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> 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 sc

• 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
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• 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....