Bangs for the Buck!

You may have noticed I have a rather exalted notion of the place of a homemaker allowance in the scheme of things. We no longer believe in religion as a society, so to a considerable degree, we religiously believe in our entitlements. Health care and education, disability and old age pensions, unemployment insurance, holidays and job safety: These define us as people. And a homemaker allowance screams what kind of people we want to be, in what kind of world.

We work~not to serve the corporations~but to have nice homes. Family and home are the final end of our efforts, for most people. Well, Let's go for it! A home has to be made by somebody~Let's call them homemakers~and give them an allowance. Let's get our priorities straight. For the last forty years, every effort has been made to get women into the workforce, leaving one-income couples to fend for themselves, treated with benign neglect and subject to petty harrassment. Well, let's facilitate breadwinner and homemaker couples, and treat working couples to benign harrassment.

Promoting the one involves marginalising the other. We can't have it both ways. So an entire thought world starts to take shape around a homemaker allowance.

* Assume $300 a month for a basic homemaker with increments for any children or invalids they care for.
* Cancel survivor's pensions for working spouses to pay for it.
* Child allowances to be folded into the homemaker allowance: It is madness giving child allowances to working couples. We don't want working couples, so why subsidise them?
* Spousal inheritance rights to be limited in future to breadwinners and homemakers: the meaningful essence of a marriage.
* Breadwinners to have priority in the workforce: working couples coming last: and singles in between.
* Homemakers focussed on part-time jobs with no benefits: They're covered by their breadwinners'.
* No more talk about subsidised daycare: usually provided by homemakers.
* No more full-wage govt jobs to single girls. It's a policy of national suicide: desexing our young women.
* Stop encouraging women to expect equal representation anywhere. Women's equality is not to be confused with racial equality.

So we are looking at a radically reformed society, all on a voluntary basis. Nobody is obliged to take the allowance! But with millions of homemakers (mainly women of course) looking for part-time jobs with no need for benefits, the opportunities are golden. Quite how matters will shake down is anyone's guess: especially for single career women. They will be really scarce.

The economy cannot generate full-wage jobs for everyone. Young people go to school and live at home into their thirties. Employment conditions in the private service economy resemble peonage: Young people hold 2-3-4 jobs, on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, just to pay the rent! So the greater need is to allocate the few good jobs available on a rational basis i.e. one per family, let's say to the breadwinner.

Let's stop digging ourselves into a hole, and put more effort into getting out of it!

P.S. Happy Christmas, you all! I nearly forgot! And Hannukah and Ramadan, where appropriate. And let's not forget jolly old Saturn! He started it all. Remember?