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The number of people I know in their 30s who can only just afford food and shelter is so high - these are people in the same economic class who'd have had kids

The number of people I know in their 30s who can only just afford food and shelter is so high - these are people in the same economic class who'd have had kids 20 years ago. We do extremely little to make a society that encourages people having kids, or honestly just living a life doing much other than working. Daycare is expensive for the same reason that everything is expensive - money to investors and landlords. The workers are still being paid under a living wage. Keep in mind its mostly privileged people who can afford a single income that have the option to exit the workforce. Unless we can make cost of living more affordable for everyone we can't expect anything to get better. In 1985 a median wage worker would spend only 55% of their check on housing healthcare transportation and education, now its 105%.

nonethewiser 3y ago
> Daycare is expensive for the same reason that everything is expensive - money to investors and landlords. Labor in the US is pretty expensive in the grand scheme of things. $15 is peanuts to make, but a lot for parents to cover. Take this scenario. You have an infant room with 8 kids and have 2 teachers in a LCOL area. Tuition is 325/week. Total incoming weekly tuition is 2600. If you find 2 people who will work for $15/hr thats 1200/week in labor costs. Plus FICA, insurance, and anything else required to pay per employee. With no redundancy (so no sick/vacation days). Then you have to pay rent, utilities, maintenance, front office staff, and have enough left over for someone find it all worth it. There is really no way around it - if you want people at the bottom to make a decent wage then customers will have to pay it. And $15 isn’t exactly decent even in LCOL so daycare costs would probably need to rise at least another 33% in this scenario which moves the low end price of daycare from 1300/month to 1729/month.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Fundamentally, I believe the US either needs to subsidize childcare directly (either as guaranteed slots at childcare facilities or payments to families for a parent to stay home and provide care) or make peace that people will have less or no kids because they are unaffordable (unless you are of means and can afford children as if they are luxury goods) in the current socioeconomic macro. Will this help? I'm unsure. Children are heavily subsidized in Scandinavian countries with pro natalist policies (in some circumstances, governments paying cash for children does not move the needle much and comes at a high cost), not subsidized much at all in China comparatively, and both cohorts continue to see a decline in total fertility rates. These are complex systems problems where the cost to modify inputs is high, and latency in feedback also high. https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4141600-pro-natalist-policies-are-great-but-declining-birth-rates-are-here-to-stay/ https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4141600-pro-natalist... https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-come-with-a-hefty-price-tag https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-... https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Policy_responses_low_fertility_UNFPA_WP_Final_corrections_7Feb2020_CLEAN.pdf https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Policy_res... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3136991/can-china-boost-its-birth-rate-adopting-nordic-position https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3136991/can...
  - huytersd 3y ago
    Alternatively conditions can be created where one parent, most likely the mother, can stay home and wages will automatically increase because of the reduced labor force.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
      And then you have sexism though. I want to enjoy my children as much as my wife and we both want a career too
      - huytersd 3y ago
        Yeah can’t have it all. I’d be willing to put up with some sexism if it meant everyday wasn’t a low paid grind to the gravestone. I would bet a lot of women would given how dissatisfied the workforce is currently.
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        No one wants to be told they can’t have it all. That is the reality. Life is about choices. Not gender specific.
        huytersd 3y ago
        The reality is also everyone can’t have it all. If a lot of people make choices that lead to a worse outcome for everyone then maybe we should prioritize other avenues of fixing the problem rather than continuing to optimize for complete freedom of choice.
        Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
        I mean, dads have sacrificed dadhood for years (talking as a dad), without even a chiice. I've been in the privileged position of working from home, so I see my children every day, can take a minute or two to play together during the day, eat together, bring them to school, and of course when they were 0-1 years old they slept on me so many times (even while working. Computer did wonders!) I don't know for a fact, but I suspect it is possible to have two parents working from home and an external person coming home a couple of hours during the day and have both career + children, but I'm not entirely sure (my wife is fully dedicated to children, although we are at the tail end). That being said, the choice shouldn't be determined by sex. Breastfeeding is a thing, but with Canada's paternity/maternity leaves, the problem is heavily mitigated (1 year, although with very low compensation)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- taurath 3y ago
  > if you want people at the bottom to make a decent wage then customers will have to pay it We could always consider it a public good. $35 billion a year is the rough estimated cost I've found to provide universal pre-k (ages 3-5), with people leaving the workforce costing $155billion elsewhere in the thread. We spend at minimum $880 billion on the military. Seems like a no brainer to me.
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    California is slowly moving that direction by expanding out DK. Our twins got to attend last year because of the new cutoff. And our local elementary school added a 2nd DK class this year due to the continued expansion (before they only had 1). There definitely does seem to be a learning curve involved here. They try to teach DK to K standards because there are no other standards. Which is just unrealistic, especially as you start accepting nearly newly 4 year olds.
