17 ms·

This is fantastic! I hope they succeed and there is no abuse or other issues, because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work t

by dzink 1y ago

This is fantastic! I hope they succeed and there is no abuse or other issues, because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential. Families who were previously in poverty because the mom would struggle to pay for childcare to work can now have assurance kids are ok while the mom can pursue jobs, start her own small business (huge chunk of businesses are small businesses ran by women) and prosper. If you pose your child’s safety vs another dollar, most parents would vote for their children. But if the children are taken care of, parents can give the economy their best and the taxes paid and GDP gained will pay back for the expense manyfold.

mothballed 1y ago
Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred.
- bombcar 1y ago
  There are many things that may be better overall, but because they're not financialized, they don't show up on GDP and so are deemed "worthless." Breastfeeding doesn't move money around, but formula does; things like that. Cooking your own meal doesn't raise GDP beyond the cost of supplies, but door-dashing from a restaurant does.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - ch4s3 1y ago
    More realistically here, there’s a limit to the funding any individual state can come up with to fund benefits. Tradeoffs have to be considered and increased workforce participation increases the tax receipts that fund these programs. It’s not much more complicated than that.
    - xp84 1y ago
      It's sometimes surprising to read a comment like this, which applies just common sense, basic math, and logic, instead of the typical online comment mixture of hysteria, panic, and portraying one's non-favorite "team" as a bunch of mustachio-twirling cartoon villains.
      - ch4s3 1y ago
        You read a lot of books about economics, history, and political science and suddenly everything starts to look like it's complicated. The recent trend of commentators shouting "it's actually not complicated" is troubling. I try to present commentary with some nuance and humility. I have a perspective, but I endeavor to leave room for the possibility that I don't have a full understanding or that my model of the world doesn't fit every set of circumstances.
        bombcar 1y ago
        The key I realized is that there is always complexity, but the "simple" understanding is still "mostly" right. No complexity can make a $1 billion expense able to be paid with $1m of revenue.
        ch4s3 1y ago
        > but the "simple" understanding is still "mostly" right. I rarely find this to be the case for anything big or important.
    - giantg2 1y ago
      I find it dubious that adding the people who don't find it financially feasible to use childcare to cover working hours will generate tax revenue to cover this due to the low income and low tax nature. Not to mention the addition of the cost from all the current paying families.
      - ch4s3 1y ago
  - rml 1y ago
    In the book 'Double Entry' the author explains that the guy who created GDP was actually in favor of having family caregiving and household activities accounted for in GDP. If that had happened, different world
    - toomanyrichies 1y ago
      Thanks for mentioning this book. I just bought it, looking forward to reading it.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      This actually DOES occur at the margins, in some cases. If you have a severely disabled child (who is on SSA), you often can get certified by the state and get paid as the caretaker. Then the action appears on the GDP.
  - motorest 1y ago
    > There are many things that may be better overall, but because they're not financialized, they don't show up on GDP and so are deemed "worthless." I think you're confusing GDP with a measure of worth or quality. It is not. Just because you can earn money doing double-shifts in a coal mine that doesn't make it better than spending the same time at a beach doing nothing.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      It's a confusion the whole world seems to have, even if you ask everyone and they'd deny it. GDP of a country is flat for 10 years, but everyone is happier and healthier and feels better? Bad country! GDP is soaring for ten years, but everyone is depressed, suicidal, deep in debt, overweight, and dying early? Good country!
- dzink 1y ago
  Depending on how they structure the childcare, women who want to stay with their kids can be childcare providers at one of the centers, so they take care of not just their kids but also others. Similar to the Israeli Kibbutz system.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    One of the reasons to care for your own kids is you can give them individual attention. Unless you have so many kids that you are only caring for your own anyway your plan diverts their attention away to other kids (or those other kids get less attention)
    - hedora 1y ago
      One reason to send your kids to daycare is so they can socialize and make friends. Also, the daycares typically have structured programs that are fun and helpful for toddler development.
    - jjk166 1y ago
      The argument is that stay at home parents should get the same credit as childcare providers because they perform the same service to society. If you're only caring for your own kids, you are providing significantly less to society than those caring for many kids. You want to focus on raising your own kids, that's fine, but do it on your dime.
      - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
        >you are providing significantly less to society than those caring for many kids And getting paid considerably less. You're almost certainly providing proportionally more for your pay. A childcare provider can register and only look after 1 child, usually, but wouldn't because they want/need more income. Presumably nannies (careworker for children from a single family) are registered childcare providers where you are; would a nanny be subsidised able to get paid with a subsidy?
        1y ago
- jvuygbbkuurx 1y ago
  This is how it works in Finland, but with some adjustments based on family income. You are eligible for up to 500€/month if you take care of your child. The other option being childcare costing up to 300€/month.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. This is a great way to kill a policy. It would technically be most fair if every parent was given the same amount of money per child, period. Then they could do what they needed or wanted with it. But doing so would not only increase the costs dramatically (by a multiple) it would give money to many parents who didn’t need it for child care. That’s great in a hypothetical world where budgets are infinite, but in the real world they’re not. The more broadly you spread the money, the less benefit each person receives. If you extended an equal benefit to parents who were already okay with keeping their children home, it’s likely that the real outcome would be reduced benefits for everyone going to daycare. Now you’re giving checks to parents who were already doing okay at home but also diminished the childcare benefit for those who needed it, which was the goal in the beginning.
  - itake 1y ago
    I guess Youre not a fan of UBI?
    - ian-g 1y ago
      That feels like an entirely separate policy. This one is about making sure small children have care, not whether or not people deserve a minimum guaranteed income
      - Pxtl 1y ago
        This is basically UBI for parenting, so it's hard to see it as "entirely separate".
      - itake 1y ago
        A core tenant of UBI is the universal part: everyone receives the benefit. High income, low income, rich, poor. If you remove the cost of regulating a benefit, then there will be more money available for people to get this benefit.
    - mcbobgorge 1y ago
- patrickthebold 1y ago
  I agree. Ideally we could just increase the tax credits so it's large enough to cover the childcare expenses (and other necessities), and let the families decide what is best. And yes, some people are going to do a bad job taking care of their kids and spend the money on something else. But my understanding is that it generally works well to just give people money, rather than pay for specific things.
- motorest 1y ago
  > Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. I don't know how can anyone arrive at that conclusion. > This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred. This assertion is baffling and far-fetched. There is only one beneficiary of this policy: families who desperately needed access to childcare but could not possibly afford it. With this policy, those who needed childcare but were priced out of the market will be able to access the service they needed. I don't think that extreme poverty and binding a mother to homecare is a valid incentive cor "children staying with their mother".
  - bluGill 1y ago
    > With this policy, those who needed childcare but were priced out of the market will be able to access the service they needed. And the rich parents who can afford childcare are also given a subsidy. A married parent who wants to stay home but can't quite afford it is forced to work. Is this really what you want? If it is the poor your care about why not subsidies just them?
    - motorest 1y ago
      > And the rich parents who can afford childcare are also given a subsidy. That's fine. > A married parent who wants to stay home but can't quite afford it is forced to work. I don't get what point you think you're making. Do you believe that not offering universal child care changed that?
    - afthonos 1y ago
      > A married parent who wants to stay home but can't quite afford it is forced to work. I’m confused; how does your preferred policy solve this problem?
      - bluGill 1y ago
        I don't have a stated preferred policy here. I'm questioning if the post I replied to really preferred this policy. Policy is a constant battle of unintended consequences. I clearly understand that nothing isn't immune from those consequences, and so I'm constantly adjusting my preferred policy trying to find the least bad compromise.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  I'm not sure there is equal value, in economic terms at least. A stay at home parent caring for 1-2 children comes at the opportunity cost of a full time worker, which would typically be a lot more than 12-24 thousand dollars this is saving them in childcare costs. On the flip side, a childcare worker in NM can care for the children of ~6+ such stay at home parents (depends on randomness of ages and number of children each had). None of that is a statement that it wouldn't be nice for everyone to be able to be paid as a full time parent, just that the economic value is not necessarily equal with a waiver.
  - mguerville 1y ago
    and these $12-24k are net dollars so the parents needs more like $20-40k of gross income to pay for it, but now they can have a small job or small business that nets them even as low as $15k and still come out ahead
- thinkingtoilet 1y ago
  Sure. Right after I get all my tax money back from all the userless wars we've fought in the last 20 years because I was against them.
