unemployment and a tooth

On Saturday my wife asked me to help her with making the theplas. Theplas is a type of gujju roti. So her job was to give me the dough all ready and in the right shape and I was to cook it on the stove. I had done this in the past before so I was pretty comfortable. As she churned out the raw material faster and faster the pressure was on me to keep the stuff going. Then Wifey comes out with one more pan and starts two at a time. On one pan the theplas get heated, then they get transferred to the other pan where I oil them on one side, cook a bit, then oil them on the other, cook a bit and throw them onto a pile. I was feeling pretty happy helping her finish the work fast. My servant also looked surprised to see me helping with the theplas. I was trying to do my part of the deal faster and was completely stressed out.
Then suddenly it struck me. I asked Jasmine “me helping is not really helping you do it faster is it? I think you would do all this without me at the same speed… isn’t it?” jasmine says “ya, I do all of this together at the same speed”
Hmmm… I remembered this theory of economics that we had learnt at college. I think it was in the first year. Suppose there is an acre of farm land that the farmer is tending to for years. After he has a couple of sons they to join in the farming as extra hands. So now we would have three heads employed, but if the productivity of the farm land has not gone up in the same ratio then we have what is called ‘disguised unemployment’. It just looks as if more are employed while the net effect is actually negative.
You get the drift….
Disguised unemployment at work.

One more tooth in the life of Jispa and her tooth fairy. Here is the long and shot of it. The ‘OK’ with the circle is her response to the entire episode. The no5 in the top corner is my wife clarifying which tooth number this is.