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Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

104 points by westurner 3y ago

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Universal childcare is low-hanging fruit for America. Unfortunately, there is a vocal section (mostly married men) who want a stay-at-home mom and believe this will, similar to women entering the workforce following the advent of contraception and the civil rights movement, "force" their wives into the workplace.
- ctoth 3y ago
  I'm from the south and have never once heard anything like this. Any source? It sounds like a caricature.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > from the south and have never once heard anything like this I should have added that I've typically heard it in liberal suburbs, not rural America. Good, recent example is this thread [1] right here on HN (in particular this comment [2]). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654342. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654578
    - api 3y ago
      The thing about women entering the workforce making it impossible to have a single earner home is nonsense. The problem is housing. Most things are the same price or cheaper as a percentage of median income today except housing. That’s because housing is treated as investment meant to appreciate, leading to perverse incentives to artificially restrict supply. IMHO housing is the economic problem in the Western world. Most of the reason younger people feel poorer than their parents is housing. Most of the pressure on families is housing. The demographic collapse issue is due in part to housing costs. Real estate is cancer and the most important economic battle of today is finding a way to break the real estate market. All the people panicking over demographics should be in favor of state and federal density mandates, telework where possible, and zoning reform.
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        Housing isn't the only aspect, by far. Our family healthcare insurance premium is double our mortgage, and it goes up more than inflation (and wage growth) every year.
        api 3y ago
        Yeah health care is another problem but the cost disease here is not as deeply entrenched in the economy as housing. The whole real estate market and a giant chunk of the financial system runs on the idea that housing must always go up, which necessitates that it must become less affordable over time.
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        > The whole real estate market and a giant chunk of the financial system runs on the idea that housing must always go up, which necessitates that it must become less affordable over time. The same is true for healthcare. Pfizer needs to demonstrate ongoing growth to their shareholders; insurance companies are bound by the ACA to a maximum profit margin so can only increase profits by growing costs; half the new commercial real estate in my area is medical buildings going up.
      - lliamander 3y ago
        > The thing about women entering the workforce making it impossible to have a single earner home is nonsense. The problem is housing. I think you may be right about the overall problem, but I'm not sure I agree that density is the solution. People starting families don't just want a house, what they want is enough space. Mothers want a yard they can send the kids out into when they need a moments peace, closets to store everyone's junk, and bathrooms big enough to walk into while pregnant. I think disaggregating populations into more medium and small cities would help keep costs down and give people more space.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > People starting families don't just want a house, what they want is enough space. Mothers want a yard they can send the kids out into when they need a moments peace, closets to store everyone's junk, and bathrooms big enough to walk into while pregnant All of this also means said mother can't go to the corner to pick up supplies, but must drive to the store. There isn't an abundance of neighbors to help out or restaurants with cheap delivery; everything must be done themselves. The notion that families require low density is very culturally-specific and a choice more than a necessity. Yes, four people need more physical space than two, but not to the extent of modern suburbia.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    I dunno how mainstream it is, but this opinion very definitely exists. https://newrepublic.com/article/173288/tpusa-young-women-summer-aint-nothing-wrong-tradwife https://newrepublic.com/article/173288/tpusa-young-women-sum... > The influencer saved her most controversial take for last: Daycare is feminist garbage too. It raises cortisol levels in children. It creates disordered attachment styles. It is pernicious poison, Marxist cancer. “I believe the feminist movement is in large part to blame for the fracturing of the traditional home, where women were coerced outside of their natural roles as mothers into the workforce,” Clark said. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradwife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradwife
    - api 3y ago
