The root of the word "economy" is from the greek "oikos" (habitat). It is the same root as that of "ecology".

Economy means "the laws of the habitat", and ecology means "the story of the habitat".

How can 'smart people' think they are separable?

Imagine trying to do physics or chemistry, except that everything had to translate into the units of $.

Why is it: my sister is a full time mom on her own dime, whereas a friend of mine gets paid $14/hr to nanny? (Her clients pay $50/hr and she gets a fraction of that).

Care for one child, get paid, whereas if you care for another child, you have to pay? My sister could go work as a nanny and get paid to care for someone elses' children, but when it comes to taking care of her own, she's running a loss? To keep up, she goes and cleans those very same peoples' houses.

That's a bunch of nonsense, that two children would have different economic values. That one family would have to scramble just to keep up while another family's cup runneth over. The very real work my sister does to care for my niece is all but invisible in the economist's spreadsheet, while my nanny friend is considered a working, productive person.

These days I've been taking care of my niece quite often, and my work is not counted on the spreadsheets of the economists either. That doesn't make it any less valuable ecologically, spiritually, socially, communally... But economically, my work is in the red.

The contradictions are endless. People work "for free" all the time, and it doesn't get counted. In fact, such work is often "discounted" as amateur, poverty, laziness.

What's much more important, to many economists, and what is counted, is to sit at some desk somewhere doing busywork in an office so that you can pump economic power into the pockets of rent suckers. That is counted on the economists' sheets. That'll get you greasy green paper pieces. So I could be doing that and walking around with all the clout telling people about my career and buying people drinks at the bar, and people would pat me on the back, and my family would be so proud of me, and my friends would envy my bank account, etc. But I wouldn't get to spend time with my niece.

Until people stop putting up with the madness of mainstream economic religion, it's just going to continue.

People take monstrous loans that grow and grow, just to have a stable home. That's the norm. What good does it do anyone? All it really does is uproot communities on a yearly basis.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being nomadic. But when multiple generations are in exile because of rampant greed all across the board (homeowners are corroborating by taking those loans out in the first place, by paying such high prices at the cost of such high debts)... it's a problem.

How much time and human energy is wasted by "breadwinners" doing ritual busywork at offices 40-70 hours a week? They could be at home doing things that are actually useful for at least half of that time. Being with kids, cooking, gardening, reading/studying, exercising, cleaning, fixing stuff...

What counts as "busywork" vs. real productive work is ideologically relative... and here is where we desperately need spiritual evolution.