No, "oikonomics" has nothing to do with pigs. The word "economics" is on everyone's lips today. We use the word all the time, although we have completely forgotten what it means.
The English word "economics" is descended from the Greek word "oikonomia", literally, "household sense". The derivation is no coincidence: in ancient Greek times, and, indeed, until recently (the beginning of the Industrial Revolution about 200 years ago), the basis of the economy - the creation of wealth - was the household.
The ancient Greek household economy divided work between three groups of people: male citizens, their wives, and their slaves. The overwhelming majority of male citizens were farmers, with a minority employed in construction and service industry. Women were responsible for making clothing and raising children. Slaves worked in mining and metalworking.
Although modern Feminist and ultraliberal scholars decry the perceived injustice of ancient Greek society, what they fail to realize was that this tripartite division of labor was universal in the ancient world because it was the most efficient at meeting the needs of ancient civilizations, doing the best they could with the very low level of technology available. In practice, life was so brutally hard for everyone - men, women and slaves alike - and everyone was so busy just doing the huge amount of work it took to get by day-to-day, that there just wasn't time to consider alternatives. Not that there really were any.
This, then, is the suitable context for the decline of slavery in the Southern US and the real cause of the American Civil War: the Confederate States of America (like Nazi Germany, which bore a significant resemblance to ancient Sparta) are best understood as an ancient barbarian nation brought forward two millennia into the modern age and inevitably drawn into conflict with a contemporaneous society.
I say "barbarian", because, unlike the ancient Athenians, Romans and Persians, who managed to do some remarkable things in their limited free time, the Confederacy, like ancient Sparta, Scythia, Gaul or Macedonia, had no cultural accomplishments, a failing that contributed to the demise of the society.
"Gone With The Wind" is ultimately accurate in portraying the American Civil War as a clash of civilizations: the ancient slave society versus the modern industrial society. The novel is also accurate in another sense: identifying that, indeed, something intangible was lost in the transition from ancient oikonomia to modern economy. Modern industrial society created two basic problems that have yet to be resolved to satisfaction: economic surpluses, and the separation of economic produce from man's labors.
Recently I read an article about the European economy in which the practice of transferring funds directly into the bank accounts of European women "just for having children" was decried. Indeed, we have similar systems here in the US, where women are "paid" to make babies.
The impulse to outrage at such systems (and the prolific abuses they engender) overshadows the basic premise of EBT and other "get paid to make babies" systems. In the ancient Greek oikonomia, the role of women and family in the raising of children was inherent in the functioning of the system. When the basis of the economy moved out of the house and from people to machines, this basic dynamic became confused.
Our modern industrial society places no market value on the rearing of children (which is one of many examples of why free markets don't exist and don't work) - so in order to keep society going, it is necessary and appropriate to compensate women for their efforts. The alternative would be starvation, food riots, social breakdown, etc.
Now that we understand the premise of EBT - the "value" of the "work" it takes to make babies - we can get some ideas as to how to fix the system.
Operating under the premise that bringing children into this world and providing them with the appropriate care and attention is a worthy pursuit that should be compensated by society in lieu of fiscally rewarding occupations, it stands to reason that the system should reward good performance.
Parents who raise well-behaved children who reach their full potential should be more generously rewarded than those who do not. I would argue that children who top their class at each grade and are recognized as good citizens based on social participation (book faires, church, sports teams, social work) should see their parents rewarded with bonuses. I would even go so far as to argue that Social Security payments should be tied to the progress of the next generation.
Feminists have long made the rather trite argument that divorced women should be entitled to the same quality of life that they had when married so that they would not be disincentivized from leaving husbands they find abusive (or, more often, boringly responsible). This argument is commonly associated with really stupid Feminists who idolize Lysistrata but ignore the point of the story: the adaptive value of the oikonomia, the household division of labor.
If we accept the value of the oikonomy and the utility of the labor of wives and mothers - and the opportunity cost to a woman (or man) of staying home and raising children well, then, I would argue, EBT and similar "pay to make kids" systems should offer compensation that scales with the earnings of the other spouse and the ending wages of the full-time parent.
Such a system would remove the choice that most women and families face between making ends meet via two wage-earners and having time to spend with the kids. The system would in large part pay for itself by removing large numbers of women from the labor pool, raising salaries for the remaining, mostly male, workforce.
It is easy to lose sight that arguably the two biggest changes in the American economy since the idyllic 1950s - and the real causes of the degeneration of American society - have been automation and the entry of women to the workforce.
In sum, I very much agree with Benito Mussolini's observation:
"Women and machines are the two main causes of unemployment."
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