      I’ve come to the belief that virtually all of the culture war is a battle over fertility and parenting. One of the hardest things about being human is that human children are ludicrously high maintenance. We have some of the highest maintenance offspring in nature. High parental investment requirements may be a factor in our evolution of complex social systems and longevity (“the grandmother effect”) but it also creates massive pressure and strife in the areas of gender and social dynamics. I feel like non parents don’t get this. I have kids and listen when I say that nothing can prepare you for how high maintenance human children are. There are no words. Even the process of pregnancy and delivery are a life threatening medical condition that used to kill a large number of women. Our species really is uniquely burdened this way. Many cultures have what amounts to a system of soft socially enforced slavery in which 50% of the population, namely women, are pressured or compelled to dedicate their lives to reproduction and raising children. Cultures that don’t do this either face declining birth rates or have to subsidize it financially instead because someone has to do it. Humans do not emerge from eggs and raise themselves. I think this means if we want gender equality and don’t also want demographic collapse we must subsidize high quality child care.
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  Yeah childcare is a casualty in our culture war, where one side wants women to be employed for their empowerment and the other wants women to stay at home with kids. What really sucks is some European countries have already solved this dilemma by both offering childcare and paying a benefit to stay at home mothers, so parents can act in whichever way suits their individual situation. To me, this clearly benefits society, but it requires each side release their hostages.
  - decremental 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Ericson2314 3y ago
    Don't both-sides this. The side that is pro childcare is also pro paid parental leave.
- mbiondi 3y ago
  I've nothing against women in the workplace, but I do think it sucks that in most families both parents are forced to work in order to make ends meet. Universal childcare is the worst of both worlds - you miss out on all those special moments when your children are young and your kids get to be raised by a stranger. Plus the public gets to foot the bill. I guess it works if you don't want those experiences and are happier working.
  - Ericson2314 3y ago
    The goal is both parents work, but work only part time. And we get there via better childcare.
    - rpcope1 3y ago
      Why is that the goal? Who decided that it is an appropriate goal? This whole argument is silly for a lot of reasons, but honestly it's a bait and switch amongst other things: "Oh we'll eventually get to reduced hours, you just need to both start working now and let someone else raise and watch your children." Sounds like a scam to me.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Sounds like a scam to me It seems more scammy to me that universal childcare, pre-school, et cetera are twisted to mean mandating both parents work. It doesn't. Countries with universal childcare still have plenty of stay-at-home parents. What they don't have is parents, predominantly moms, forced to stay at home with their kids.
        Ericson2314 3y ago
        Yup. People need to understand optionality. Markets are about adjacent hypotheticals. Right now it's not like parent needing to do other things is some low-simmering quasi-strike disciplining labor markets. It's more like the expense of having kids disciplinarians would-be parents. A post of post-work post-scarity stuff runs through more people working. It is counter intuitive, but that is how things work. So long as people who would like to work are not, it will hang over our heads and we won't be able to shrink the workweek. If you need some real-world evidence, see right now, at this period of record low unemployment, the one of the UAW's demands is a shorter work-week.
- akavi 3y ago
  Universal Childcare at the margin means some people who would rather take care of their own children are pushed to take a job and have someone else watch their child. I fail to see why that's superior to a universal childcare subsidy, which can be used for childcare or retained if someone wishes to care for their child themself. Or better yet, a universal child allowance that parents can use to defray whatever child raising costs they see fit. And I say that as someone whose current plan is to be a stay-at-home dad while my (female) partner continues to work.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > some people who would rather take care of their own children are pushed to take a job and have someone else watch their child You could say the same about the taxes used to pay for public schools. > fail to see why that's superior to a universal childcare subsidy For one, it doesn't free up labor. Two, most systems I'm aware of let one take a childcare subsidy and use it at home. Paying providers by default makes administration easier by reducing the number of payees. (There is also an oversight cost with private payments.)
    - lliamander 3y ago
      > You could say the same about the taxes used to pay for public schools. Absolutely, because it is true. Especially considering how much we overpay for public schools (costs having been rising faster than inflation for decades with no improvement in student outcomes).
  - pj_mukh 3y ago
    That’s a fine implementation but the flipside is a constant subsidy regardless of geography is basically the same as forcing a parent to not work in HCOL areas, If it was a childcare voucher that was guaranteed to get your child a seat that could be maybe exchanged for cash if you don’t want to go to work, that would be fine. It’s the same problem with UBI. I don’t need a basic income or childcare subsidy. I need a basic purchasing power.
    - 3y ago
- lliamander 3y ago
