On Feb 13, 1:39*pm, (Cynic) wrote:
On Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:53:21 -0800 (PST), Ste
wrote:





It is more an attitude of mind and expectations than a reorganisation
of society. =A0A married couple in the UK are perfectly prepared to
sacrifice their life to some extent in order to raise children. =A0In
other countries thare is *exactly* the same attitude and expectation
regarding the care of parents in their old age. =A0A couple will marry
and sacrifice much of their time to caring for their children.
Following that, an elderly relative will move in and they will devote
more time to caring for that relative. =A0And finally they will
themselves become old and frail, and move in with a son or daughter.
It is something that is taken as a given and normal sequence of events
in any average life. =A0Sending a parent to a care home is as unusual as
it is to send a child to a care home in the UK.
But to return to what I was just saying about child daycare, the whole
point of elderly care homes is to wring out labour from the process of
caring, freeing that labour up (women's labour, in particular) for
consumption in the market economy - and also, to some extent,
alleviating the psychological burden of care, so that other burdens
created by the market economy can be successfully carried without
mental breakdown.

It is not the "market economy" that is soaking up people's wages to
make it unaffordable to live on a single income. *It is government
taxation.

Rubbish! Direct taxes are at their lowest in living memory. Indirect
taxes (e.g. point-of-use charges) have increased massively, but people
such as yourself often tend to support such things anyway as an
alternative to direct taxes.

And the point is, my taxes pay for the public services that I, my
family, and friends enjoy. I don't have a problem paying taxes in
principle, and I don't have this imaginary perception like you do that
the public sector is full of workshy layabouts who sit around drinking
tea all day. As I've said previously, my experience of the public
sector is that most of the 'waste' occurs at the interface with the
private sector. It is true (though not in my direct expeirence) that
the public sector can be inefficiently organised and lacks political
control, but the private sector often lacks organisation almost by
definition, precisely because there is so much atomisation of the
productive process (not least because monopoly is prevented), and it
often also lacks the appropriate incentives (which is precisely why it
cannot be permitted monopoly).



And a great deal of that taxation is used to provide the
expensive services and benefits that would not be necessary if a
family could afford to live on a single income!

Indeed.



Consider how much of your income ends up going to the government one
way or another. *Obviously there is income tax, VAT and council tax,
which of themselves eat up a huge percentage of your income (work it
out and surprise yourself). *But you also pay indirectly for business
taxes because the cost of *all* goods, utilities and services must
incororate that levy - which in many cases you are then charged VAT
on. *And of course there is the huge cut that government takes from
motor fuels that again affects the cost of almost everything.

If people could afford to go back to single-income families, it would
increase the number of jobs available which consequently would
decrease the amount needed to pay unemployment benefits.

Yes, but like I said previously, it improves the bargaining power of
labour! Why do you think they ended the post-war policy of full
employment, and put one in ten on the dole in the 80s?