But what was missing was any plan for some men to be drawn into the "care economy." But (2) reminds us that this is not just about gender balance. Previously we had hypothetically a 50/50 split between the "paid economy" and the "unpaid care economy" but now it's like, 70/30.
One response is that there's no room in our economy for people to work less (men or women) so they are not going to go back to the "unpaid care economy."
The response? Let's create the "paid care economy." So now you can get paid for giving care... but... caring for the elderly is just not "economically productive..." so it's hard to see how our current economic system can make it happen.
The really fun bit is that we don't have full employment, so there are people around who could do some caring... but right now we have no means to pay them to do so at all.
[Good care is a classic example of Baumol's cost problem so that's an extra difficulty.]
One solution is to increase taxes. Then there would be money to employ people to care for the elderly. But the figures are pretty hard to grasp...
Pay for care provided, and that person has some disposable income, perhaps they have better access to leisure opportunities, keep themselves healthier, and have a pension they can live on when they retire.
But still, I agree with you that there is no easy way to create a paid care economy, especially for adults and elderly people - especially at a time when calls for cutting taxes are getting very loud. Ad astra per aspera
A decade ago I ended up looking after sick relatives at home. Not exactly unpaid, but the paltry UK benefit payment to the carer was a mere £40 per week - deducted from the disability benefit of those you're looking after.
You could call that a comprehensive approach. Comprehensively degrading and cheap. And there were Kafka-esque ordeals in accessing agencies and services which were all but concealed from mortal view.
On the positive side, the teams of 'home helps' attending at various junctures during the day were an absolute godsend. Almost exclusively women, overworked and low-paid. But so good that I've since wondered whether improved wages, staffing and caseloads would be enough to transform this shoestring local service into a universally-applicable best practice.
That however would mean adequate funding of services. And we all know that people exist only to serve financial markets. It would be just crazy if markets existed to serve humanity.
As one of those apparently rare male carers, I can testify to the subsequent loss of opportunities. The state has an awful long way to go before it even begins to address such inadequacies. Besides, corporate welfare comes first...
Again, the same experience of some truly excellent carers who are so overworked and screwed out of being paid properly (private and public sector) through every possible loophole that can be used. The contracting out of services to the private sector has resulted in a real drop in the standards of the service provision through the way it is run and resultingly the undue pressure on the carers themselves. But carers do such an important job.
Then there are other carers who feel hugely resentful of doing work they aren't being paid properly for, or they are far too rushed and have to run off to the next job without doing all that needs to be done. Then the standards suffer and so does my relative. Ad astra per aspera