  Do you think my preference for my wife to be a homemaker is wrong or irrelevant? It's not just an arbitrary preference: in general it is better for the children. It is also what most mothers (at least mothers of young children) would prefer, including my wife. Don't get me wrong: for some children, childcare is a better alternative than what awaits them at home, but I think for most it produces worse outcomes. And this kind of thing will force some women into the workforce, because there's no free lunch and some women will have to work to offset the cost to pay for these programs.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Do you think my preference for my wife to be a homemaker is wrong Yes! It's totally fine for your wife to want to be a homemaker. But if you're asking for a world where economic necessity forces her into being one, I totally think there's a moral shade to that preference. (Even if it's simply a preference.) (Clarification: "wrong" as in unethical. I don't think you're a bad person for having that preference. Far from it, I think you're thinking of your kids.) > this kind of thing will force some women into the workforce Is there evidence of this in Luxembourg, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Germany or Portugal [1]? Keep in mind that plenty of women are forced out of their careers to take care of their kids. Adding them back into the economy boosts productivity (whatever they were doing is likely more productive than raising only their own kids, systemically). Taxes from that productivity alone may be the missing variable that balances the equation to not force those who truly choose to stay at home into a profession to keep up with COL. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/07/01/which-countries-have-the-most-generous-child-care-policies https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/07/01/which-co...
omershapira 3y ago
I'm usually surprised when no-nonsense economic incentives fly under the radar nowadays. You'd expect this, much like subsidized education or any other workforce support utility, to just be a hot topic in a media landscape that looks to shame these incentives, but I guess the state it comes from is complicated to put in narrative.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Similarly, Quebec asserted that it's (then) $7/day daycare program paid for itself. https://www.thestar.com/life/quebec-s-child-care-scheme-pays-for-itself-economist/article_496c91d2-5483-5412-ace9-469ab5fe6256.html https://www.thestar.com/life/quebec-s-child-care-scheme-pays...
- olalonde 3y ago
  The idea that it pays for itself is really dubious. If it really did, there would be no need for a government subsidy. Second, there's actually a massive shortage of daycare spaces and workers[0]. It was a major election issue. [0] https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/daycare-bill-gives-quebec-5-years-to-create-37-000-spaces-1.5852805 https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/daycare-bill-gives-quebec-5-year...
  - 11101010001100 3y ago
    It pays for itself in the sense that the government is able to receive greater tax revenue from the increased number of parents in the workforce.
isykt 3y ago
[flagged]
- Garlef 3y ago
  Do you really think there are that many rich child care employees?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > rich get handouts in Kentucky On what planet are child-care workers the rich?
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    you didn't know that $12/hour was rich? (that rate is from the article) Well now you do.... /sarcasm
  - isykt 3y ago
    The key phrase here is “regardless of household income.” There’s a very simple way to make sure rich people don’t get free shit, and that’s capping stuff like this so that rich people don’t get to take advantage of it. I’ll give you an example: there is no universe in which I personally ought to have had my student loans forgiven. My household income tipped into the seven figures during the pandemic. But some debt forgiveness advocates insisted on cancelling “all student debt, no exceptions.” Absolutely not!
    - InitialLastName 3y ago
      On the other hand, it's entirely possible that adding a rule that requires an administrator to figure out who is too wealthy to deserve some benefit and an enforcement arm to chase down and punish people who utilize a benefit that they are too wealthy to deserve is more expensive than the benefit (some) wealthy people would gain if the benefit were universal.
      - isykt 3y ago
steven-xu 3y ago
Setting aside the philosophical free market questions, additional government subsidy childcare seems fine. There’s a positive externality of readily available childcare: one adult to many children is more efficient than home care, and parents being able to work generates economic production, taxes, etc. But couldn’t we come up with a subsidy with less market distortion? A specific subsidy to pay for childcare for childcare workers will just cause the market clearing wage to childcare workers to drop to the point that only people with high childcare costs will work in the field. This labor pool is much smaller and people will tend to cycle in and out as their children grow to school age. At the end of the day society will end up paying a lot more due to lower liquidity than with a plain flat subsidy. It’s like loan forgiveness for federal workers. Sounds lovely but it just ends up breaking the market for example further subsidizing already wasteful higher education spending.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > couldn’t we come up with a subsidy with less market distortion? Yes. Universal childcare. Alternatively, payment for children (as a refundable tax credit or e.g. social security payment for one's first N years).
  - nickff 3y ago
    How is universal childcare less market distorting? It seems to me that the larger the subsidy (or tariff for that matter), the more the distortion.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - steven-xu 3y ago