    - satvikpendem 3y ago
      What is DK? Please spell out your acronyms, especially if you are using them in a thread for the first time.
      - metaphor 3y ago
        [flagged]
        satvikpendem 3y ago
        > Google isn't obsolete yet. Doesn't matter, it's just good writing to spell out acronyms initially. At the very least, it also helps everyone else reading this to not waste their collective minutes googling uncommon acronyms when the commenter could simply spend an extra few seconds spelling them out initially.
        metaphor 3y ago
- syntheweave 3y ago
  The thing that creates the specific downward pressure in the US is also the thing that makes it very GDP-productive. When business raises their voice, they get to call the shots and define society in a way that creates economic rent: so, car dependency, approaches to childcare, approaches to healthcare, and so on. A lot of money from these businesses is "on the books" and easy to assess for taxation and investment purposes, and the government tends to be satisfied with this arrangement since it makes easy to know who's in charge. Meanwhile, everyone suffers from having sprawled cities with expensive homes, oversized trucks, bad healthcare, etc. All of that results in an expensive childcare number. But this structure is also rather unrelated to the real productivity of the economy - the creatively destructive portion of American business always has something to say about it. If those companies want their labor to be cheaper and less frequently disrupted, they have to go cause grief for one of these rentier businesses, socialize some things and cut into some monopoly inaction or low standards. But they only reach that conclusion by letting the economy get into a highly unstable position first.
- wizerdrobe 3y ago
  > Take this scenario. You have an infant room with 8 kids and have 2 teachers in a LCOL area. Tuition is 325/week. You’re pulling these numbers out of your ass, to be frank. I live in a Low-Cost of Living Area (rural South Carolina, near Clemson) and we pay $160 per week for care for a good facility. Formerly, in a now High-Cost area (Charleston) we paid about $200 per week in 2020 with that rising to about $225 for an ok facility. If you wanted to pay $325 you’d have your pick of the litter of high-end facilities with nice add-ons like Spanish-immersion and music education. For further context, my wife currently makes $15 per hour as a simple line cook in order to have a 9-5 style schedule, and covers daycare, vehicle expenses, and groceries on her paycheck. If we had a second child added we would be about break-even on her at that pay grade. For further context, her 9-5 prep-cook pay was $20 per hour at her Charleston employer and prior to was making 55k salaried with benefits and PTO as a sous chef. The issue we faced as a family was lack of availability at most facilities. We spent a year on a waiting list to get accepted in. My wife couldn’t work even if she wanted to the first year. In the city, that might have stretched further.
  - rfrey 3y ago
    I believe you, but how do the sums work? In my jurisdiction - a notoriously right-wing part of Canada - the staff:kid ratio is 1:4 for little guys, 6 for toddlers, and 8 for 4 years +. Call it 6 average. A group of 6 kids will bring in $960/week. At a minimum wage of $15/hour, a week's wages is $600 - call it $800 for the employer after expenses. That leaves roughly $160 excess funds per cohort. Say there are 5 cohorts in a daycare - 40 kids. $800 excess funds per week or ~$3500 per month. Out of that comes rent, insurance, supplies, cleaning, utilities, and probably property taxes and maintenance on a typical triple-net lease. Seems like a losing proposition.
  - mberning 3y ago
    I don’t think they are really out of line for their estimate. I live in a mid size city in the midwest and we have paid $50-$100 per day depending on the quality of the facility. I’m sure a weekly or monthly rate could knock that down a bit, but it’s still quite expensive.
  - francisofascii 3y ago
- jefftk 3y ago
  > There is really no way around it We could have a culture where it's typical for people who stay home with their kids to additionally be paid to watch the kids of another family.
  - migf 3y ago
    I like this idea. This is not as safe as having your kids in a licensed daycare.
    - jefftk 3y ago
      Are you sure? Lots of kids are watched by nannies and this doesn't seem to have worse outcomes than daycares (though confounded by richer people having nannies).
- lm28469 3y ago
  > There is really no way around it - if you want people at the bottom to make a decent wage then customers will have to pay it. There was a way from 1950 to ~1990s though, we could start looking here: https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcXp-6EsuSBkSyHpSbm0.png https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcX...
- paddim8 3y ago
  It's subsidized in sweden. Works fine.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  > Plus FICA, insurance, and anything else required to pay per employee. > Then you have to pay rent, utilities, maintenance, front office staff, and have enough left over for someone find it all worth it. That means labour is not expensive, the tributes are expensive. "Expensive labour" is an oxymoron. If something is not worth doing because it would be too expensive to pay anybody to do it, that means it's not worth doing. The whole meaning of having civilization is to make labour as "expensive" as possible, ie to see that the people doing the work receive as much as possible from their input. This includes making labourers as effective as possible by the help of education and having them operate more and more advanced machinery to increase production.
- grecy 3y ago
  > Labor in the US is pretty expensive in the grand scheme of things Labor in the US is significantly cheaper than any other developed country.
