I wonder what happens if we redefine “productivity” to mean total US spending divided by total US man-hours. There may be very little macro difference between globalization and automation. What Avent says about automation can be said about outsourcing. Both compete with domestic labor for the job of making things for Americans and so put downward pressure on US wages.

Raising US wages by fiat will increase the trend toward importation and automation. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does require a way to reduce the labor participation rate without decreasing incomes. The rather obvious solution is to create incentives not to work that are not so great as to destroy the incentive to do those things (e.g., construction) that can only be done here. And the obvious way to do that is by subsidizing the one-earner household. We should replace the childcare credit for joint filers with a homemaker tax credit.

Of course, this won’t happen, but that just means that productivity will remain stagnant as automation gains on importation. Maybe that’s a fair price to pay for the inefficiencies of gender-despecialization. There is no free lunch, but the one Mom puts in your lunchbox may be as cheap as it gets. Gender creates the anode and cathode of the economic battery. We have made them the same, and so the potential has dropped. That this result surprises people is a tribute to the power of religion — in this case Egalitarian Feminism — in human affairs. (“MS. says, it, I believe it, and that settles it.”)

Place your bets accordingly.