      Universal childcare seems to me significantly less distorting than universal childcare for childcare workers. It’s larger subsidy yes but it corrects for an existing distortion (parents pay full price for childcare to raise children who then end up paying taxes to the state), and it does so in a way that it doesn’t break one specific labor market. We do not do parents who aren’t already childcare workers a favor by skewing the market for their labor. For some parents, working in childcare is the right choice, but for many it won’t be, and when you artificially inflate short term wages only if they go into childcare, everyone loses.
epakai 3y ago
Texas has an amendment coming up for vote next month to allow municipalities to cut property tax on properties used for child care. Was a pleasant surprise to see real good incentives tied to a change.
- Avshalom 3y ago
  That sounds more like a way to let homeschoolers get out of property tax than it does anything that would lower the cost of childcare for workers.
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    I don't disagree, but there does exist a network of people who run childcare services for the public out of their homes. I imagine this is who benefits from the amendment.
    - Ericson2314 3y ago
      If this gets us further from a land value tax, it is bad. Simple as. 100% this is disguised handout for home schooling right wing nuts. Property tax is not a significant burden for regular childcare outfits. "Cash poor asset rich" is not a real problem and anyone telling you otherwise it out to swindle you.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        property tax is a burden for anyone who owns property in the US.
        Ericson2314 3y ago
        The weight of my t-shirt upon my shoulders is also technically a burden. Who cares. Quantitative distinctions matter, binary burden/non-burden thinking is not helpful.
gadders 3y ago
>>One reason was Kentucky had lowered the child-to-teacher ratios in the pandemic to prevent the spread of COVID. Each class had to be smaller. I may have missed it, but did this get reversed?
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  What pandemic mitigations haven't been reversed at this point? (Yes, it did, in early 2021: https://www.wlky.com/article/kentucky-child-care-capacity-sizes-returning-to-pre-pandemic-levels/35844083 https://www.wlky.com/article/kentucky-child-care-capacity-si...)
m_0x 3y ago
How long until a "conservative" sees this program and says "Gee, we don't need to waste money in free child-care for workers, they can use their own money for that!"?
- flavius29663 3y ago
  This is such a reddit level comment, a knee jerk reaction to a media article that is biased in its own way. Kentucky is voting 80% republican, so you can be sure that the measure was passed by republicans. The article doesn't mention "republican" once, but if it was an article about a good thing done by democrats, you would have seen "democrat led house". for example this has a picture of Biden https://www.npr.org/2023/10/06/1204077790/buying-electric-vehicle-ev-tax-credit-inflation-reduction-act https://www.npr.org/2023/10/06/1204077790/buying-electric-ve... this is putting the mayor front and center in there, even though she had little merit https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/05/25/edgewater-food-forest-mattapan-boston-food-forest-coalition https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/05/25/edgewater-food-forest-m...
Racing0461 3y ago
More incentivasion of single motherhood. the largest correlation with crime and worse outcomes.
beerdoggie 3y ago
The argument no one has brought up yet: why should society have to pay up even more for breeders' personal choices? People without kids have to pay higher taxes (via rebates for parents), utilize less resources (public schools), effectively subsidizing people who want to have kids. I'm all for protecting what's best for children, but I am not happy with people having children they cannot adequately support, causing other people to need to pay for them.
- ourmandave 3y ago
  Seems if the state is going to mandate 10-year-old rape victims have children, then they should provide some sort of childcare system too.
  - true_religion 3y ago
    Does the state force people to maintain their children? I believe you can always give your children up for adoption so long as all guardians agree to it. It's not commonly desirable but it's what one would recommend for extreme circumstances like you stated.
- netcraft 3y ago
  I understand where you are coming from. I am curious though if you feel differently after watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ (I did)
  - lukeasch21 3y ago
    I knew exactly which video you linked before I even clicked on it. Very timely! (Why Korea is Dying Out - Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell)
- pj_mukh 3y ago
  Sure let’s do that. But as part of the deal let’s make sure $0 off of the economic output of the offspring of “breeders” goes to your Medicare or social security. Deal?
persponsibility 3y ago
[flagged]
thsksbd 3y ago
Widespread use of child care is a symptom of a society in a terminal stage. It's necessary when both parents need to work (or the rate of cohabiting parents has collapsed leading to single parents, ie moms) The teacher student ratio must be small to get half decent care. The care must be affordable so that it is less expensive than the least economically remunerated parent. The ratio * tuition puts a ceiling on the teacher pay. Pay sucks so the quality of care providers is, for most kids, low (there are boutique facilities with long waiting lists, of course). Parents have more pressure not to have kids (myself, all my kids care tuitions costs us >$50k/year for three kids). This leads to a collapse in natality rates. What's the solution? I don't know.
jscipione 3y ago
Well there goes the idea that Republicans stop caring about babies after they are born.

