costs have risen much faster than general inflation. Counting health care, male real wages have declined noticeably since 1973. Meanwhile, returns to capital have grown dramatically. This is precisely what you would expect in a weak economy, where the workers necessarily lack bargaining power…
Additionally, in 1973, there was a good chance you had a partner who could stay at home to watch the kid(s). Now you have both people working whether you like it or not, because you're competing with two-income households for housing. Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing, but making it (on average) necessary for two people to work to afford a home when before it took one is a bad thing.
Any reason you used the term servitude which implies a negative connotation, when many women were happy with that arrangement? It also implies none of the women received positive utility from staying at home with the kids and it was always a chore, which seems a little ridiculous.
We should be embracing every opportunity for more personal involvement with our children and family, not calling it servitude. It does all families, past, present and future, a huge disservice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Additionally, in 1973, there was a good chance you had a partner who could stay at home to watch the kid(s). Now you have both people working whether you like it or not, because you're competing with two-income households for housing. Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing, but making it (on average) necessary for two people to work to afford a home when before it took one is a bad thing.
> Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing Any reason you used the term servitude which implies a negative connotation, when many women were happy with that arrangement? It also implies none of the women received positive utility from staying at home with the kids and it was always a chore, which seems a little ridiculous. We should be embracing every opportunity for more personal involveme…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Male real wages have been stagnant since 1973, and that's without considering the situation around health care, where costs have risen much faster than general inflation. Counting health care, male real wages have declined noticeably since 1973. Meanwhile, returns to capital have grown dramatically. This is precisely what you would expect in a weak economy, where the workers necessarily lack bargaining power…
Additionally, in 1973, there was a good chance you had a partner who could stay at home to watch the kid(s). Now you have both people working whether you like it or not, because you're competing with two-income households for housing. Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing, but making it (on average) necessary for two people to work to afford a home when before it took one is a bad thing.
Alternative is 'trapping them' (horrible choice of words btw) into corporate servitude. Which of the two is better? Which of the two is better for children?
Meanwhile, in the US and Canada, you are forced to sign clauses that gives your employer full ownership of anything you invent ever while employed and you have to ask your ~parents~ employer if you could please do something else on the side. Good for Sweden, these feodal rules are dragging everyone down.
When I first learned about this type of contract I couldn’t even believe the concept. How can anybody think it’s ok that a company can claim and kind of ownership over things an employee does in his free time? I have signed up for 40 hours a week and not for being fully owned by the company. What happens if you work another job and invent things there? Do the companies own each other’s stuff?
I like to frame it in terms of reputation risk to the company. If they own the contents of people's creative hobbies outside of work then I am happy to put "Copyright $COMPANY" in big letters on my amateur porn website... Surprisingly few companies have thought about it that way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Additionally, in 1973, there was a good chance you had a partner who could stay at home to watch the kid(s). Now you have both people working whether you like it or not, because you're competing with two-income households for housing. Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing, but making it (on average) necessary for two people to work to afford a home when before it took one is a bad thing.
> Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing Alternative is 'trapping them' (horrible choice of words btw) into corporate servitude. Which of the two is better? Which of the two is better for children?
The choice should be there for men and women to work or rear. Applying that freedom appropriately is the individual's responsibility.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing Any reason you used the term servitude which implies a negative connotation, when many women were happy with that arrangement? It also implies none of the women received positive utility from staying at home with the kids and it was always a chore, which seems a little ridiculous. We should be embracing every opportunity for more personal involveme…
the term presumably is used because at that point it was not a choice. Many women may have been happy with it, but there was scant alternative for those who were not.
This has changed, but it reveals a lot. It also might relate to why it's so hard to find teachers for the price government is accustomed to paying - if you were a well-educated woman in the 1950's you had far fewer options (aka bargaining power) than you do today, and teaching was likely to be one of the few options with a bit of prestige and mental stimulation available to you.
It's true that women weren't FORCED to not work, but to suggest that they didn't face a strong disadvantage is disingenuous. Hell, it's still a rampant problem - how many tech bros get off an interview and then say "ah but she's 32, she'll want to take maternity soon". This is a good reason for making maternity and paternity leave equal, incidentally...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/podcasts/the-daily/pregna...
Though for all that, my wife stays home with our kid by choice. She went back to work when our daughter was 6 months old, and after six months of barely seeing her outside of the weekends she just couldn't bear it (I didn't much like it either). The only reason we can do that is because I have a good paying job in tech making something over the 90th percentile of incomes in my country. I wish other people had that choice. Hell, I wish I had that choice. But few do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The fear is that otherwise you will quit. Hiring is hard here, so it's better to have a promise of someone coming back in 6 months than a job opening that can take 12 months to fill. This is what a strong economy actually looks like. It's hard (in my experience) to get Americans to understand this, because our economy here has been so bad for so long, most people here have never experienced anything like this.
Exactly. Male real wages have been stagnant since 1973, and that's without considering the situation around health care, where costs have risen much faster than general inflation. Counting health care, male real wages have declined noticeably since 1973. Meanwhile, returns to capital have grown dramatically. This is precisely what you would expect in a weak economy, where the workers necessarily lack bargaining power…
A real weak economy would look like Japan, Ukraine, Russia, Zimbabwe, etc.
Life for the laborer has been under systemic attack since Reagan, but the US economy as a whole has been doing swimmingly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Additionally, in 1973, there was a good chance you had a partner who could stay at home to watch the kid(s). Now you have both people working whether you like it or not, because you're competing with two-income households for housing. Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing, but making it (on average) necessary for two people to work to afford a home when before it took one is a bad thing.
> Of course, not trapping women in domestic servitude is a good thing Any reason you used the term servitude which implies a negative connotation, when many women were happy with that arrangement? It also implies none of the women received positive utility from staying at home with the kids and it was always a chore, which seems a little ridiculous. We should be embracing every opportunity for more personal involveme…
But in 1973, it fell almost exclusively to the female parent, whether it was what she wanted or not. Many women may well have been happy with that arrangement, but practically no men would have "received positive utility". And either there's something unique about the Y chromosome that makes it impossible for them to enjoy that, or a lot of women weren't so much "happy" as "accepting".
We should indeed embrace opportunities for more personal involvement in families -- for both parents. Generous leave is a big start on that. But "100% leave, as long as you're female" is not.