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    Weird to assume people who support an increased child credit aren't also against devoting resources to pointless wars.
    - thinkingtoilet 1y ago
      That's clearly not the assumption at all. The idea that we can pick and choose what we pay taxes for is not a reality. That's not how this works. There are tons of subsidies, pork, and other ways my tax dollars get used that don't benefit me at all. Just because you don't have a kid or choose not to use the new system, doesn't mean you shouldn't pay your share of taxes, just like everything else in this country.
      - ndriscoll 1y ago
        No one said they're not going to pay taxes. They advocated for what they consider to be a better policy. What you're saying is like responding to someone who thinks we shouldn't start random wars with "we don't get to choose what we pay taxes for". Uh, yeah, we do get to advocate for and vote on how the government spends our money. We can and should point out that starting pointless wars is bad and we should encourage others to support a policy where we stop doing it. Arguing against specific uses and for other uses of taxes to build consensus for your point of view is exactly what people are supposed to do in a democracy.
- forbiddenvoid 1y ago
  In what way does this disincentivize anyone? If you want to stay home with your kids, stay home with your kids. This is literally not preventing anyone from being a stay at home parent.
  - programjames 1y ago
    Lots of two-parent working families do the maths, and realize they would pay more in childcare than the income from a second job. This incentivizes one of them to stay at home. Here, the incentive is gone. This is worse for the economy and probably the family.
    - macintux 1y ago
      I can see arguments that it's worse for the family, but why is it worse for the economy to have two parents working?
      - programjames 1y ago
        Suppose childcare is $15k/year and you work minimum wage making less than $15k/year. Then there's less wealth to go around, just more in your pocket. But actually, you probably don't take home all the wealth you create, so it can actually still be better for the economy. It is still worse for the economy, but not for that reason. Probably because labor has a backward-bending supply curve, and most people are already working more hours than is optimal. As another commenter said, it would probably be better for the economy to make a 30 hour work week.
- clickety_clack 1y ago
  I totally get the reasoning behind that, but the majority of women are not stay at home moms, and most families don’t have the resources to make it happen. Society is just not oriented to family creation, and both women and men (to a lesser extent) take a hit when they decide to start a family. The entire world is in a fertility crisis now that could easily endanger the very society we live in, with all the ideals and principles we take for granted, and that calls for solutions that may not end up being absolutely fair to everyone in it. If the tradeoff is between childcare that actually works versus a watered down version because we are also paying people who don’t avail of it, I think the former option will do most to support families.
  - rpcope1 1y ago
    I agree with you except the part about the policy making a dent. Scandinavian countries have all sorts of "universal childcare" and benefits, and their TFR is still going straight into the shitter. All this talk about expanding the GDP and going towards total workforce participation IMO is why family formation is slowing to a crawl (I mean look at South Korea, where it's all about being a workaholic and they basically will cease to exist in maybe 50-100 years, literally). If we want to continue as a nation or entity of people, I believe the people and the government are going to need to put their thumb on the scale in a way more aggressive way, including both childcare credits for all, paying stay at home parents a salary, major cultural changes (including our own version of the Soviet Mother Heroine/Order of Parental Glory that carry real status with them, perhaps), and economic and cultural pushback on being a DINK or similar. We have no future the way we're going, and these sort of policy interventions have been tried elsewhere and they don't do shit. We really have got to rethink a lot of things, in a way that's probably painful or irritating to the readership here, otherwise we're basically done.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      You don’t want just kids, you want well raised kids. Badly raised kids are easily a net negative, so just paying people to be parents isn’t going to work. The only thing that might incentivize people to think about the long term is getting rid of all old age benefits (including continuous bail outs of broad market assets by the federal government by sacrificing the purchasing power of the currency). Right now, we take productivity from people who sacrifice to raise kids well and give it to those who don’t raise kids well, or not have them at all. This obviously leads to an arbitrage opportunity (as evidenced by DINK lifestyles). I do not see any other way other than to remove this arbitrage opportunity. Which probably will not happen in any democracy due to old people’s voting power.
- koolba 1y ago
  I’m sure people will find creative ways to scam the system where I watch your kids and you watch mine, and both of us get paid for it.