104 points by westurner 3y ago

Universal childcare is low-hanging fruit for America. Unfortunately, there is a vocal section (mostly married men) who want a stay-at-home mom and believe this will, similar to women entering the workforce following the advent of contraception and the civil rights movement, "force" their wives into the workplace.

ctoth 3y ago
I'm from the south and have never once heard anything like this. Any source? It sounds like a caricature.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > from the south and have never once heard anything like this I should have added that I've typically heard it in liberal suburbs, not rural America. Good, recent example is this thread [1] right here on HN (in particular this comment [2]). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654342. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37654578
  - api 3y ago
    The thing about women entering the workforce making it impossible to have a single earner home is nonsense. The problem is housing. Most things are the same price or cheaper as a percentage of median income today except housing. That’s because housing is treated as investment meant to appreciate, leading to perverse incentives to artificially restrict supply. IMHO housing is the economic problem in the Western world. Most of the reason younger people feel poorer than their parents is housing. Most of the pressure on families is housing. The demographic collapse issue is due in part to housing costs. Real estate is cancer and the most important economic battle of today is finding a way to break the real estate market. All the people panicking over demographics should be in favor of state and federal density mandates, telework where possible, and zoning reform.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      Housing isn't the only aspect, by far. Our family healthcare insurance premium is double our mortgage, and it goes up more than inflation (and wage growth) every year.
      - api 3y ago
        Yeah health care is another problem but the cost disease here is not as deeply entrenched in the economy as housing. The whole real estate market and a giant chunk of the financial system runs on the idea that housing must always go up, which necessitates that it must become less affordable over time.
        ceejayoz 3y ago
        > The whole real estate market and a giant chunk of the financial system runs on the idea that housing must always go up, which necessitates that it must become less affordable over time. The same is true for healthcare. Pfizer needs to demonstrate ongoing growth to their shareholders; insurance companies are bound by the ACA to a maximum profit margin so can only increase profits by growing costs; half the new commercial real estate in my area is medical buildings going up.
    - lliamander 3y ago
      > The thing about women entering the workforce making it impossible to have a single earner home is nonsense. The problem is housing. I think you may be right about the overall problem, but I'm not sure I agree that density is the solution. People starting families don't just want a house, what they want is enough space. Mothers want a yard they can send the kids out into when they need a moments peace, closets to store everyone's junk, and bathrooms big enough to walk into while pregnant. I think disaggregating populations into more medium and small cities would help keep costs down and give people more space.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > People starting families don't just want a house, what they want is enough space. Mothers want a yard they can send the kids out into when they need a moments peace, closets to store everyone's junk, and bathrooms big enough to walk into while pregnant All of this also means said mother can't go to the corner to pick up supplies, but must drive to the store. There isn't an abundance of neighbors to help out or restaurants with cheap delivery; everything must be done themselves. The notion that families require low density is very culturally-specific and a choice more than a necessity. Yes, four people need more physical space than two, but not to the extent of modern suburbia.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  I dunno how mainstream it is, but this opinion very definitely exists. https://newrepublic.com/article/173288/tpusa-young-women-summer-aint-nothing-wrong-tradwife https://newrepublic.com/article/173288/tpusa-young-women-sum... > The influencer saved her most controversial take for last: Daycare is feminist garbage too. It raises cortisol levels in children. It creates disordered attachment styles. It is pernicious poison, Marxist cancer. “I believe the feminist movement is in large part to blame for the fracturing of the traditional home, where women were coerced outside of their natural roles as mothers into the workforce,” Clark said. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradwife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tradwife
  - api 3y ago
    I’ve come to the belief that virtually all of the culture war is a battle over fertility and parenting. One of the hardest things about being human is that human children are ludicrously high maintenance. We have some of the highest maintenance offspring in nature. High parental investment requirements may be a factor in our evolution of complex social systems and longevity (“the grandmother effect”) but it also creates massive pressure and strife in the areas of gender and social dynamics. I feel like non parents don’t get this. I have kids and listen when I say that nothing can prepare you for how high maintenance human children are. There are no words. Even the process of pregnancy and delivery are a life threatening medical condition that used to kill a large number of women. Our species really is uniquely burdened this way. Many cultures have what amounts to a system of soft socially enforced slavery in which 50% of the population, namely women, are pressured or compelled to dedicate their lives to reproduction and raising children. Cultures that don’t do this either face declining birth rates or have to subsidize it financially instead because someone has to do it. Humans do not emerge from eggs and raise themselves. I think this means if we want gender equality and don’t also want demographic collapse we must subsidize high quality child care.
droopyEyelids 3y ago