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    > any other This hyperbole makes your point very easy to disprove. All it takes is one example and your statement is factually incorrect. Italy, South Korea, etc. Many definitions of "developed" basically boil down to income so you would basically need the USA to be the least developed of developed countries. But I will try and be charitable and assume you mean USA labor costs are on the low end of developed countries. What metrics are you looking at? Wages in general in the USA are higher (higher median income). The 15$/hr example I used is higher than most minimum wages in Europe. For example the minimum wage in Germany is about 1600 euros a month or $10/hr for full-time work. The federal averge minimum wage is lower than some developed countries and higher than others, and many states have higher minimum wages than countries like Germany, UK, and France. Regardless, even if US labor costs are low relative to developed countries (which doesnt seem to be the case), it doesnt change that its a major factor in daycare costs and that increasing wages would just make very high prices even higher.
    - grecy 3y ago
      https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=RMW https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=RMW In 2022 the US had a lower minimum wage than every OECD country other than Romania, Croatia, Hungary and Czechia. 21 developed countries have more expensive labor than the US, and only 4 are less expensive. Labor in the US is cheap among Developed countries.
      - kbelder 3y ago
        Kind of corresponds to unemployment. 10 OECD countries have lower rates, 30 have higher. https://www.oecd.org/employment/unemployment-rates-oecd-updated-september-2023.htm#:~:text=OECD%20unemployment%20rate%20remains%20below,the%2013th%20consecutive%20month&text=The%20OECD%20unemployment%20rate%20was,a%20year%20(Figure%201.1) https://www.oecd.org/employment/unemployment-rates-oecd-upda....
depletedgherkin 3y ago
I feel like changes in culture are a bigger factor than economic reasons. Around the world it's normally the poorer, not richer, countries that have more kids on average, so I don't think finances are the main story here. A lot of countries with excellent childcare policies like in the Nordics also have pretty low birth rates. (Not knocking those policies though, I'm sure the parents there do appreciate them)
- api 3y ago
  Poorer places usually have lower costs for things like real estate and child care. Richer places tend to get “cost disease” especially in real estate. This in turn means that people have to have higher level careers and usually two earners in a home to afford the cost of living. Overall this all raises GDP but it results in an environment that is hostile to family formation. It could be a feedback loop too. Fewer kids might coincide with more career oriented lifestyles which drive higher earnings but also bid up real estate and other costs, and so on.
  - d3w4s9 3y ago
    In many parts of the world, it is common for grandparents to take care of the babies and even small kids. In other words, free daycare. Not so common in the US.
    - Qem 3y ago
      As people delay parenting, this option becomes less available. When people routinely had kids in their 20s, starting age of grandparents was about 40-50, when they were still had a lot of energy to help. In a world where people have kids in their 30s, the average grandparent has their first grandchild between 60-70. It means a sizeable fraction of them may be already too frail or even already dead, to contribute significantly in childrearing, needing assistance themselves. That compounds the problem, because then people have to raise small children at the same time their elderly parents start to need more assistance.
- csomar 3y ago
Kranar 3y ago
This claim doesn't add up. The fertility rate actually increases the lower your income is, that is, the richer you are the less likely you are to have kids. The issue is not that kids are expensive, it's that once you reach a certain level of income you don't want to give up your lifestyle in order to raise kids. People who are lower income don't have to give up on a lifestyle in order to have kids. They still have to work incredibly hard in order to raise kids, absolutely, but it's not like if they didn't raise kids they'd be able to go on vacations, enjoy eating out more often, attend more expensive social events with friends, etc...
- taurath 3y ago
  The fertility rate also lowers for other factors. Declines do not match up with incomes - I think implying cost of living, which is what anecdotally almost everyone I know says, is a nonfactor may be premature. In the US the birthrate has been mostly the same since the early 70s. The difference between the top and bottom birthrates by income is all of 28% (45 per 1000 women for $200k or more, vs 63 per 1000 women for under $10k) - thats significant but certainly not the only factor.
  - Kranar 3y ago
    You argued that there are people in their 30s who can just afford food and shelter and implied that they are not having kids due to their economic situation, whereas 20 years ago (so in 2003) they would have had kids, presumably because their economic situation would have been better 20 years ago. Yet the statistics show that: 1. Those with lower incomes have more kids than those with higher incomes. 2. This trend has existed for more than 20 years, closer to 50 years in fact. Now that I've pointed this out you seem to want to argue that income is not the only factor that determines fertility rates. Certainly that is true, but given that it's true why did you seem to emphasize it so strongly in your post when it supported the conclusion you wanted to make, but when I point out the opposite only then do you decide to diminish the relationship between income and fertility? If the relationship between income and fertility is not that significant when I point it out, then it's not that significant when you want to use it for your argument either in which case your entire point kind of falls apart. Finally as an aside, there is no shortage of countries with either cheap or even free child care, mostly in wealthy countries such as Finland, Sweden, Norway. But guess what? Fertility rates in those countries are incredibly low.
jmye 3y ago
This is nonsense. Daycare is expensive because no one provides it, and because no one wants Joey Bag of Donuts with no insurance or credentials watching their kids, whom they presumably love (although many people do just that because it’s their only option and few states do a sufficient job enforcing quality standards). There are waitlists long enough that parents have to sign up before their child is born. That’s nothing, at all, to do with “landlords” or “investors”. I’m so tired of faux-progressive outrage online that always only focuses on how one of roughly three things are to blame for everything, no matter how tenuous or invented the connection is.