- Pet_Ant 1y ago
  > Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. They are strictly less efficient than commercial daycare because the adult-child ratio is much higher. How many women would be of out of the work for if they were taking care of children? Also, it prevents trickle down and the lifting of the poorest in society.
  - SilverElfin 1y ago
    Less efficient? No they aren’t strictly less efficient because they provide MUCH better quality of care.
    - Pet_Ant 1y ago
      To less children. Even if the area under the curve was the same (and I suspect that there very much are diminishing returns) they have a very negative effect on the Gini coefficient and that is a negative externality that should not be incentivised. If your position is that people should not be compelled to contribute to overall society and the lifting of the boats of others, than there isn't enough alignment of values for a meaningful conversation.
      - tomrod 1y ago
        It does offer a potential backdoor to UBI while also encouraging desirable outcomes -- increased birth rate for wanted children, more people willing to foster, optionality for women to enter workforce, etc. I suspect there will be some fraud (I have 30 kids, wheee!) as well as foster/adoption abuse -- probably AZ's experiment with paying parents to home school would be instructive.
    - tomrod 1y ago
      At the median: probably. At the tails: probably not.
  - orthoxerox 1y ago
    However, they provide superior level of childcare.
- TulliusCicero 1y ago
  > Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. From the government's point of view, they want more people out in the workforce, so it probably doesn't make sense that way.
- jimbo808 1y ago
  While true, social policies do not need to provide an equal benefit to everyone. People who can afford to stay home with the kids are not the ones who need this sort of policy.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  I just don't understand this mentality. My wife is a stay-at-home mom. We are lucky that we can afford to do this. Most of our kid's friends have both parents working and they pay for child care. If suddenly they were able to have that childcare paid for, that would be wonderful! It doesn't affect our situation at all. Why would we oppose it? I don't need to have my own "waiver" payment in order for me to be in favor of my neighbor's burden being lifted. It's like free school lunch. We pack our kid a lunch every day, but some families rely on the school-provided free lunch. It's never even occurred to me that we should get a $3/day payment because we don't take advantage of free lunch. Having free lunch available is unequivocally a good thing, regardless of whether we personally partake.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    Why wouldn't you want your friends to better be able to afford what you have, by getting an equal value stipend to stay at home if you're for universal childcare? There are many families that might be only one or two tuitions away from being able to stay at home with their child like they had wished, and assigning the waiver/voucher to the child instead of to the daycare can make that happen. And no it's not a free lunch. If stay-at-home in a family isn't reimbursed, they are actually worse off, because now they have an additional tax they are paying that they did not have before. So now even more people like you who wanted a parent to stay at home are driven out of it because their family budget comes upon this tax.
    - stickfigure 1y ago
      Let it go. Everyone gets some tax benefits that others don't. Childless people get many fewer social benefits than people with children. We don't need to quibble over microgrievances.
      - hellojesus 1y ago
        We shouldn't provide any welfare services. Then we will all be equal. For as much as you Elsa folks quible about people being against giveaways, what is so harmful about not giving thigs away involuntarily?
- crazygringo 1y ago
  > This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred. It does no such thing. If you could afford to be a stay-at-home mom before, this isn't going to make any significant difference to that. Think of whether it would make sense if you applied your logic to other areas -- do public schools disincentivize people sending their kids to private schools? That would be absurd to say. Creating choice where there wasn't any before doesn't "disincentivize" anything. It gives people options to make the choices that are best for them.
- daveswilson 1y ago
  As a resident of New Mexico I can tell you that it is a miracle that we can afford to launch this program at all. Perhaps when the long-term economic benefits begin to pay out, we'll be able to pay people to support their personal preferences. As it stands, while I don't have kids at home anymore, I can see the long-term economic benefit to the state, and am very pleased that my tax dollars are helping to get this done.
- lillecarl 1y ago
  In Sweden we value equality and everyone working. If someone is wealthy enough to have a stay-at-home parent it's their choice to do so, we shouldn't subsidize the rich. It is good for children to go to a place where they learn to interact with others early. We give 480 days off to the parents to share (90 "mandatory" per parent), then they go to childcare. Individualism breeds privileged shits, if you want your kid to be one of those then you pay out of your own pocket. We subsidize childcare so everyone can afford to work.