Yeah childcare is a casualty in our culture war, where one side wants women to be employed for their empowerment and the other wants women to stay at home with kids. What really sucks is some European countries have already solved this dilemma by both offering childcare and paying a benefit to stay at home mothers, so parents can act in whichever way suits their individual situation. To me, this clearly benefits society, but it requires each side release their hostages.
- decremental 3y ago
  [dead]
- Ericson2314 3y ago
  Don't both-sides this. The side that is pro childcare is also pro paid parental leave.
mbiondi 3y ago
I've nothing against women in the workplace, but I do think it sucks that in most families both parents are forced to work in order to make ends meet. Universal childcare is the worst of both worlds - you miss out on all those special moments when your children are young and your kids get to be raised by a stranger. Plus the public gets to foot the bill. I guess it works if you don't want those experiences and are happier working.
- Ericson2314 3y ago
  The goal is both parents work, but work only part time. And we get there via better childcare.
  - rpcope1 3y ago
    Why is that the goal? Who decided that it is an appropriate goal? This whole argument is silly for a lot of reasons, but honestly it's a bait and switch amongst other things: "Oh we'll eventually get to reduced hours, you just need to both start working now and let someone else raise and watch your children." Sounds like a scam to me.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > Sounds like a scam to me It seems more scammy to me that universal childcare, pre-school, et cetera are twisted to mean mandating both parents work. It doesn't. Countries with universal childcare still have plenty of stay-at-home parents. What they don't have is parents, predominantly moms, forced to stay at home with their kids.
      - Ericson2314 3y ago
        Yup. People need to understand optionality. Markets are about adjacent hypotheticals. Right now it's not like parent needing to do other things is some low-simmering quasi-strike disciplining labor markets. It's more like the expense of having kids disciplinarians would-be parents. A post of post-work post-scarity stuff runs through more people working. It is counter intuitive, but that is how things work. So long as people who would like to work are not, it will hang over our heads and we won't be able to shrink the workweek. If you need some real-world evidence, see right now, at this period of record low unemployment, the one of the UAW's demands is a shorter work-week.
akavi 3y ago
Universal Childcare at the margin means some people who would rather take care of their own children are pushed to take a job and have someone else watch their child. I fail to see why that's superior to a universal childcare subsidy, which can be used for childcare or retained if someone wishes to care for their child themself. Or better yet, a universal child allowance that parents can use to defray whatever child raising costs they see fit. And I say that as someone whose current plan is to be a stay-at-home dad while my (female) partner continues to work.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > some people who would rather take care of their own children are pushed to take a job and have someone else watch their child You could say the same about the taxes used to pay for public schools. > fail to see why that's superior to a universal childcare subsidy For one, it doesn't free up labor. Two, most systems I'm aware of let one take a childcare subsidy and use it at home. Paying providers by default makes administration easier by reducing the number of payees. (There is also an oversight cost with private payments.)
  - lliamander 3y ago
    > You could say the same about the taxes used to pay for public schools. Absolutely, because it is true. Especially considering how much we overpay for public schools (costs having been rising faster than inflation for decades with no improvement in student outcomes).
- pj_mukh 3y ago
  That’s a fine implementation but the flipside is a constant subsidy regardless of geography is basically the same as forcing a parent to not work in HCOL areas, If it was a childcare voucher that was guaranteed to get your child a seat that could be maybe exchanged for cash if you don’t want to go to work, that would be fine. It’s the same problem with UBI. I don’t need a basic income or childcare subsidy. I need a basic purchasing power.
  - 3y ago
lliamander 3y ago
Do you think my preference for my wife to be a homemaker is wrong or irrelevant? It's not just an arbitrary preference: in general it is better for the children. It is also what most mothers (at least mothers of young children) would prefer, including my wife. Don't get me wrong: for some children, childcare is a better alternative than what awaits them at home, but I think for most it produces worse outcomes. And this kind of thing will force some women into the workforce, because there's no free lunch and some women will have to work to offset the cost to pay for these programs.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Do you think my preference for my wife to be a homemaker is wrong Yes! It's totally fine for your wife to want to be a homemaker. But if you're asking for a world where economic necessity forces her into being one, I totally think there's a moral shade to that preference. (Even if it's simply a preference.) (Clarification: "wrong" as in unethical. I don't think you're a bad person for having that preference. Far from it, I think you're thinking of your kids.) > this kind of thing will force some women into the workforce Is there evidence of this in Luxembourg, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Germany or Portugal [1]? Keep in mind that plenty of women are forced out of their careers to take care of their kids. Adding them back into the economy boosts productivity (whatever they were doing is likely more productive than raising only their own kids, systemically). Taxes from that productivity alone may be the missing variable that balances the equation to not force those who truly choose to stay at home into a profession to keep up with COL. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/07/01/which-countries-have-the-most-generous-child-care-policies https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/07/01/which-co...