- taurath 3y ago
  > Daycare is expensive because no one provides it Why isn't the Free Market providing it then? > I’m so tired of faux-progressive outrage online that always only focuses on how one of roughly three things are to blame for everything I have roughly 20 straight married friends and 4 have kids (all are making top 5% income) and 10 want them but are waiting until they can better afford housing. Thats the basis of my argument, that cost of living is a common complaint. Cost of living sucks, its worse than its ever been in many areas. In areas with low cost of living, they have the problem that housing is relatively cheap but jobs aren't plentiful. I don't think that's controversial, but please let me know what I'm missing.
  - krapht 3y ago
    Somehow, I think it's just cultural. I spent many years outside of the US, and I think expectations for space are too inflated in America. There are many happy families in Europe raising two kids in a 500 sqft apartment.
  - jmye 3y ago
    Most of the child care I’ve seen is single provider, restricted to a few kids. Most parents seem to want pre-pre-school. One of those costs a lot, the other costs less, but requires knowing someone who knows someone. I also don’t think many people see it as a glamorous thing they want to get involved in, but the opportunity is clearly there. There’s probably a fortune to be made in figuring out how to “disrupt” the current industry. To the other, I think if they’re top 5% in income, they’re looking for something very specific in some very specific neighborhood, and are completely unwilling to compromise. I was in the top 10% in my relatively high (but not Seattle or SF) cost of living city, and had to move several miles outside of downtown. It was completely affordable with few sacrifices. In short, I’m calling BS.
angmarsbane 3y ago
We have special neighborhoods that are 55+ only, it would be a huge boon if we had subsidized housing for young married couples full of other families.
- voisin 3y ago
  Boomers would never allow it. Discrimination they’d say. Rules for thee, not for me.
- mlrtime 3y ago
  Those special houses are not "subsidized". They are currated for people who don't want to live with younger folks and the "issues" that follow them. You are conflating issues, there is nothing stopping a developer from creating a "35-" development (Except a market of course).
  - ajhurliman 3y ago
    They may be subsidized (sort of) in that they pay lower taxes, on the theory that they’re not sending anyone to school at that age. And age discrimination in housing is actually illegal, the 55+ and 65+ situations are special exclusions.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >there is nothing stopping a developer from creating a "35-" development (Except a market of course). I'd be down, that means young people can't actually own houses, unheard of for my generation. But yes, it's no secret older folk either have better financial safeties that degraded by millenial/Gen Y (pension, social secrutity) and generally make more money. Great market to appeal to. Meanwhile, the 23- market takes out an un-bankruptable 100k over 4 years hoping to climb through the cracks.
apwell23 3y ago
> Daycare is expensive for the same reason that everything is expensive - money to investors and landlords. This is wrong. If this was the case there would investors lining up to make a killing. Planet money did an episode on this https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-expensive-child-care-waitlists https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-ex...
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I tracked down the transcript and I still don't understand the math here: > GUO: In a month where they're bringing in, like, $40,000, $33,000 is going to payroll. > ANDERSEN: Our salaries are 83% of our budget per month. That is absolutely insane. > GUO: And this is pretty representative of the country. And for thinking, well, at least day care workers are getting paid well - right? - because most of the money is going to salaries. Well, they are not paid well. Kelsey pays 12 to $15 an hour. >But Kelsey says she can't pay as much as those stores because she has more people to pay than they do. For Kelsey's 72 kids, she needs 25 people on staff I guess this just shows my ignorance, but is a 1:3 kid-parent ratio the norm for day care? I know you can't automate child care like you can a cashier, but given that my grandparents raised 4-5 kids at any one time (they had like, 10 kids between one previous marriage each, but huge age gaps), and my uncle raised 3 himself (and sometimes My mom dropped me off with him. So 3.5), it seems very "inefficient" when considering this is only caring for a third of the time (as opposed to a 24/7 care as a stay at home parent). >The safety of kids and the quality of care get a little more dicey if you have more than four infants to one teacher. So you just need a lot of grown-ups to take care of babies and even toddlers. I guess a day care has a higher quality stay than my uncle since it mentions teaching. I guess it's tough to just throw your child at someone you don't trust who may do it for cheap, so there's pressures to not just be "my uncle's house" (not that he's a bad parent. But I was mostly there to play with my cousin and be fed lunch/dinner). But when you remember the perspective of a school teacher teaching 20-40(!) kids at once for even less money, it makes you feel like something is off. Probably in the case of the teachers, but still. >But we wouldn't leave 16-year-olds alone. In fact, we don't really leave anyone alone. tangent but I'm really baffled by this sentiment. Like, I wouldn't leave the country for months with a 16YO, but by 16 I would feel they can operate for a few days without seeing a parent. Just make sure they have allowance to cover food. That's an age where they need to start operating independently anyway since they are potentially close to living alone in college, or moving out a few years into adulthood.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
> We do extremely little to make a society that encourages people having kids... What do you mean? We've gotten rid of RvW and a lot of states are making abortion illegal. We are politicing the HELL out of this problem.