  - mothballed 1y ago
    You don't subsidize the rich, yet you subsidize rich child care corporations (or high-level bureaucrats in the event it is public) at the expense of not subsidizing stay at home moms. You don't want people paid for taking care of their children, but it's OK if other people are paid for taking care of their chidlren. None of this makes sense. Especially not this false dichotomy that either you send your kids to daycare or they don't learn to interact with others early.
    - lillecarl 1y ago
      We live in different societies, yours is extremely on the individualism spectrum and ours is on the "common good" spectrum. We don't subsidize the childcare corporations here, we do what's best for society.
      - mothballed 1y ago
        I might be wrong, but I believe in Sweden salaries are able to be publicly found. Find some high level people in the public or private childcares in your nation who are beneficiaries of these subsidies and then tell me how rich they are compared to the average stay at home mom.
        lillecarl 1y ago
        There are barely any stay at home moms because it's socially detrimental, the ones who are are either social outcasts by lack of capability or religious oppression. We should not subsidize stay at home moms or dad's because it's bad for society, if they can afford to do it or stretch their economy to do it for other reasons it's their bad choice, and we allow free choice even if it's bad, that's why cigarettes are still allowed. I don't know who to look up, but if you have some suggestions I could look it up through ratsit.se
- jrflowers 1y ago
  This makes sense. If something objectively good happens, it is not actually that good if a completely different good thing did not happen.
- onlypassingthru 1y ago
  Your taxes pay for the public service whether you use it or not. Take a look at your property tax statement and I bet you can find all sorts of things you may or may not use: parks fees, library fees, health/hospital fees, schools, etc. Should everyone who reads but doesn't use the public library get a book voucher? I'm a stay-at-home-reader, why shouldn't I get the government to subsidize my reading?
- mattmaroon 1y ago
  I don’t get a voucher for not receiving medicaid or food stamps. Fairness is a concept meant to tame unruly preschoolers, let’s just solve problems.
- eirikbakke 1y ago
  Norway does this. Kindergartens are nearly free ($120/mo), but with a "cash-for-care" benefit for parents who choose to stay at home with the child ($750/mo). https://www.nav.no/kontantstotte/en https://www.nav.no/kontantstotte/en
  - SilverElfin 1y ago
    I wonder why they don’t have the same allergy to a voucher program that is prevalent in the US on the political left. For some reason, letting people exercise their agency and do things their own way is seen as a threat here.
    - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
      It's not an allergy to vouchers. It's an allergy to diverting tax payer dollars away from public schools and into subsidizing religious indoctrination centers. There are good religious schools: I've been largely impressed by the Jesuit-run schools I've seen. But most religious private primary and high schools in the US are run by weird little cults that fundamentally fail to meet muster in the whole "not being thinly-veiled excuses for indoctrination" side of things. Americans are stupid enough without stripping them of what little education we do offer them.
      - SilverElfin 1y ago
        > It's an allergy to diverting tax payer dollars away from public schools and into subsidizing religious indoctrination centers. All schools are indoctrination centers. Some very progressive cities push a lot of political programming into their curriculums. Why does it matter if someone wants their child’s education to have THEIR flavor of religious indoctrination? The money follows the child. The money for kids staying in public schools stays with them. So it doesn’t divert anything away.
  - magicalist 1y ago
    > You can receive cash-for-care benefit for children between 13 and 19 months, starting the month the child turns 13 months, up until and including the month the child turns 19 months. You can receive cash-for-care benefits for a maximum of 7 months. so, no, extremely limited compared to what's being discussed.
- hereme888 1y ago
  Absolutely. Nothing is free. This means less resources for something else, marketed as "compassion". Mothers generally take much better care of their own children than childcare. Childcare was already previously available for low-income families. To incentivize women to work when they can afford to care for their children is very bad for a country in the long term.
- angmarsbane 1y ago
  I see benefits for stay at home Moms, universal childcare means she has somewhere safe to drop her kid off while she goes to her own doctor appointments, or when she needs a break, or if there’s a family emergency she needs to attend to or even if she’s going into labor to bring kid number 2 or 3 into the world. There are a lot of stay at home parents that don’t have family near by or a reliable sitter and this can help plug some gaps.
