Defining Money and Productive
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(Jan. 08 revisions in red)

------------------Was your mother productive?----------------

There is one simple way to do away with the absurdly false idea that money comes from production.

Simply answer this question: Was the work that your mother (or others) did to bear and raise you to adulthood, productive? Answering "no" is impossible, because in doing so you are negating the value of your own existence, which is negated again by the fact that you exist.

(That people sometimes commit suicide because they feel their life has no value, that they have no worth, is directly related to the traditional economic definition of productive. Given this fact, how can we accept this destructive definition?)

If you answer "yes", how would the recognition that mothers' work is productive change the size of the money supply, if money supply is to correspond to production?

Some people assert that mothers have little to do with the value of their lives, that whatever value their lives have is due to whatever they are doing with their life.

People sometimes take this point about mothers personally, however, it is mathematical argument that needs to be made in relation to guaranteed livable income.

Why? Because even people who agree with a guaranteed income say 2 things: they doubt there is 'enough money' for a guaranteed income (i.e. the money supply is not big enough) and b) money for the guaranteed income needs to come from taxation of production.

However, what happens to this theory when the work of mothers (who make up the biggest "set" of people in the unpaid, essential, beneficial work category) is included into the "set" of what is considered "productive."

Set 1 called "unproductive"	Set 2 called "productive"
Unpaid, essential, beneficial work ( considered "unproductive" and excluded from Productive set )	Paid work
Set 3 "unproductive" included with "productive"
If unpaid, essential, beneficial work were included in what was counted as "productive" -- the GDP (the current economic measure) would be incalcuably bigger. (Future economist?) -------- This obliterates the idea that money comes from production, or that money should come from production. For if we count women's unpaid work in the world's productive measures, and if this is supposed to be where money comes from, there is no shortage of money. Quite simply, the men who made the economic rules, made them up to exclude unpaid care work, only the world's most essential work.

If the money supply (as a set) is supposed to directly correspond to productivity (as a set) then what gets counted as productive is the key issue in a discussion of guaranteed income.

If the set of "productivity" includes the work of mothers (and other unpaid caregivers), and "productivity" determines money supply, then this totally changes the money supply.

This is the achilles heel of economics. This is why in economics text books "human capital" is defined as not the production of new humans beings but "skills", "education" and "training". Yet "training" cannot happen without mothers first producing people.

"Of course everyone leaves out that vital ingredient, reproduction of the human species, from the equation, for all the models would collapse with its sheer magnitude if this value were imputed."
Footnote, Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing, What Men Value and What Women are Worth (2nd Edition, 1999)

Page 6...Changing the rules