nonethewiser 3y ago

> Daycare is expensive for the same reason that everything is expensive - money to investors and landlords. Labor in the US is pretty expensive in the grand scheme of things. $15 is peanuts to make, but a lot for parents to cover. Take this scenario. You have an infant room with 8 kids and have 2 teachers in a LCOL area. Tuition is 325/week. Total incoming weekly tuition is 2600. If you find 2 people who will work for $15/hr thats 1200/week in labor costs. Plus FICA, insurance, and anything else required to pay per employee. With no redundancy (so no sick/vacation days). Then you have to pay rent, utilities, maintenance, front office staff, and have enough left over for someone find it all worth it. There is really no way around it - if you want people at the bottom to make a decent wage then customers will have to pay it. And $15 isn’t exactly decent even in LCOL so daycare costs would probably need to rise at least another 33% in this scenario which moves the low end price of daycare from 1300/month to 1729/month.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Fundamentally, I believe the US either needs to subsidize childcare directly (either as guaranteed slots at childcare facilities or payments to families for a parent to stay home and provide care) or make peace that people will have less or no kids because they are unaffordable (unless you are of means and can afford children as if they are luxury goods) in the current socioeconomic macro. Will this help? I'm unsure. Children are heavily subsidized in Scandinavian countries with pro natalist policies (in some circumstances, governments paying cash for children does not move the needle much and comes at a high cost), not subsidized much at all in China comparatively, and both cohorts continue to see a decline in total fertility rates. These are complex systems problems where the cost to modify inputs is high, and latency in feedback also high. https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4141600-pro-natalist-policies-are-great-but-declining-birth-rates-are-here-to-stay/ https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/4141600-pro-natalist... https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-come-with-a-hefty-price-tag https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-... https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Policy_responses_low_fertility_UNFPA_WP_Final_corrections_7Feb2020_CLEAN.pdf https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/pub-pdf/Policy_res... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3136991/can-china-boost-its-birth-rate-adopting-nordic-position https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3136991/can...
- huytersd 3y ago
  Alternatively conditions can be created where one parent, most likely the mother, can stay home and wages will automatically increase because of the reduced labor force.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
    And then you have sexism though. I want to enjoy my children as much as my wife and we both want a career too
    - huytersd 3y ago
      Yeah can’t have it all. I’d be willing to put up with some sexism if it meant everyday wasn’t a low paid grind to the gravestone. I would bet a lot of women would given how dissatisfied the workforce is currently.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        No one wants to be told they can’t have it all. That is the reality. Life is about choices. Not gender specific.
        huytersd 3y ago
        The reality is also everyone can’t have it all. If a lot of people make choices that lead to a worse outcome for everyone then maybe we should prioritize other avenues of fixing the problem rather than continuing to optimize for complete freedom of choice.
        Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
        I mean, dads have sacrificed dadhood for years (talking as a dad), without even a chiice. I've been in the privileged position of working from home, so I see my children every day, can take a minute or two to play together during the day, eat together, bring them to school, and of course when they were 0-1 years old they slept on me so many times (even while working. Computer did wonders!) I don't know for a fact, but I suspect it is possible to have two parents working from home and an external person coming home a couple of hours during the day and have both career + children, but I'm not entirely sure (my wife is fully dedicated to children, although we are at the tail end). That being said, the choice shouldn't be determined by sex. Breastfeeding is a thing, but with Canada's paternity/maternity leaves, the problem is heavily mitigated (1 year, although with very low compensation)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
taurath 3y ago
> if you want people at the bottom to make a decent wage then customers will have to pay it We could always consider it a public good. $35 billion a year is the rough estimated cost I've found to provide universal pre-k (ages 3-5), with people leaving the workforce costing $155billion elsewhere in the thread. We spend at minimum $880 billion on the military. Seems like a no brainer to me.
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  California is slowly moving that direction by expanding out DK. Our twins got to attend last year because of the new cutoff. And our local elementary school added a 2nd DK class this year due to the continued expansion (before they only had 1). There definitely does seem to be a learning curve involved here. They try to teach DK to K standards because there are no other standards. Which is just unrealistic, especially as you start accepting nearly newly 4 year olds.
  - satvikpendem 3y ago
    What is DK? Please spell out your acronyms, especially if you are using them in a thread for the first time.
    - metaphor 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - satvikpendem 3y ago
        > Google isn't obsolete yet. Doesn't matter, it's just good writing to spell out acronyms initially. At the very least, it also helps everyone else reading this to not waste their collective minutes googling uncommon acronyms when the commenter could simply spend an extra few seconds spelling them out initially.
        metaphor 3y ago
syntheweave 3y ago