- arathis 1y ago
  Nonsense. Absolute Fucking nonsense.
dzink 1y ago
This would solve a lot of Republican’s problems as well. Israel has the kibbutz system and they have the highest birth rate of developed economies. They also have amazing tech and women participation and excellent contributions even in the military. If you raise the country’s children well, you get more GDP and less prisons and less need for policing, and less need for welfare programs. Plus you get quality workers for those american-made factories.
- watwut 1y ago
  [flagged]
- ch4s3 1y ago
  Only about 1-2% of Israelis live on a kibbutz, and unsurprisingly that number has recently fallen. You actually see the elevated birth rates even in Tel Aviv. There’s a broader cultural expectation that would be impossible to recreate elsewhere.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    The USA is barely getting around to banning legal child marriage. Many many countries have not only child marriages, but arranged child marriages which can fall into selling these 'brides'. Not sure the Israel is any worse than other countries.
- AndyMcConachie 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - reliabilityguy 1y ago
    what does it mean “fake country”? What is the test one can use to determine a “real” country?
- 1y ago
WD-42 1y ago
You realize a lot of people actually prefer to give their child their best instead of outsourcing it so they can focus on bettering the economy, right?
- dzink 1y ago
  And with this option they can have that choice. Right now, many don’t.
  - WD-42 1y ago
    Yea and I think that’s great. OP makes it sound like every parent is pining to contribute to the churning of capitalism if only they didn’t have to worry about raising a child. It’s not so.
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      > every parent is pining to contribute to the churning of capitalism People don’t want to work because they’re “pining to contribute to the churning of capitalism”. They want to work for income, for career development, or even because they like what they do. This is such a dismissive way to phrase it that doesn’t even acknowledge why people work. Reducing everything to “capitalism” is missing the point.
  - Ajedi32 1y ago
    With this option, they are now financially penalized for making that choice in order to subsidize those who don't. I'm not so sure that's a good thing.
    - nerpderp82 1y ago
      Can you spell it out with math?
      - Ajedi32 1y ago
        Tax $100 each from couple A and couple B. Couple A leave their kids at a daycare and work. They get $200 in childcare costs reimbursed by the government. Couple B has one parent stay home to take care of their kids. They get nothing. Couple A: -$100 + $200 = +$100 Couple B: -$100 + $0 = -$100
alt227 1y ago
> it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential Why bring gender into it? There are plenty of families who choose to have stay at home Dads while the mother goes back to work full time. We are not in the 1950s any more.
- inetknght 1y ago
  I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. I'm hopeful that the parent comment simply didn't think about Dads because it's not in their "worldview", and perhaps also not in many others'. Nonetheless, I think your point is completely valid.
- holocenenough 1y ago
  [dead]
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  I would suspect the numbers show we're closer to the 1950's than you think. But I'm happy to be proven wrong.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Even if it is only 5% stay at home fathers, that is still 5% that is ignored. Staying at home as a parent isn't the right choice for everyone, but when society assumes that it is only mothers that is a disservice to the fathers who want to (and in some cases the couples who want a parent staying at home but it never occurs to them that it could be dad)
chongli 1y ago
I appreciate your optimism but I’m skeptical. I dated someone who worked in child care (with a degree in ECE). She was quite miserable caring for a dozen screaming babies all day. I think the burnout and turnover for such a job (which requires a degree but still paid minimum wage) is likely to be extremely high. The other thing that doesn’t make sense to me is the economics of it. The pay for the staff is very low but the cost of service to parents is very high. That means so much of the cost is overhead which would make the whole thing quite unsustainable, even when ostensibly covered by the government. I live in Canada and a similar issue is occurring with our universal health care system. The costs are skyrocketing even as wait times are increasing.
- nemomarx 1y ago
  Burnout and turnover for teachers are also like that, so it's what you'd expect? maybe they can unionize like teachers though
  - hedora 1y ago
    It sounds like she was a poor fit, or the child care center sucked. Try to find one that has long average tenure (10+ years, if possible).
    - chongli 1y ago
      Sure, if the place paid everyone a lot and had much higher staff:child ratios then everything would be great. Except it would cost an absolute fortune for parents thus even less viable under a government program. Government programs almost universally have higher overhead and more waste than private businesses. There is no incentive for government employees to improve efficiency, reduce budgets, or cut costs.
