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

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. *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!

My other reply went off on a different tack, but I've just realised
what you were responding to. I didn't say the market economy was
soaking up people's wages. I said it's soaking up their *labour
power*. In other words, women's labour is increasingly sold on the
market, rather than bartered domestically.