The thing that creates the specific downward pressure in the US is also the thing that makes it very GDP-productive. When business raises their voice, they get to call the shots and define society in a way that creates economic rent: so, car dependency, approaches to childcare, approaches to healthcare, and so on. A lot of money from these businesses is "on the books" and easy to assess for taxation and investment purposes, and the government tends to be satisfied with this arrangement since it makes easy to know who's in charge. Meanwhile, everyone suffers from having sprawled cities with expensive homes, oversized trucks, bad healthcare, etc. All of that results in an expensive childcare number. But this structure is also rather unrelated to the real productivity of the economy - the creatively destructive portion of American business always has something to say about it. If those companies want their labor to be cheaper and less frequently disrupted, they have to go cause grief for one of these rentier businesses, socialize some things and cut into some monopoly inaction or low standards. But they only reach that conclusion by letting the economy get into a highly unstable position first.
wizerdrobe 3y ago
> Take this scenario. You have an infant room with 8 kids and have 2 teachers in a LCOL area. Tuition is 325/week. You’re pulling these numbers out of your ass, to be frank. I live in a Low-Cost of Living Area (rural South Carolina, near Clemson) and we pay $160 per week for care for a good facility. Formerly, in a now High-Cost area (Charleston) we paid about $200 per week in 2020 with that rising to about $225 for an ok facility. If you wanted to pay $325 you’d have your pick of the litter of high-end facilities with nice add-ons like Spanish-immersion and music education. For further context, my wife currently makes $15 per hour as a simple line cook in order to have a 9-5 style schedule, and covers daycare, vehicle expenses, and groceries on her paycheck. If we had a second child added we would be about break-even on her at that pay grade. For further context, her 9-5 prep-cook pay was $20 per hour at her Charleston employer and prior to was making 55k salaried with benefits and PTO as a sous chef. The issue we faced as a family was lack of availability at most facilities. We spent a year on a waiting list to get accepted in. My wife couldn’t work even if she wanted to the first year. In the city, that might have stretched further.
- rfrey 3y ago
  I believe you, but how do the sums work? In my jurisdiction - a notoriously right-wing part of Canada - the staff:kid ratio is 1:4 for little guys, 6 for toddlers, and 8 for 4 years +. Call it 6 average. A group of 6 kids will bring in $960/week. At a minimum wage of $15/hour, a week's wages is $600 - call it $800 for the employer after expenses. That leaves roughly $160 excess funds per cohort. Say there are 5 cohorts in a daycare - 40 kids. $800 excess funds per week or ~$3500 per month. Out of that comes rent, insurance, supplies, cleaning, utilities, and probably property taxes and maintenance on a typical triple-net lease. Seems like a losing proposition.
- mberning 3y ago
  I don’t think they are really out of line for their estimate. I live in a mid size city in the midwest and we have paid $50-$100 per day depending on the quality of the facility. I’m sure a weekly or monthly rate could knock that down a bit, but it’s still quite expensive.
- francisofascii 3y ago
jefftk 3y ago
> There is really no way around it We could have a culture where it's typical for people who stay home with their kids to additionally be paid to watch the kids of another family.
- migf 3y ago
  I like this idea. This is not as safe as having your kids in a licensed daycare.
  - jefftk 3y ago
    Are you sure? Lots of kids are watched by nannies and this doesn't seem to have worse outcomes than daycares (though confounded by richer people having nannies).
lm28469 3y ago
> There is really no way around it - if you want people at the bottom to make a decent wage then customers will have to pay it. There was a way from 1950 to ~1990s though, we could start looking here: https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcXp-6EsuSBkSyHpSbm0.png https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcX...
paddim8 3y ago
It's subsidized in sweden. Works fine.
carlosjobim 3y ago
> Plus FICA, insurance, and anything else required to pay per employee. > Then you have to pay rent, utilities, maintenance, front office staff, and have enough left over for someone find it all worth it. That means labour is not expensive, the tributes are expensive. "Expensive labour" is an oxymoron. If something is not worth doing because it would be too expensive to pay anybody to do it, that means it's not worth doing. The whole meaning of having civilization is to make labour as "expensive" as possible, ie to see that the people doing the work receive as much as possible from their input. This includes making labourers as effective as possible by the help of education and having them operate more and more advanced machinery to increase production.
grecy 3y ago
> Labor in the US is pretty expensive in the grand scheme of things Labor in the US is significantly cheaper than any other developed country.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > any other This hyperbole makes your point very easy to disprove. All it takes is one example and your statement is factually incorrect. Italy, South Korea, etc. Many definitions of "developed" basically boil down to income so you would basically need the USA to be the least developed of developed countries. But I will try and be charitable and assume you mean USA labor costs are on the low end of developed countries. What metrics are you looking at? Wages in general in the USA are higher (higher median income). The 15$/hr example I used is higher than most minimum wages in Europe. For example the minimum wage in Germany is about 1600 euros a month or $10/hr for full-time work. The federal averge minimum wage is lower than some developed countries and higher than others, and many states have higher minimum wages than countries like Germany, UK, and France. Regardless, even if US labor costs are low relative to developed countries (which doesnt seem to be the case), it doesnt change that its a major factor in daycare costs and that increasing wages would just make very high prices even higher.
  - grecy 3y ago
    https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=RMW https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=RMW In 2022 the US had a lower minimum wage than every OECD country other than Romania, Croatia, Hungary and Czechia. 21 developed countries have more expensive labor than the US, and only 4 are less expensive. Labor in the US is cheap among Developed countries.
    - kbelder 3y ago
      Kind of corresponds to unemployment. 10 OECD countries have lower rates, 30 have higher. https://www.oecd.org/employment/unemployment-rates-oecd-updated-september-2023.htm#:~:text=OECD%20unemployment%20rate%20remains%20below,the%2013th%20consecutive%20month&text=The%20OECD%20unemployment%20rate%20was,a%20year%20(Figure%201.1) https://www.oecd.org/employment/unemployment-rates-oecd-upda....