omershapira 3y ago

I'm usually surprised when no-nonsense economic incentives fly under the radar nowadays. You'd expect this, much like subsidized education or any other workforce support utility, to just be a hot topic in a media landscape that looks to shame these incentives, but I guess the state it comes from is complicated to put in narrative.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Similarly, Quebec asserted that it's (then) $7/day daycare program paid for itself. https://www.thestar.com/life/quebec-s-child-care-scheme-pays-for-itself-economist/article_496c91d2-5483-5412-ace9-469ab5fe6256.html https://www.thestar.com/life/quebec-s-child-care-scheme-pays...

olalonde 3y ago
The idea that it pays for itself is really dubious. If it really did, there would be no need for a government subsidy. Second, there's actually a massive shortage of daycare spaces and workers[0]. It was a major election issue. [0] https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/daycare-bill-gives-quebec-5-years-to-create-37-000-spaces-1.5852805 https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/daycare-bill-gives-quebec-5-year...
- 11101010001100 3y ago
  It pays for itself in the sense that the government is able to receive greater tax revenue from the increased number of parents in the workforce.

isykt 3y ago

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Garlef 3y ago
Do you really think there are that many rich child care employees?
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> rich get handouts in Kentucky On what planet are child-care workers the rich?
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  you didn't know that $12/hour was rich? (that rate is from the article) Well now you do.... /sarcasm
- isykt 3y ago
  The key phrase here is “regardless of household income.” There’s a very simple way to make sure rich people don’t get free shit, and that’s capping stuff like this so that rich people don’t get to take advantage of it. I’ll give you an example: there is no universe in which I personally ought to have had my student loans forgiven. My household income tipped into the seven figures during the pandemic. But some debt forgiveness advocates insisted on cancelling “all student debt, no exceptions.” Absolutely not!
  - InitialLastName 3y ago
    On the other hand, it's entirely possible that adding a rule that requires an administrator to figure out who is too wealthy to deserve some benefit and an enforcement arm to chase down and punish people who utilize a benefit that they are too wealthy to deserve is more expensive than the benefit (some) wealthy people would gain if the benefit were universal.
    - isykt 3y ago

steven-xu 3y ago

Setting aside the philosophical free market questions, additional government subsidy childcare seems fine. There’s a positive externality of readily available childcare: one adult to many children is more efficient than home care, and parents being able to work generates economic production, taxes, etc. But couldn’t we come up with a subsidy with less market distortion? A specific subsidy to pay for childcare for childcare workers will just cause the market clearing wage to childcare workers to drop to the point that only people with high childcare costs will work in the field. This labor pool is much smaller and people will tend to cycle in and out as their children grow to school age. At the end of the day society will end up paying a lot more due to lower liquidity than with a plain flat subsidy. It’s like loan forgiveness for federal workers. Sounds lovely but it just ends up breaking the market for example further subsidizing already wasteful higher education spending.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> couldn’t we come up with a subsidy with less market distortion? Yes. Universal childcare. Alternatively, payment for children (as a refundable tax credit or e.g. social security payment for one's first N years).
- nickff 3y ago
  How is universal childcare less market distorting? It seems to me that the larger the subsidy (or tariff for that matter), the more the distortion.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - steven-xu 3y ago
    Universal childcare seems to me significantly less distorting than universal childcare for childcare workers. It’s larger subsidy yes but it corrects for an existing distortion (parents pay full price for childcare to raise children who then end up paying taxes to the state), and it does so in a way that it doesn’t break one specific labor market. We do not do parents who aren’t already childcare workers a favor by skewing the market for their labor. For some parents, working in childcare is the right choice, but for many it won’t be, and when you artificially inflate short term wages only if they go into childcare, everyone loses.

epakai 3y ago

Texas has an amendment coming up for vote next month to allow municipalities to cut property tax on properties used for child care. Was a pleasant surprise to see real good incentives tied to a change.

