Haha that entire radio program is fucking outrageous. It's brilliant! The idea that people are exploited by employment (that say if you earn £100 but you earn for your employer say £300 a day). The idea of cutting the working week by half, then reducing it more. The idea that there's no freedom in going out work (except the freedom/interest of not being alone working unwaged in the house). The idea that you pay housewives (from the military budget
). There's so much
there dammit.
And all of those things have a million questions associated (like if you don't have employers, then who do you work for or how does work get done? or what is work anyway? and how would it be worked what is and isn't necessary?). But anyway not to deal with that all at once...
Yeah I understand and identify with the idea of housework being unwaged but actually your still working for the business. Of course I do. I raised our sons for YEARS unwaged (also working in the evenings/nights ftr) so my husband could build his business and build it he did, and when he walked out he took all the business (and most of the money) with him. He couldn't have done it without me (caring for the kids and
him and going out there working myself when we had insufficient money to get by). I felt that business was part mine, but of course it wasn't in the end.
And I totally agree with her when she says women bear the brunt of economic hardship, are the ones not to eat first (oh yes how familiar), are the ones who
have to step up when social services are cut. And it's kind of a good idea to pay wages for reproductive work/caring work/house work because it means that cannot happen. You
force a value on it.
Now I don't have a clue how much that stuff would cost or if those books would ever balance or if that's all just pie in the sky. And it worries me the size of the state (and the power you'd have to give the state) to administrate it. But yeah, it's an interesting idea.
