Who is 'chopped-liver'? A housewife or a working wife? Who is to be preferred? One-income or two-income marriages? This last forty years, we have promoted working couples while leaving single-income marriages to fend for themselves. It should be the other way around. Single-income marriages deserve support. I propose to replace child allowances with a HOMEMAKER ALLOWANCE. The strengthening of the family. And the restoration of middle-class society.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Part-Time Work

I envisage homemakers taking the allowance and part-time jobs. I can see 8 million Canadian women (and nineteen men) accepting the allowance, 6 million of them with part-time jobs. Why the opposition to part-time work?

I dropped out in the late Sixties to write up an insight, and spent the next forty years looking for a part-time job I could live on. Some hope! (I eventually found cab driving.) Huge numbers of mothers and housewives would prefer part-time work. Old age pensioners and people with disabilities. Students, artists and athletes in training. Hedonists (bums). Probably 70-80% of the adult population would prefer part-time work, or would appreciate the option. The corporations can only treat part-time workers as garbage. The unions just want to ban part-time work. Can we please talk sense and try to rationalise the concept!

India and China must not make the mistake made by the West in abandoning the nuclear family. No economy can provide everyone with a full-wage job. For the foreseeable future, most third world economies will be based on subsistence farming supplemented with some seasonal and part-time work; and it has to be rationalised. Economies need a low cost labour component; and the key to the solution is for homemakers to work part-time, their benefits (and status) being met by their bread-winner spouses. They are not an exploited, immoral lower class.

The West is stoking up this vast inferno of entitlement because working wives are allowed double pensions (OK and a few men) and then sucks in cheap immigrant labour to feed the flames. Well, let's try to develop an alternative.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Why Equality?

We can't have both. Either we go with working couples, or we go with the nuclear family. Promoting the one involves marginalising the other. The corporations and the media put working couples first. I put working couples last, and seek to promote breadwinner and homemaker couples. That is the object of this blog.

When the issue is presented in those terms, there is little room for discussion. The merits of the single income marriage are obvious. So the issue is never presented in those terms. The media will allow no mention of the breadwinner and homemaker arrange-ment. It is thought crime. Politically incorrect.* Instead the discussion revolves around women's equality. And I haven't a clue where to go from here. There are doors opening everywhere. Let's try this one.

What Does Equality Mean For Women?

The Anglo world has been fixated with 'equality' since the Black Death in the mid 1300's. The only defence against mass extermination was the nuclear family: a farmer and his wife working their private farm, living private lives, supporting their immediate family, keeping to themselves. They would often survive the plague, while villagers living and working the village lands together succumbed in droves.

Somehow the farmer and his wife were the righteous people, and villagers and nobles were tainted. The private farm took over from the manor as the basis of socio-economic life. People became individuals and not class tokens: They acquired surnames. And for six hundred years, the whole logic of social progress was towards that end. Middle class people were empowered ~their values prevailed~while the lower and upper classes were disadvantaged.

So equality for women means primarily being a farmer's wife: There is an inherent equality between bread-winner and homemaker that just needs a little tweaking. They mutually support each other and depend on each other, performing complementary tasks: forming a reciprocal relationship greater than the sum of the parts. They seek completion not in themselves but in a partnership. The concept is fair and square: It just needs a little fine tuning.

Most importantly I suspect, the homemaker role needs to be recognised as such. Which is the first function of an allowance: It says, Thank you! An allowance isn't just money. It's a token of appreciation. Given the option, huge numbers of women would prefer to be home-makers, revolutionising the domestic scene and the workplace.

The important thing is for men and women to pull together and not against each other. If women pull against the men as equals, we'll get nowhere. Somehow this teensy point gets overlooked.

The media only talk the symbols. Here on this blog, we talk reality.

*If you doubt me, YOU try broaching the issue.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Attn: Generations X and Y

When I was growing up in the Sixties~If you can overlook the oxymoron~there were some 15 people in the workforce for every pensioner, who enjoyed a pretty modest lifestyle. Today we are approaching 3 people working for each pensioner, who enjoys an elevated lifestyle. You guys have to slash the pension obligations Trudeau dumped on you, to get himself re-elected.

Firstly you eliminate survivor's pensions for working spouses. As per my opening blog, they are an illicit inducement to get women to scab. Only homemaker spouses are entitled to survivors' pensions, as a reward for foregoing their own careers.