Avshalom 3y ago
That sounds more like a way to let homeschoolers get out of property tax than it does anything that would lower the cost of childcare for workers.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  I don't disagree, but there does exist a network of people who run childcare services for the public out of their homes. I imagine this is who benefits from the amendment.
  - Ericson2314 3y ago
    If this gets us further from a land value tax, it is bad. Simple as. 100% this is disguised handout for home schooling right wing nuts. Property tax is not a significant burden for regular childcare outfits. "Cash poor asset rich" is not a real problem and anyone telling you otherwise it out to swindle you.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      property tax is a burden for anyone who owns property in the US.
      - Ericson2314 3y ago
        The weight of my t-shirt upon my shoulders is also technically a burden. Who cares. Quantitative distinctions matter, binary burden/non-burden thinking is not helpful.

gadders 3y ago

>>One reason was Kentucky had lowered the child-to-teacher ratios in the pandemic to prevent the spread of COVID. Each class had to be smaller. I may have missed it, but did this get reversed?

ceejayoz 3y ago
What pandemic mitigations haven't been reversed at this point? (Yes, it did, in early 2021: https://www.wlky.com/article/kentucky-child-care-capacity-sizes-returning-to-pre-pandemic-levels/35844083 https://www.wlky.com/article/kentucky-child-care-capacity-si...)

m_0x 3y ago

How long until a "conservative" sees this program and says "Gee, we don't need to waste money in free child-care for workers, they can use their own money for that!"?

flavius29663 3y ago
This is such a reddit level comment, a knee jerk reaction to a media article that is biased in its own way. Kentucky is voting 80% republican, so you can be sure that the measure was passed by republicans. The article doesn't mention "republican" once, but if it was an article about a good thing done by democrats, you would have seen "democrat led house". for example this has a picture of Biden https://www.npr.org/2023/10/06/1204077790/buying-electric-vehicle-ev-tax-credit-inflation-reduction-act https://www.npr.org/2023/10/06/1204077790/buying-electric-ve... this is putting the mayor front and center in there, even though she had little merit https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/05/25/edgewater-food-forest-mattapan-boston-food-forest-coalition https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/05/25/edgewater-food-forest-m...

Racing0461 3y ago

More incentivasion of single motherhood. the largest correlation with crime and worse outcomes.

beerdoggie 3y ago

The argument no one has brought up yet: why should society have to pay up even more for breeders' personal choices? People without kids have to pay higher taxes (via rebates for parents), utilize less resources (public schools), effectively subsidizing people who want to have kids. I'm all for protecting what's best for children, but I am not happy with people having children they cannot adequately support, causing other people to need to pay for them.

ourmandave 3y ago
Seems if the state is going to mandate 10-year-old rape victims have children, then they should provide some sort of childcare system too.
- true_religion 3y ago
  Does the state force people to maintain their children? I believe you can always give your children up for adoption so long as all guardians agree to it. It's not commonly desirable but it's what one would recommend for extreme circumstances like you stated.
netcraft 3y ago
I understand where you are coming from. I am curious though if you feel differently after watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ (I did)
- lukeasch21 3y ago
  I knew exactly which video you linked before I even clicked on it. Very timely! (Why Korea is Dying Out - Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell)
pj_mukh 3y ago
Sure let’s do that. But as part of the deal let’s make sure $0 off of the economic output of the offspring of “breeders” goes to your Medicare or social security. Deal?

persponsibility 3y ago

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thsksbd 3y ago

Widespread use of child care is a symptom of a society in a terminal stage. It's necessary when both parents need to work (or the rate of cohabiting parents has collapsed leading to single parents, ie moms) The teacher student ratio must be small to get half decent care. The care must be affordable so that it is less expensive than the least economically remunerated parent. The ratio * tuition puts a ceiling on the teacher pay. Pay sucks so the quality of care providers is, for most kids, low (there are boutique facilities with long waiting lists, of course). Parents have more pressure not to have kids (myself, all my kids care tuitions costs us >$50k/year for three kids). This leads to a collapse in natality rates. What's the solution? I don't know.

jscipione 3y ago

Well there goes the idea that Republicans stop caring about babies after they are born.