depletedgherkin 3y ago

I feel like changes in culture are a bigger factor than economic reasons. Around the world it's normally the poorer, not richer, countries that have more kids on average, so I don't think finances are the main story here. A lot of countries with excellent childcare policies like in the Nordics also have pretty low birth rates. (Not knocking those policies though, I'm sure the parents there do appreciate them)

api 3y ago
Poorer places usually have lower costs for things like real estate and child care. Richer places tend to get “cost disease” especially in real estate. This in turn means that people have to have higher level careers and usually two earners in a home to afford the cost of living. Overall this all raises GDP but it results in an environment that is hostile to family formation. It could be a feedback loop too. Fewer kids might coincide with more career oriented lifestyles which drive higher earnings but also bid up real estate and other costs, and so on.
- d3w4s9 3y ago
  In many parts of the world, it is common for grandparents to take care of the babies and even small kids. In other words, free daycare. Not so common in the US.
  - Qem 3y ago
    As people delay parenting, this option becomes less available. When people routinely had kids in their 20s, starting age of grandparents was about 40-50, when they were still had a lot of energy to help. In a world where people have kids in their 30s, the average grandparent has their first grandchild between 60-70. It means a sizeable fraction of them may be already too frail or even already dead, to contribute significantly in childrearing, needing assistance themselves. That compounds the problem, because then people have to raise small children at the same time their elderly parents start to need more assistance.
csomar 3y ago

Kranar 3y ago

This claim doesn't add up. The fertility rate actually increases the lower your income is, that is, the richer you are the less likely you are to have kids. The issue is not that kids are expensive, it's that once you reach a certain level of income you don't want to give up your lifestyle in order to raise kids. People who are lower income don't have to give up on a lifestyle in order to have kids. They still have to work incredibly hard in order to raise kids, absolutely, but it's not like if they didn't raise kids they'd be able to go on vacations, enjoy eating out more often, attend more expensive social events with friends, etc...

taurath 3y ago
The fertility rate also lowers for other factors. Declines do not match up with incomes - I think implying cost of living, which is what anecdotally almost everyone I know says, is a nonfactor may be premature. In the US the birthrate has been mostly the same since the early 70s. The difference between the top and bottom birthrates by income is all of 28% (45 per 1000 women for $200k or more, vs 63 per 1000 women for under $10k) - thats significant but certainly not the only factor.
- Kranar 3y ago
  You argued that there are people in their 30s who can just afford food and shelter and implied that they are not having kids due to their economic situation, whereas 20 years ago (so in 2003) they would have had kids, presumably because their economic situation would have been better 20 years ago. Yet the statistics show that: 1. Those with lower incomes have more kids than those with higher incomes. 2. This trend has existed for more than 20 years, closer to 50 years in fact. Now that I've pointed this out you seem to want to argue that income is not the only factor that determines fertility rates. Certainly that is true, but given that it's true why did you seem to emphasize it so strongly in your post when it supported the conclusion you wanted to make, but when I point out the opposite only then do you decide to diminish the relationship between income and fertility? If the relationship between income and fertility is not that significant when I point it out, then it's not that significant when you want to use it for your argument either in which case your entire point kind of falls apart. Finally as an aside, there is no shortage of countries with either cheap or even free child care, mostly in wealthy countries such as Finland, Sweden, Norway. But guess what? Fertility rates in those countries are incredibly low.

jmye 3y ago

This is nonsense. Daycare is expensive because no one provides it, and because no one wants Joey Bag of Donuts with no insurance or credentials watching their kids, whom they presumably love (although many people do just that because it’s their only option and few states do a sufficient job enforcing quality standards). There are waitlists long enough that parents have to sign up before their child is born. That’s nothing, at all, to do with “landlords” or “investors”. I’m so tired of faux-progressive outrage online that always only focuses on how one of roughly three things are to blame for everything, no matter how tenuous or invented the connection is.

