“The Law to Decrease Unemployment”: Might this be useful in combatting high unemployment & low s

Does the average family really need two breadwinners?

One G%26amp;WS participant argues that

“Now that many more households have two incomes, wages have dropped accordingly. This is basic econ. and logic - as soon as the %26quot;average%26quot; family has two incomes, the economy adjusts, and the %26quot;average%26quot; family comes to NEED two incomes.”

So, how about a law allowing for the firing of women who are the %26quot;second-earners%26quot; in the family? Would salaries rise, and unemployment rates drop?

Has such a law been passed elsewhere? If so, under what circumstances, and was the outcome?

“The Law to Decrease Unemployment”: Might this be useful in combatting high unemployment %26amp; low salaries?finance

In Australia we have a serious skills shortage and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has been warning for years about the associated detrimental effect of this upon inflation and interest rates. Increasing productivity is central to macroeconomic stability.

We also now have a much more educated female population and families with huge mortgages. Why waste their education or pray that banks will halve their mortgage repayments? You%26#039;ll also find that women do most of the casual work in the labour force - who else is going to do that work to keep our businesses afloat? Immigrants?

In the face of a severe labour shortage, corporations with expectant shareholders won%26#039;t necessarily increase wages - they will either shut shop, grow to expect their workers to do the job of two workers (without paid overtime) or lobby the government to increase the available labour supply.

So - a real economist would add 2 and 2 together and recoil in horror at such a proposition of (to quote you):

%26quot;So, how about a law allowing for the firing of women who are the %26quot;second-earners%26quot; in the family?%26quot;

Why %26quot;women%26quot;? That%26#039;s downright offensive! LOL

I%26#039;m the most qualified and higher income earner in my household. The MALE secondary income earner is pursuing his own career and dreams and no democratic government is going to deny him of that. He%26#039;s also terrible at keeping house so he%26#039;s much more useful by earning an income and paying for a cleaner.

The 1950%26#039;s was 50 years ago. LOL :)

EDIT-

In answer to your question - my point was that unemployment wouldn%26#039;t be solved. It would instead cause a labour shortage. A female workforce just isn%26#039;t a serious factor of unemployment and low salaries these days.

“The Law to Decrease Unemployment”: Might this be useful in combatting high unemployment %26amp; low salaries?

loan

Wow, thanks for that link! That really illuminates the source and ulterior motive behind such bizarre reasoning. As an overeducated, %26quot;deliberately barren%26quot; white female I%26#039;m even all for baby taxes instead of baby bonuses too! haha. It was fun answering your question. Thank you :) Report It

|||Who wants to be the first to conduct such a socio-economic experiment (and face the consequences whatever they may be?)- not I! I don%26#039;t think people want to lose their houses, their cars, the food on the table, just to find out if the economy will %26quot;adjust%26quot; to their newly lowered level of poverty. Risky...far too risky for most to consider.|||It never ceases to baffle me Berewolf some of the posts that we as regulars read and comment on this forum.

I sincerely hope that the poster who scribed the above has now gone to bed with a headache and wakes up this morning with a ginormous hangover.

Would serve them right.|||You%26#039;re missing the whole point.

Corporate America got twice the productivity for the same money.

And you think they%26#039;re gonna give those gains back?

Oh, and to answer your question: Yes, the average family does now need two bread winners.|||Here in Australia I think the opposite is true ~ bigger salaries, more money in the community generally and more spending.

There is no doubt at all in my mind that we live in the richest society ever known, and the fact that there are still people in want in our society is a shame on all of us.

The movement of women into the workforce coincided with increased wealth in the west, and it is arguable that enabling women to work is, at least in part, responsible for this increase.

After all, what nation consciously uses only HALF it%26#039;s natural resources to create wealth? Or anything else for that matter. A poor one, that%26#039;s which one. It%26#039;s no coincidence that the poorest nations are also most often those which fail to recognise the potential for wealth creation by women, and not just economic wealth, as the west has discovered.

Enabling women to generate income autonomously, and providing them with the means to expend that income to their own satisfaction has led to the development of new market sectors (child care, anyone) and new ways of thinking about market and social structures (consensus building, social capital, lalalala), as well as benefitting children, who have grown rich alongside their mothers and sisters.

The increasing middle class-ness of western society is due in most part to the emphasis on family and security which have become part of the political, economic and social dialogue in the four decades since women began, in substantial numbers, to forego sole dependence on the satisfactions of unpaid employment for the benefits of the paid workforce.

But then, my guess is, you knew that :-)

Cheers :-)|||I don%26#039;t think that will help anything. Immigration pushes down the wage of American workers. I think that if they control immagration, maybe then the wages will imporve. But to fire a woman just because her husband works is just plain stupid and it will trigger so many lawsuits that is discrimination. It will never work|||growing up, my dad was the only one that worked. there were three kids at one point in the household. my dad was not a professional. he worked at a grocery store, than at a factory. my parents spoild us, we always had nike shoes, name brand clothing. this is mostly due to my mom making sacrafices.

while yes, it is possible for one bread winner, but where i live now, no way. your idea makes sense, and it could, but the fact is, we have gone to far already. consumerism is the real problem.

think about all the added expenses just these past years, internet, cell phones. we keep adding expenses to our lives. if you buy a car, there%26#039;s more than just the sticker price. you have gas and insurance. most of us can spend around $250 a month just to keep it on the road, this does not include car payments.

we keep consuming, we keep needing more money, end of story. look at the headlines, they read, %26quot;panic, nobody is buying junk they don%26#039;t need%26quot;. what? we are in trouble because we don%26#039;t buy as much junk that we don%26#039;t need?|||I don%26#039;t agree with the G%26amp;WS arguement . More numbers in the workforce should make economy thrive to a higher level .

I also disagree with the second statement that the firing of women who are the %26quot;second earners%26quot; in the family . A lot of women I know earn more than their husbands !

All in all what you said does not make sense .|||The problem now is that the marketplace is global, and the standard of living we here in the west enjoy is mostly sustained by protectionist policy, or what remains of it.

Two people earning together on a median US wage cannot compete on level terms with the median wage of a Chinese worker in an EDC zone manufacturing the same product.

The question is complex because the market doesn%26#039;t operate freely, and the laws shift more and more to the benefit of business at the expense of the employee, especially in jobs which require little skill to perform.

The principle you suggest would be sound only in a position of economic surplus where it would enforce a redistribution of wealth from an oversupply of labor. It has been shown to be true in such circumstances, for example, when unions in the professions use collective bargaining and their employers cannot readily turn to replace their sources of labor.

Unfortunately the measure you suggest would have barely any effect in helping the most impoverished where there is a surplus of labor, certainly in global economic terms.|||What that participant fails to mention is that the book they often name to supplement their argument encourages socioeconomic reform (i.e. mat leave, flextime, fair wages, etc.) rather than women going home. Secondly, many high-paying blue-collar jobs have been eliminated. Thirdly, even if a husband earns more than enough money for the entire household, women still work — they enjoy it most of the time, and they don%26#039;t want to be dependent. Does it work for them? Indeed. Yes, a high household income means a higher tax bracket, but there%26#039;s a way to resolve that, too: tax everyone individually.