I'm glad we've progressed beyond that

It used to be if you had pneumonia you died

Yes, and I am, too, but society actually is completely aligned in its interestes.

And that women had a 1-in-5 change of dying in childbirth every time

If we just let a productive member of society die, instead of taking care of them while they are not productive, we lose an otherwise productive worker.

Sorry if that sounds so sterile or discompassionate.

Nahh

It's all good

I just recognise that the main reason women are still held back in the modern world is the "childbirth penalty"

Often times, we actually do more harm by choosing to be compassionate in the now then being objective. Resources will always be limited, and by helping one person now, inefficiently, we might have to let two people die in the future.

That's why women in general still struggle for parity

It's not some conspiracy

It's not overt prejudice against women

It's simply the calculation you describe

It's part of what gets me so upset about the migrant crisis: It's the childish view to only see the people you help immediately, but we still have homeless people, people who die in the streets. By being emotional about the now, we hurt other people who we do not consider, by being irrational about our choices. Every migrant we help from abroad might cost the life of other people elsewhere. Scarcity is a reality of humanity.

Why take on childbirth issues if you don't have to? And by the time women don't have kids anymore, the damage is long-since done.

Well, but you see: then we DO have an interest in women having children.

So, the proper question to ask is: who has that interest?

And this is what still fuels even rational women to align to the left. Why women vote blue in such a disproportionate manner.

Whoever has that interest, derives that benefit, should support women. That is what should be figured out to make it fair. If it is a general, intangible benefit, it might be hard to figure it out, but if we can figure out how much productivity our children provide in our society, then it is only fair for society to foot the bill for that.

If you plan to retire, you have an interest in either women having kids or ample immigration

Yes, and that is why families figured out these kinds of questions.

Who pays social security? You're not getting what you put into it. There's no lockbox. You are paid by the FICA taxes of current workers.

The ones who derived the benefit, absent of the welfare state and national debt, were families. You care for your child and your child later on cared for you. So you make the investment in your children.

Now, because we are all tied together through the welfare state, social security, etc. the burden is shifted from families to society at large, to the state, so that flow of value is much, much harder to figure out, in aggregate.

That is also how I see the destruction of families tied together with the state budding its nose into everything.

Now, the interest in children is not just for the family, but society at large, so society at large has to figure out a way to compensate women (or, more generally, parents) for the value they provide: children.

We're back to agreeing

dang

your name is silly

there

/thread

Silly? Which one? 10th Amendment Cat?

yes

so we can disagree on something

lol

If children were for the benefit of the family still, it would be up to each family to decide on having children.

But now, children are more like wards of the state, future tax payers, so the calculus of potential parents is reduced to the joy the gain from having kids vs. the extra money they could earn. If the center of American life was the family again, it would be a value in itself to have children, so there would be little conundrum. But kids aren't really an investment anymore. You have your 401(k), so children are not a value in of itself, for the parents, but more of a luxury, with their value to carry on society a coincidental effect. And that is why we have to ponder how to get corporations to balance women in the work force and their ability to have kids, which should have never been the concern of corporations, but families.

You know that slippery slope arguments the right used to have? Sometimes I wonder if they weren't all fallacies. Like "death of the family" fear mongering.

We've removed things we don't like but haven't found a good replacement for the issues that lead to the thing we don't like.

This is an issue most people have, period.