I know that I should
probably stick to recipes, and stories about my family, but as our
Federal Government has spent the last two weeks partially shutdown, I
find I just cannot resist speaking up about something. I promise,
this is actually completely non-partisan in nature.
I've spent the last
couple of weeks talking to some very worried folks. The government
shut down has affected a lot of families, and has made even more
families uncertain about their long-term security. Even though I
fully expect that by the time this is published everything will be
back on track, a lot of damage has already been done to the economy,
and even more damage has been done to people's faith in the
continuation of our economic system. The way it works is that the
Federal government borrows money, and then lends it to banks, who in
turn lend it to businesses large and small. For most people, that
means that their ability to put food on the table relies on a grocery
store, and that grocery store relies on the Federal government being
able to borrow money, and lend it cheaply. I have no intention of
discussing how we got here, and I'm equally uninterested in pointing
fingers. But folks, this is the reality for most of us.
The thing is, I am a
homemaker, and my job is to keep my family safe and warm, loved and
fed. Because that is my only job, I have what is often seen as the
luxury of time and energy to pursue it. My occupation is seen as a
bonus, a boon to my family, an appreciated, yet essentially
unnecessary vocation. But what if it isn't?
I have a house full of
food. I also have an entire winter's heat stacked neatly in my
basement. These two things represent an entire summer and fall of
hard work. Work so hard, in fact, that I haven't been writing, or
even checking my email much. I have gobs of new recipes and
techniques to share, not to mention a new knitting pattern, and I
will get to that soon now that the season is winding down, but today
I really want to talk about homemaking and economics. And I want to
do so by committing an enormous faux pas. I'm going to talk about
money and politics. Not on a National scale, mind you, but on a very
personal one.
Let me preface this by
saying that it is a gross generalization, and I make no judgments or
recommendations for how other folks run their households. With a
second income in my household, some things would be easier, it's
true. But that money is more likely than not to be used. Very few
couples or families end up putting the whole of one person's income
into savings. It's the nature of money, it gets spent. But what if a
second person's efforts can be almost entirely converted into
savings, by their very nature? In my family, my husband provides a
monetary income, and I provide for a share of the necessary household
outlay, such as tending a garden and a few livestock animals. This
puts food on the table, and reduces the grocery expenses, both by
providing free food, and by avoiding the cost of convenience food.
Now, that doesn't take up all of my time, and neither does it exhaust
the produce we get out of the garden or from local farmers (it's much
cheaper to buy in bulk, and in season). So when I preserve food, and
store it away for the coming year, it converts the rest of my efforts
into direct savings. Those things represent wealth more concrete than
money in the bank, as it is food that we don't have to buy later, and
gathered and stored at a much lower price. At the same time, my job
requires no expenses for child care, travel expenses, or a second
wardrobe of work appropriate clothing. In addition to that, I handle
all of the bookkeeping for the household and farm, and ensure that we
aren't caught short, and that our monetary income is used to its best
effect. My income, in real terms, without any nonsense claims of
having to hire a bookkeeper, gardener, chauffeur, cook, or house
keeper, is something in the neighborhood of $30,000 per year. That's
how much money it would cost my family for me to get a job, which
means that I would have to earn that in take-home income, AND still
do laundry, household bookkeeping, cooking, cleaning, mending, home
maintenance, errand running, research, and any hiring of contractors
that still has to be done – just to break even.
Now all of those
economic benefits of homemaking have been touched on before, and by
those much wiser than myself. The cost benefit analysis of staying
home has been done to death, and I do believe I've been clear about
my situation and feelings on the matter. What I really want to talk
about it this. My income is not dependent on the Federal government.
The savings generated by my labors are not subject to the stability
of the banking system. As a matter of fact, in the case of a poorly
performing or even failing economy, my labors, stacked neatly away in
gleaming jars and vacuum sealed bags, carefully tucked into the
freezer and nestled into bushel baskets, can only increase in value.
Even in a booming economy, my savings do not actually lose value.
Everyone needs to eat.
When you add to that
the fact that I simply cannot lose my job, cannot be fired,
furloughed, laid off, or downsized, it adds yet another layer of
economic stability to my family. And that's really the heart of it.
Stability. I can talk about money, and income, and cost benefit until
I'm blue in the face. But the truth of the matter is that even if the
Federal government shuts down again in January or defaults in
February (which it seems no one can rule out at this point), we will
still have months of food and heat stored in the house. My family
doesn't have to worry as much about the price of food, because our
food is not as dependent upon Federal politics nor world economics.
How do you put a price on that? How do you measure that kind of
stability as part of the GDP?
You don't. As a matter
of fact, I am a scum-sucking drain on the GDP, and everything I do
makes it worse. That's really something that bears discussing.
Instead of acting like a momma squirrel, and working my tail off, I
could borrow all or part of that $30,000 per year, drive my family
into debt, and wreck the family finances. I would then be growing the
GDP, and making the economy “better”.
Woah. When did that
happen? When did what is financially best for the country become a
disaster for American families? When did doing what is financially
best for our families become bad for the American economy? And more
importantly, how do we fix that? I don't really know the answers to
these questions. I am neither an economist, nor an historian. But I
do know that these are things that we should be talking about. I also
know that I am going to continue to do what I believe is best for my
family and my local community, even if that means not doing my part
for the economy as a whole, or at least not in a way that can
currently be measured. I will continue to design my life with the
goal that no one will be able to make a stand or a point with my
family's economic security. Does that make me a radical? Yeah, maybe.
A radical homemaker.
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