S/o tuition thread, this is not a a Jewish problem!

amother

↑ Orchid

Yesterday at 5:27 pm

ora_43 wrote:

And as a quick look around the world will show you, poverty would be rampant.

The issue isn't just the number of workers in the market, but the number of non-workers that each working person has to support.

Eg your average American man is married with two kids, his wife also works. So two workers in the family, two non-workers. His brother and sister also work, so he doesn't support them. His parents work, or are retired, so he doesn't support them. Essentially his job needs to support 2 people.

Your average Afghani man is married with five kids. His wife doesn't work. His sisters don't work. His mother doesn't work. His father is retired, because his father's job involved hard physical labor and he's too old for it now - and 'retirement' means being supported by your children. So he and his two brothers support their two parents and two sisters. His one job needs to support 8.3 people.

Are you sure? I was under the impression that the women are working really hard in Afghanistan, helping in the fields, and doing all the household labor that we have machines for.

nylon

Yesterday at 6:29 pm

This isn't very good economics at all.

First of all, women always work. Those Afghani women are working. But even 50 years ago, women worked for pay. They just got paid poorly. What Peterson is complaining about is women being able to work in the same jobs and for the same pay as men, and middle class women working.

When someone says pay is flat since 1973, they mean in real terms, after inflation. It isn't quite that bad, but the average rise in pay obscures the pattern. Wealthy Americans have seen much larger increases in income than working class Americans. On top of that, house price inflation has been much higher than inflation in general, in part due to insufficient homebuilding since the 1980s. The price of healthcare and education has also outpaced inflation.

So yes: families across America, even if they are not frum, have been squeezed. This is absolutely true.

(And in terms of tuition: schools have seen their costs increase, even before we consider whether a school is providing things that did not exist in 1980, and in some cases teachers back then were working for poor salaries. Depending on where you are, you may have to offer salaries at the same level or close to it as local public schools. This is especially true in MO or OOT schools as they may need to hire non-Jewish teachers for some subjects and they are not going to do it solely out of dedication to yeshiva education.)

amother

↑ Molasses ↓

Yesterday at 9:56 pm

amother Clear wrote:

I'm not following the math on this one. If the men would be replacing the women in the workforce, the workforce would still be the same. Im assuming that it's given that there will be a comparable amount of girls born too.

And if the population is growing exponentially, the workforce ratio would following a similar trajectory.

Say there were 1,000 people in America, 500 men and 500 women. The women go on birth control and all couples have an average of two children. The next generation has 1,000 people all of whom are working.

Now if those 1,000 Americans never went on birth control, say the couples would all on average have 4 children. The next generation would have 2,000 people, only the men would work so there would be 1,000 people in the work force. Effectively there would be the same amount of people in the workforce either way.

B'Syata D'Shmya

Yesterday at 10:58 pm

amother OP wrote:

I only noticed the thread on tuition now, so I'm late to the discussion.
But I want to point out something that hasn't been said, and that is that this financial crisis we find ourselves in is not limited to the frum world. Yes, tuition is a frum problem, but it's only one expense out of many. .
This is actually a problem in the greater society as well. We are on a terrible trajectory which is leading towards disaster.
I found it frustrating that some posters (such as Raspberry on the other thread) think that the solution is to have less kids. It's extremely obtuse and dillusional to think that that would solve anything.

I recently heard a fascinating analysis by Jordan Peterson, on how we have arrived at this situation.

I will post the link here, but the relevant part is where he says the following:

Because women have access to birth control, they can now compete in the same domains, roughly, as men- and this creates a huge economic problem.
Years ago, it was still possible for a ONE income family to exist. But, since 1973, wages have been flat (except for the top 1 percent).
Why?
Because WE DOUBLED OUR LABOR FORCE.
When we doubled our labor force, we halved the value of labor. So now we are in a situation where it takes TWO PEOPLE to make as much as one did before!
We went from a situation when women's career options were relatively limited to where they are relatively unlimited and there were 2 incomes, to now, where women HAVE to work. They have no choice. But they only make half as much as they would have otherwise.

I found thus to be a startling analysis of where we are today and how we have come to this. Women's desire to work has created a domino effect where they now have no choice but to work.
This is a problem that is much bigger than just tuitions in the frum world.
The beginning of the talk is about how people need to prioritize having kids and family because that is actually what counts.

It's well worth a listen. (Around 11 minutes)
https://youtu.be/1FQQ7vcq-rM?s.....LROTO

What shtuyot you are spouting. You claim that people earn less because there are double the amount of workers in the market? And if the women didnt work, there would be half the number of available workers, so salaries would double?
According to this study, its more like 7-8% decrease in salaries, not half. https://www.sciencedirect.com/.....01378

And birth control has enabled this situation? (I know many women with large families who work full time and went right back to work after each birth, who dont take bc).

You apparently dont remember history, when men mistreated women and women were reliant on their husbands for their financial stability, their social standing, their everything.
Women realized that employment evened the playing field both at home and in public.

Its funny how you call it womens desire to work. I remember growing up, we girls were told to have a profession or skills to work in case our husbands cant work or we lose them (almana or divorcee).

Eishes Chayil is replete with references of working for her family.

We are told we have to work to support our Kollel husbands so they can be free to learn Torah.

Yet, despite understanding the need to work, most women I know would love to be SAHM's ( although some prefer their work to being home).

Tuition is a different story. Schools cost money. I wish the schools would open their books so we could feel better about paying our astronomical tuitions. I often wonder if schools are poorly managed, leading to crazy demands for tuition. However, I do agree with you, its about private schooling which isnt limited only to Jewish schools. The difference being the number of children we have at one time in our private Jewish schools being far greater than the average nonJewish fam.

People could choose to live where tuitions are lower, but clearly dont want to.

Personally I think your numbers are way off, and your conclusions dont factor in history of why women returned en masse to the workforce. Do we really want to go back to the days where we were subservient to our husbands, the bread-winner?

↑ ora_43 ↓

Today at 4:55 am

amother Orchid wrote:

Are you sure? I was under the impression that the women are working really hard in Afghanistan, helping in the fields, and doing all the household labor that we have machines for.

If they're a rural, farm-owning family, sure. But until the laws (and social customs) change they'll never be able to contribute more to the family income than subsistence farming.

If they're an urban family, then no. They'll be doing household labor but that has diminishing returns. 1-2 women home all day cleaning and caring for the kids? Amazing. 3-5 women doing the same? Would have been easier if at least 2 of them could have been out there earning a doctor's salary.

To be clear, I'm only talking here about how easy or difficult it is to pay the bills. Obviously if a couple can afford for the wife to not work and prefer it that way, great. But will it be easier to pay the bills? No. Getting women out of the workforce makes it harder for families to get by, not easier.

↑ ora_43

Today at 5:05 am

nylon wrote:

First of all, women always work. Those Afghani women are working.

Not necessarily. Across most of the mideast something like 10% of women work. Now if you want to tell me that 50%, 60% of women are doing full-time unpaid labor at home or on the farm, sure. But not 90%. Not in 2024.

Not that it's just a middle eastern thing. I think the same was true in the US back in the 60s. That's a big part of why radical feminism got off the ground. Because while many of the women who were expected to be full-time wives were actually working - raising 3-8 kids, keeping the house pristine, volunteering with a dozen different groups, etc - a lot of others were bored out of their skulls.

Wherever modern prosperity overlaps with societal values that think women belong in the home, you get a lot of women who don't work and are just plain bored.