It doesn't matter _why_ women entered the workforce. I was arguing against the idea that GDP only reflects nominal wages, and doesn't reflect the value of labor outside the formal labor market. My point was that when women were primarily homemakers, the average salary of the man indirectly reflected the work of the entire household and thus was actually reflected in the GDP. Not perfectly, of course, because she wasn't as free to participate in the labor market as men, and thus society systemically undervalued her labor. But to a large extent it was indeed reflected in nominal wages.
Likewise, when the article discussed how the per-capita GDP of Kenya, at only $2, clearly didn't reflect the "real" amount of labor and wealth in Kenya, it's wrong and misleading. Much of that value is reflected in $2 in that $2, in nominal wages, is all you need to subsist. Remember, there's no such thing as "intrinsic" value, not in economics. If $2 is all the Kenyan labor market is willing to pay, then $2 reflects rather well how the Kenyan labor market is structured, and reflects what value any investments can leverage in the short-term. (Would you invest $100 million in Kenya in exchange for help harvesting your fields and babysitting your kids?) We don't need some ad hoc system to quantify the potential of the Kenyan labor economy because the potential is implicit in the huge difference between the Kenyan GDP and the GDP of richer countries.
Look at it another way: if I sit here and pour myself into writing HN posts all day rather than participating in the formal labor market, can I complain that GDP isn't accurately reflecting the value of my labor? It's nonsense. I would be neither wrong nor right. My complaint would only beg the question, value by who's reckoning?
There's a debate to be had, at the margins, about the limits and accuracy of metrics like GDP, but the notion of trying to quantify wealth outside the formal economic system is fundamentally and hopelessly flawed. Rather than trying to create some framework to guesstimate the value of supposedly hidden wealth, people should be working to plug these systems of labor and exchange into the formal economy. A free market economy based on supply & demand and a fungible currency is fundamentally a pricing system. It's a giant calculator with a built-in unit for determining and expressing "value". For all its many flaws, it's foolish to believe anybody can do any better by trying to tally behaviors individually. Such systems are invariably worse in terms of systemic biases. It's why communism failed--at scale no system of pricing the "value" of objects and labor is more honest, accurate, and consistent than what people manifestly are willing to freely accept in exchange; and no system of quantifying that value is more honest, accurate, and consistent than a nearly perfectly fungible, nearly perfectly substitutable commodity--currency. It's not perfect, but it represents the best that is achievable.
If you find flaws in how the system prices those things, it usually has something to do with 1) the lack of freedom of accepting or rejecting exchange or 2) the medium of exchange (i.e. currency). Thus debates about whether, e.g., healthcare should be considered some sort of right (forcing government or employers to express the cost, previously hidden by silent pain and suffering, in nominal currency) so that people would be more free to change jobs. The issue and task is to figure out a way so that these things can be more transparently priced into the formal economy, rather than spending time trying to quantify these things in some ad hoc, contrived model. What good would such a number be, anyhow?
Likewise, when the article discussed how the per-capita GDP of Kenya, at only $2, clearly didn't reflect the "real" amount of labor and wealth in Kenya, it's wrong and misleading. Much of that value is reflected in $2 in that $2, in nominal wages, is all you need to subsist. Remember, there's no such thing as "intrinsic" value, not in economics. If $2 is all the Kenyan labor market is willing to pay, then $2 reflects rather well how the Kenyan labor market is structured, and reflects what value any investments can leverage in the short-term. (Would you invest $100 million in Kenya in exchange for help harvesting your fields and babysitting your kids?) We don't need some ad hoc system to quantify the potential of the Kenyan labor economy because the potential is implicit in the huge difference between the Kenyan GDP and the GDP of richer countries.
Look at it another way: if I sit here and pour myself into writing HN posts all day rather than participating in the formal labor market, can I complain that GDP isn't accurately reflecting the value of my labor? It's nonsense. I would be neither wrong nor right. My complaint would only beg the question, value by who's reckoning?
There's a debate to be had, at the margins, about the limits and accuracy of metrics like GDP, but the notion of trying to quantify wealth outside the formal economic system is fundamentally and hopelessly flawed. Rather than trying to create some framework to guesstimate the value of supposedly hidden wealth, people should be working to plug these systems of labor and exchange into the formal economy. A free market economy based on supply & demand and a fungible currency is fundamentally a pricing system. It's a giant calculator with a built-in unit for determining and expressing "value". For all its many flaws, it's foolish to believe anybody can do any better by trying to tally behaviors individually. Such systems are invariably worse in terms of systemic biases. It's why communism failed--at scale no system of pricing the "value" of objects and labor is more honest, accurate, and consistent than what people manifestly are willing to freely accept in exchange; and no system of quantifying that value is more honest, accurate, and consistent than a nearly perfectly fungible, nearly perfectly substitutable commodity--currency. It's not perfect, but it represents the best that is achievable.
If you find flaws in how the system prices those things, it usually has something to do with 1) the lack of freedom of accepting or rejecting exchange or 2) the medium of exchange (i.e. currency). Thus debates about whether, e.g., healthcare should be considered some sort of right (forcing government or employers to express the cost, previously hidden by silent pain and suffering, in nominal currency) so that people would be more free to change jobs. The issue and task is to figure out a way so that these things can be more transparently priced into the formal economy, rather than spending time trying to quantify these things in some ad hoc, contrived model. What good would such a number be, anyhow?