JOHN PURDY writes:

Jesse Powell is spot on in his analysis, as usual, of how large numbers of women in the workforce do not enrich modern nations. However, I think he has overlooked one aspect of the problem. I will accept his assertion that the phenomenon of women in the workforce does not raise national income; this seems self-evident based on supply and demand for labour. What women in the workforce probably does do is increase income tax revenue. Consider a hypothetical case. Couple ‘A’ are both employed and bring in income that places both of them in the low end of a particluar tax bracket. Couple ‘B’ has only one person working, bringing in an income that is in the high end of the same tax bracket. In the second scenario, the government receives only half as much in taxes, does it not? While this situation would not apply to every household in the country the overall effect must surely be to increase tax revenue.

Thus, the state impoverishes its people financially and culturally while enriching itself.

                           — Comments —

Mr. Purdy adds:

As I reflected on this, I realised that the hypothetical I offered is a little too simplistic to warrant my conclusion. One would have to have a better understanding of German tax law regarding marital deductions and how it treats co-habitation versus legal marriage to be sure how much the state benefits from women in the workforce. In addition, working women would no doubt be eligible for various state benefits. It could be a wash or a net loss to the state which would lead one to believe this push against housewives is purely ideological and not drive by greed.

While I suspect my argument is correct, a lot more would have to be done to prove it. Perhaps the inestimable Mr. Powell has some numbers that back the argument better, even if in the US context.

Adriana writes:

I’m not sure I understand the example given. It sounds like you’re saying, consider couple ‘A’ — both employed, at the lower end of the tax bracket. Let’s say each person in couple ‘A’ is making $30,000. Are you then saying consider couple ‘B’ in which only one person is working and is making $60,000? Because in that case, the government is getting the same amount of tax money — actually, the government is getting more money from couple B, if couple A decides to file “married filing separately.” 

Unless you’re talking about a situation in which couple B’s breadwinner only makes $30,000. In that case, yes, the government will have twice as much (about) money from couple A than from couple B, but also couple A will have made $60,000, while couple B will have made $30,000. 

Ironically, what women in the workforce actually does is decrease income tax revenue, if they’re earning power is comparable to their husband’s. While a couple with a single breadwinner making $200,000 gets a tax break, this tax break is only a break when you compare it with a tax payer filing singly. In other words, a single guy earning $200,000 is paying more taxes than a couple with a single breadwinner earning $200,000. But, a couple with a single breadwinner earning $200,000 is paying more taxes than a dual-income couple making $200,000 (in which both parties are earning comparable amounts). 

Like it or not, the best situation from a tax-standpoint (ironically, the worst situation for the government) is for a husband and wife to have similar incomes.

Laura writes:

I’m unfamiliar with German tax regulations. With public pension programs, it seems the government would benefit in he short term if male income stayed as it is and more women worked and contributed to the program.

Eric writes:

No need for math. You only need to notice that society needs children to survive, and that only women can produce children, and that women are the best caregivers for young children, and it becomes obvious that the most efficient use of women’s labor is at home with the kids.

How much does it cost to ‘fix’ grownups who are screwed up because they were not raised right? Can it possibly be cheaper to have women working than at home?

Jeff W. writes:

I believe that governments have their “all women must work outside the home” policy for a number of reasons. As John Purdy pointed out, increased tax revenues are one important reason, but there are others. Here is a partial list:

1) The education lobby. Educators are very influential politically in the U.S. and elsewhere. At the state level, legislators, especially Democrat legislators, are toadies to the public school teacher’s unions. In a world where women did not work outside the home, educators could lose more than half of their students.

2) Paid child care lobby. This includes such organizations as Head Start. They are a much smaller lobby than the educators, but they also have an effect.

3) Corporate hatred of high-paying jobs. The corporate titans that direct the U.S. government hate paying high wages to anyone. They love $2/hour workers, or $0.25/hour workers. They hate, hate, hate $40/hour workers and middle managers making $125,000/year. They spend much of their time figuring out how to replace these workers with low-paid workers. Because women tend to be more docile than men and less demanding of wage increases, corporate titans, all else being equal, prefer a female employee to a male employee. In today’s economic environment, however, faced with competition from women and Asians, men are also becoming more docile and less demanding. Their natural aggressiveness has been broken.

4) Destruction of any power centers outside the corporatist state. The corporatist state does not like families, churches, the Tea Party, gun owners, or any other group of free people not controlled by the state. Communists have always wanted to get rid of the family and replace it with some kind of “scientific” child rearing performed by state-employed experts. The corporatist state dislikes families because they sometimes resist state indoctrination. A family headed by two exhausted wage earners is less capable of resisting state indoctrination.

5) Population reduction advocates. Many of the world’s wealthiest and most influential people believe that the world is overpopulated. Because stay-at-home moms produce more babies than career moms, they are contributing to the overpopulation problem.

6) Feminism. Feminists, of course, support the policy that all women must work outside the home.

In summary we see a coalition of the elites of society—government, educators, corporate leaders—as well as liberals and leftists of every description all supporting this nation-destroying policy.

Laura writes:

This is an excellent summary. All these forces exert their influence primarily through the advance of certain ideas. And unless there are countervailing forces continually pushing against them through the advance of opposing ideas, the family suffers. The traditional family, just like the nation, does not survive naturally or without strong defenses. 

Lydia Sherman writes:

When women seek jobs outside the home, taxes are automatically extracted from their paychecks; taxes which fund many anti-home programs and illegal wars. Feminists don’t even approve of this, and yet they are supporting it simply by going to work.

Jesse Powell writes:

The main point of this thread seems to be to try to explain why the EU would be telling Germany to encourage its mothers to work. I think it’s a simple case of ideology; that men supporting women is “oppressive” to women and so women should be “liberated” by joining the workforce and putting their children in daycare. The economic justification for this social policy is used because it sounds plausible at first glance. 

The point of what I said earlier is to simply point out that even the economic argument is implausible; there’s no need to say on the one hand women working benefits the economy and on the other it harms families; arguing that way is playing the feminists’ game; in reality women working harms both the economy and the family at the same time. 

In reference to Germany, East Germany actually has more working women than West Germany does; so when the EU tells Germany to encourage its women to work it is in reality telling West Germany to be more like East Germany. West Germany is more culturally conservative while East Germany is more feminist. 

Though Germany is now a united country the former West Germany is clearly better off than the former East Germany, the part of Germany that was under communist rule until the Berlin Wall fell. In 2009 the number of male workers per female worker was 1.23 in Western Germany and exactly 1.00 in Eastern Germany. This greater “equality” of East German women coincides with some nasty social statistics; the out-of-wedlock birth ratio in West Germany in 2008 was 25.8% while for East Germany it was 57.7%.

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