To build a new economic system, we need new economic indicators, for example that current economic indicators like GDP fail to include as "productive work" the work of caring in households—although already in 1995, the U.N. Human Development Report estimated the value of women's unpaid work as a whopping $11 trillion per year. Not only is the work of caregiving in homes—without which there would be no workforce—still generally given little support in economic policy; it's paid substandard wages in the market economy. So in the United States, people pay plumbers, the people to whom we entrust our pipes, $50 to $100 per hour. But childcare workers, the people to whom we entrust our children, according to the U.S. Department of Labor are paid an average of $10 an hour.

This is not logical, it's pathological—and we can, and must, change it! Now is the time to build on the frustration with the economic and ecological disasters this irrational system of values is causing—and change the rules and social structures that support it.


Hope some sane policymaker listens and does something.