A friend of mine just made this comment on her Facebook page, comparing life in the academic grind with life as a mom: "My life has instead taken on meaning outside the traditional realm of socially esteemed (that is: worthy of money) work...".
This notion of economic value vs. other ways of measuring value is an important one to think about when trying to understand how our economy works, what it does well and what it fails to do. My friend hits the nail nearly on the head with the phrase socially esteemed work. The essential element is there, that work for which we get paid is not the only kind of valuable work that there is. I would only quibble with the word socially. I would say economically esteemed work.
There is socially esteemed work. The social esteem we have for many kinds of work far exceeds the money one can make doing that work. Nurses, teachers, moms, and in 2020 "essential workers" often make very little when compared to other work that people, broadly speaking, esteem less, such as lawyers, investment bankers, or entertainers.
The difference lies in what we individually and what we as a society are willing to pay for. As individuals we usually only pay to obtain things that meet our needs and desires: food, housing, entertainment, education. As a society (the American society) we usually only pay for things that would cost us more if we didn't pay for them: police, agencies to enforce product safety, unemployment programs; or things we all agree are beneficial but too expensive for any private entity to create: roads, air traffic control, parks.
The idea of socially esteemed work is entirely absent from the American economic discourse. It is something we need. We as Americans have put "market forces" on too high a pedestal. Market driven policies can be effective and efficient, but they have serious limitations, too. Market driven policies will only solve those problems where we as individuals are willing to put our money. Money is the only signal by which the market moves. Money is the only signal about where the market should invest its effort. It is the only signal the market gets about what we want.
When we want things that we can't or don't spend money on, the market will not provide. So if we want a society in which socially esteemed work is not economically disdained, then we need to make choices that lead to such outcomes. We have made few.
If we want to support American manufacturing, then we need to be willing to pay more for the things we buy. We get cheap goods from overseas because there are countries where people will or can work for less than Americans can or will work for. If we want jobs to pay a living wage, then we need to be willing to hold companies accountable when they pay their employees a minimum wage that you can't survive on, yet earn profits of billions of dollars a year.
Market forces will never create the society we want on their own. We have to choose to mold the market forces to our will, not the other way around.
This notion of economic value vs. other ways of measuring value is an important one to think about when trying to understand how our economy works, what it does well and what it fails to do. My friend hits the nail nearly on the head with the phrase socially esteemed work. The essential element is there, that work for which we get paid is not the only kind of valuable work that there is. I would only quibble with the word socially. I would say economically esteemed work.
There is socially esteemed work. The social esteem we have for many kinds of work far exceeds the money one can make doing that work. Nurses, teachers, moms, and in 2020 "essential workers" often make very little when compared to other work that people, broadly speaking, esteem less, such as lawyers, investment bankers, or entertainers.
The difference lies in what we individually and what we as a society are willing to pay for. As individuals we usually only pay to obtain things that meet our needs and desires: food, housing, entertainment, education. As a society (the American society) we usually only pay for things that would cost us more if we didn't pay for them: police, agencies to enforce product safety, unemployment programs; or things we all agree are beneficial but too expensive for any private entity to create: roads, air traffic control, parks.
The idea of socially esteemed work is entirely absent from the American economic discourse. It is something we need. We as Americans have put "market forces" on too high a pedestal. Market driven policies can be effective and efficient, but they have serious limitations, too. Market driven policies will only solve those problems where we as individuals are willing to put our money. Money is the only signal by which the market moves. Money is the only signal about where the market should invest its effort. It is the only signal the market gets about what we want.
When we want things that we can't or don't spend money on, the market will not provide. So if we want a society in which socially esteemed work is not economically disdained, then we need to make choices that lead to such outcomes. We have made few.
If we want to support American manufacturing, then we need to be willing to pay more for the things we buy. We get cheap goods from overseas because there are countries where people will or can work for less than Americans can or will work for. If we want jobs to pay a living wage, then we need to be willing to hold companies accountable when they pay their employees a minimum wage that you can't survive on, yet earn profits of billions of dollars a year.
Market forces will never create the society we want on their own. We have to choose to mold the market forces to our will, not the other way around.
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