Now let me run this one by you. If an old-fashioned breadwinner husband works to support his wife, who similarly works as an unpaid homemaker to support him: and the husband retires and gets a pension to maintain him and his wife: and the husband dies: his wife continues to receive his pension as his surviving spouse, but takes a one third cut. All's fair and aboveboard so far.

But suppose the wife dies first, should not the husband also take a one third cut? The pension was designed for two people. Or if his wife works in her own right and does not depend on him financially, he should take a cut. Or if he has no spouse to share his pension with, he should take a one third cut.

So that a retired working couple, instead of each receiving a whole pension, would each receive two-thirds of a pension. And when their partners die, retired working spouses, instead of receiving one and two thirds pensions, would receive just two-thirds of a pension. (Similarly with working wives and gay couples: I'm trying to keep it simple. And it would only apply to CPP and pensions that are assumed by a surviving spouse.)

There are economies to be realised in recognising the breadwinner and homemaker marriage. I noted in the opening blog that it costs more than $1000 a day to keep an old person in an institution, when millions of homemakers would love to care for their old parents and infirm relatives, with just a little support and encouragement.

It's recognition and appreciation that homemakers crave, as much as the money. Corporate policy is to encourage women in the workforce with breaks and advantages, while leaving homemakers to fend for themselves. I propose we encourage the homemakers, and leave working women to fend for themselves. We admit women into the workforce as equals when they are truly up to it in all senses. If we put half the effort into the breadwinner and homemaker family that we spend trying to get working couples to fly, we might get off the ground.

And please do not ask if I voted for Trudeau in 1968. I shall smash your eardrums with the loudest scream in history.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

Women In The Workforce

If I lose my cool in this blog and start raving that women in the workforce are useless, try to remember this: A team of eleven men and one woman may be as effective as a team of twelve men; but an outfit of six men and six women is a disaster. One woman on a team functions as a kind of mascot bringing the men together and making the team more productive and gung-ho. All the great women in history played this role. Margaret Thatcher for example was the only woman in her cabinet.

But women do not form teams among themselves, or with men, in any way comparable with men's teams. Regularly it takes a supervised heirarchy of scores of mixed humans to get a job done the woman's way that would normally be done by a self-regulating team of a dozen men. The mixed humans expect to be paid as much as the men, and the supervisors get paid most. That's the corporate style. The media call it Women's Equality.

If I undergo meltdown and start raving about women in the workforce, it is mainly to these sterile heirarchies that I object: They are a pathetic substitute for men's teams. We now have women working in the liquor stores, so there are security guards. I don't call that doing the job!

Here in Vancouver at the time of writing, the Picton trial is entertaining us: accused of murdering many of the 50 or so women who have gone missing in Vancouver, the remains of some 30 being found on his pig farm. It is a tremendously emotive case: like the Air India trial. But there is simply no case for murder against him, and never was. (I'm gonna look stooopid if he's found guilty.)

The crown counsel's office here in Vancouver, like all institutions that have been feminised, is useless. They have no idea of teamwork: of prosecution and defence each playing its part. They want to be prosecution and defence and police and judge and forensic expert. Female eunuchs want to be everything, and detest being left out of anything. Notably, the prosecution put on the stand the dream defence witness, a friend of Picton's who lived on the farm throughout the disappearing season, who testified the buildings on the farm were never locked, and with people coming and going all the time, there was no privacy: not a likely scene for mass murders and human butcherings. But I digress. He was hardly cross-examined. The defence weren't going to challenge him, neither could the prosecution. Fortunately his testimony wasn't obviously tainted. But it's no way to run a trial.

The retarded smelly millionaire pig farmer has friends, dozens of them, who stand by him, though he's accused of an horrendous offence in a great public media show trial, costing millions. Random observation.

(Just in passing: Did anyone else pick up on this? Public cock fights were being held on the Picton farm in suburban Vancouver, just like Haiti and remote tribal areas of Indonesia. There's multiculturalism for you! That'll bring in the tourists! One objection to cock fighting is that once people delight in blood thrills, they crave sweeter delights, like snuffing girlies maybe. Did nobody see the connection?)

