Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
On Sun, Sep 12, 2004 at 11:47:13AM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
There are certainly undetermined factors involved. A long accepted premise among economists is that people would act rationally. Rationality in this context was defined in terms of bettering one's economic situation. This thread of rationality could be applied very conveniently at both the micro- and macroeconomic level. For the economist taking time off work to care for a sick child is not a rational act.
But of course it is rational. The benefit due to improvement in one's child's health is much greater than loss because of not working.
Rationality operates from a set of premises, and a strict reasoning from those premises. Unless it can be shown that caring for the sick child has economic value (e.g. the child is a precocious film star) it is an irrational act because we are inserting a premise from outside the system. Within a strictly rational system euthenasia may be the only rational act, and one must not confuse that with the natural human emotional response to such an act.
Even in the most diehard classical economy, the money is just a means for getting the actual goods, and in this case you can obtain much more valuable goods some other way.
In that case one needs to compare the net loss from not working with the net economic effect of working while paying someone else to care for the child. The healing effect of being personally present to care for the child cannot be economically quantified.
Ec