taurath 3y ago
> Daycare is expensive because no one provides it Why isn't the Free Market providing it then? > I’m so tired of faux-progressive outrage online that always only focuses on how one of roughly three things are to blame for everything I have roughly 20 straight married friends and 4 have kids (all are making top 5% income) and 10 want them but are waiting until they can better afford housing. Thats the basis of my argument, that cost of living is a common complaint. Cost of living sucks, its worse than its ever been in many areas. In areas with low cost of living, they have the problem that housing is relatively cheap but jobs aren't plentiful. I don't think that's controversial, but please let me know what I'm missing.
- krapht 3y ago
  Somehow, I think it's just cultural. I spent many years outside of the US, and I think expectations for space are too inflated in America. There are many happy families in Europe raising two kids in a 500 sqft apartment.
- jmye 3y ago
  Most of the child care I’ve seen is single provider, restricted to a few kids. Most parents seem to want pre-pre-school. One of those costs a lot, the other costs less, but requires knowing someone who knows someone. I also don’t think many people see it as a glamorous thing they want to get involved in, but the opportunity is clearly there. There’s probably a fortune to be made in figuring out how to “disrupt” the current industry. To the other, I think if they’re top 5% in income, they’re looking for something very specific in some very specific neighborhood, and are completely unwilling to compromise. I was in the top 10% in my relatively high (but not Seattle or SF) cost of living city, and had to move several miles outside of downtown. It was completely affordable with few sacrifices. In short, I’m calling BS.

angmarsbane 3y ago

We have special neighborhoods that are 55+ only, it would be a huge boon if we had subsidized housing for young married couples full of other families.

voisin 3y ago
Boomers would never allow it. Discrimination they’d say. Rules for thee, not for me.
mlrtime 3y ago
Those special houses are not "subsidized". They are currated for people who don't want to live with younger folks and the "issues" that follow them. You are conflating issues, there is nothing stopping a developer from creating a "35-" development (Except a market of course).
- ajhurliman 3y ago
  They may be subsidized (sort of) in that they pay lower taxes, on the theory that they’re not sending anyone to school at that age. And age discrimination in housing is actually illegal, the 55+ and 65+ situations are special exclusions.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >there is nothing stopping a developer from creating a "35-" development (Except a market of course). I'd be down, that means young people can't actually own houses, unheard of for my generation. But yes, it's no secret older folk either have better financial safeties that degraded by millenial/Gen Y (pension, social secrutity) and generally make more money. Great market to appeal to. Meanwhile, the 23- market takes out an un-bankruptable 100k over 4 years hoping to climb through the cracks.

apwell23 3y ago

> Daycare is expensive for the same reason that everything is expensive - money to investors and landlords. This is wrong. If this was the case there would investors lining up to make a killing. Planet money did an episode on this https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-expensive-child-care-waitlists https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-ex...

johnnyanmac 3y ago
I tracked down the transcript and I still don't understand the math here: > GUO: In a month where they're bringing in, like, $40,000, $33,000 is going to payroll. > ANDERSEN: Our salaries are 83% of our budget per month. That is absolutely insane. > GUO: And this is pretty representative of the country. And for thinking, well, at least day care workers are getting paid well - right? - because most of the money is going to salaries. Well, they are not paid well. Kelsey pays 12 to $15 an hour. >But Kelsey says she can't pay as much as those stores because she has more people to pay than they do. For Kelsey's 72 kids, she needs 25 people on staff I guess this just shows my ignorance, but is a 1:3 kid-parent ratio the norm for day care? I know you can't automate child care like you can a cashier, but given that my grandparents raised 4-5 kids at any one time (they had like, 10 kids between one previous marriage each, but huge age gaps), and my uncle raised 3 himself (and sometimes My mom dropped me off with him. So 3.5), it seems very "inefficient" when considering this is only caring for a third of the time (as opposed to a 24/7 care as a stay at home parent). >The safety of kids and the quality of care get a little more dicey if you have more than four infants to one teacher. So you just need a lot of grown-ups to take care of babies and even toddlers. I guess a day care has a higher quality stay than my uncle since it mentions teaching. I guess it's tough to just throw your child at someone you don't trust who may do it for cheap, so there's pressures to not just be "my uncle's house" (not that he's a bad parent. But I was mostly there to play with my cousin and be fed lunch/dinner). But when you remember the perspective of a school teacher teaching 20-40(!) kids at once for even less money, it makes you feel like something is off. Probably in the case of the teachers, but still. >But we wouldn't leave 16-year-olds alone. In fact, we don't really leave anyone alone. tangent but I'm really baffled by this sentiment. Like, I wouldn't leave the country for months with a 16YO, but by 16 I would feel they can operate for a few days without seeing a parent. Just make sure they have allowance to cover food. That's an age where they need to start operating independently anyway since they are potentially close to living alone in college, or moving out a few years into adulthood.

HumblyTossed 3y ago

> We do extremely little to make a society that encourages people having kids... What do you mean? We've gotten rid of RvW and a lot of states are making abortion illegal. We are politicing the HELL out of this problem.