I want a homemaker allowance used to reshape the workforce. There are some 3 million classic homemaker wives in Canada today with breadwinner husbands. We have a labour force of 15 million out of a population of 30 million. If 5 million women take the allowance, more than half the workforce would be affected by its terms: the breadwinners prioritised for the high-paying jobs, with homemakers back in support with part-time jobs: their benefits being covered by their breadwinner spouses. The remaining singles and working couples would fall between.

Most notably of course we can clean up the public sector: some 3 million jobs. It was never allowed for a husband and wife each to have government jobs before Feminism.

I regard a fireman's wife as the equal of a fireman. I regard lady firefighters as twaddle. A woman does not have to be a firefighter to be the equal of a firefighter. A lady nurse is the equal of a fireman. A lady firefighter is a wannabee: a nuisance exploited by the runt males to antagonise the alpha males. That's the line you'll see developed if you continue to watch this blog.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

What Have We Done?

We exchanged a 1300 square foot studio apartment for a 300 square foot one bedroom. The lady wanted a one bedroom apartment: She thought they were nicer than studios. The men defer to their ladies' wishes. And we got sold a dump. We Believed In Women's Equality and Got Sold Working Couples. We went from single income households to two incomes, with no matching rise in the standard of living.

The introduction of women into the workforce did not raise the standard of living but reduced the value of wages.

To appreciate the mess we are in, recall the Sixties. Wages and benefits were based on men as breadwinners, and women as homemakers, in single-income households. Men had a right to high wages because they had wives to support: The men were empowered. But the corporations resent empowered working men, and determined to exploit the women's movement to break them. Feminism fitted the corporate agenda: that men had no special right to high wages. The corporate media backed Feminism. And the rest is herstory. The pheminists phucked the alpha males off the phace of the earth, and the runt males can't stop sniggering. Yippee for Pheminism!

The key to the situation is the single-income marriage, which has to be recognised as such. Always it was assumed in the definition of marriage as a union of husband and wife: which is only valid as an approximation to the breadwinner and homemaker arrangement. So we can either change the laws of marriage, which would be highly confrontational. Or we can opt for the practical approach: a homemaker allowance.

In all the discussion of gay marriage, it never gets mentioned that gay couples are only a minor theoretical problem. The great practical problem is working couples. The issue is not whether to extend spousal benefits to gay couples but how to cut them off to working couples. Working couples are the disaster not gay couples. Working couples mean wretched homes, abused children, neglected seniors, exploited women and marginalised men. In a word: peonage. That's the direction we're headed. And it's time we took stock of the situation.

Where Is The Money Coming From?

Generations X and Y take note. Cancel survivor's pensions for working spouses! Anyone with a job in their own right, with its pension, has no right to a second pension as a spouse. That is double-dipping! The worst example is government workers having cosmetic dentistry, and putting half the cost on their own dental plan, and the other half on their spouse's plan, to achieve 100% coverage on cosmetic dentistry. That's fraud! The principle is that anyone with a benefit in their own right cannot repeat the benefit in another's right. And the same applies to survivor's pensions for working spouses. Cancel them!

(And please do not suggest it is OK for working wives to keep their husbands' pensions because men can similarly have their wives' pensions. That is like saying you can cheat because I can cheat. Women live longer than men, and marry older men with greater incomes, so the net result is a massive illicit transfer amounting to a bribe. It's a corporate policy of paying women to scab.)

I met an Indian lady recently whose mum had suffered a stroke and had to be institutionalised. The daughter was devastated because she had a close relationship with her mother, and wanted to care for her, but couldn't manage financially; and no help was available. We as a society will spend $1000 a day on institutional care, but we can't arrange $1000 a month for the daughter to care for her mother. Money, money, money. Those are the values we need to examine.

About Me

The same age, height, weight and initials as Cassius Clay, your favourite great uncle was born a Capricorn in the Year of the Snake. (Am I ever wise!) He has a good honours degree from an ancient British university. If you believe in symbols, kneel! In reality he has a lower second BA in geography from Durham. You may rise! (I don't make the rules!) He dropped out in the late Sixties to write up an insight (because I couldn't take to any work routine) and spent his entire life on the project. It was quite unpublishable. It used the idea of a Dual Brain to hold together the conflict between symbol and reality, right and good. Pounded by the hammers of rejection, we came to conclude the best hope for mankind lay in a homemaker allowance. So blog it!