      - hedora 1y ago
        We didn’t notice a positive correlation between teacher tenure and cost when we looked around. If anything, there was a negative correlation: The big corporate ones had high teacher turnover, more levels of administration, and turned a healthy profit for ownership/shareholders. They were priced to match. Also, government run programs usually are less expensive (take pretty much any privatization program anywhere as an evidence). The government programs don’t have to pay money to shareholders, and aren’t siphoning resources for expansion, marketing, etc. If government leadership is corrupt as we see in the US right now, then, of course, prices skyrocket, though that usually comes hand in hand with outsourcing/subcontractors/privatization. It’s hard to collect bribe money from civil servants…
colechristensen 1y ago
The problem with more people entering the workforce is that the people never end up better off. Prices just go up and people end up working more for the same result. Changing the definition of full-time hours to 30/week would do far more for families and children than giving free childcare so mothers can work more. Making mortgages with a > 20 year term illegal, putting limits on the total principal allowed to loan as a multiple of income, and barring entirely non-human (i.e. any business entity) ownership of single family homes would do far more for families and children by removing the burden of ridiculous housing costs by removing the ability for people to compete for ridiculous housing prices.
- Loudergood 1y ago
  That last part is just going to make more housing cheaper for landlords and force more people into renting.
  - orthoxerox 1y ago
    Not if the tax rate is base_rate*phi^n where n is the ordinal number of property the person owns.
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    No I think there should be extreme limits on anybody owning a single family home that they don't live in. With enormous tax penalties for those who do. Don't let people get 30 year mortgages. Don't let people own houses they don't live in.
- 9rx 1y ago
  > Changing the definition of full-time hours to 30/week would do far more for families and children than giving free childcare so mothers can work more. You want to change what now? The dictionary definition does not specify any particular time. There is no legal definition for full-time. The IRS uses the term full-time, but they actually use it exactly like you wish: 30 hours per week. People out on the street often casually use full-time to refer to 40 hours per week. I anticipate that is what you are referring to. But that usage is simply used to refer to how many hours they are working. 40 hours under that usage is an observation, not a commandment.
bcrosby95 1y ago
Any system, program, or social group involving tens of thousands of people is going to have issues. But if you systematize it you can work to address them rather than ignoring them in search of the perfect system (which doesn't exist).
bluGill 1y ago
Why the sexist word "women"? Do you really mean to imply that men/fathers should not be stay at home dads? I know several stay at home dads who by all reports do a very good job of raising their kids while mom works. (granted the vast majority of stay at home parents are mothers). Fathers are people too, and they should be treated like the great parents they can be (until proven otherwise).
- dataflow 1y ago
  >> when women are allowed to work to their full potential > Why the sexist word "women"? Do you really mean to imply that men/fathers should not be stay at home dads? That's... not even remotely what the sentence said? Or are you offended because you believe childcare obligations have historically prevented men from working their full potential?
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Women was used in several different places. Each is offensive, because in each case a man could do the same work, and the work could be done. I have no opinion on if a man or woman should be caregiver - I've seen both cases work well - every situation must be taken case by case. What does full potential even mean? If someone wants to do something, but they have to do something else or they would starve (that is play vs work) which is living up to their full potential - what they want to do, or what they must do?
- tuckerman 1y ago
  I mean, I’m a gay dad, so I get that what you are saying is a real problem, but I don’t think it’s a problem in this thread. If you had a goal of improving women’s ability to participate in the workforce you’d likely come up with a policy like this (that would also help some dads too, even if that weren’t the primary goal). Women are far more likely to be the primary, stay at home caregiver if one exists and face a lot of discrimination in the workforce as a result of those expectations (on top of already facing other workplace discrimination issues).
giantg2 1y ago
I suppose if maximizing GDP is the goal, your comment makes sense. But if feel this is more of a bandaid of deeper underlying labor/pay issues.
palmfacehn 1y ago
Worker productivity has consistently increased, yet workers are struggling to support their families or delaying having a family, because they cannot meet the cost of living. Instead of looking towards the inflation of the monetary base as a driver of price inflation, families are supposed to let the state raise their children. Pricing parents out of the house and into the workforce is instead marketed as "liberation". Liberty implies that a choice is given. Mothers or fathers should have the ability to choose to stay home and benefit from the increases in productivity. Citing GDP growth is cute, but as nothing has been done to address the underlying drivers of price inflation, we can reasonably expect that socialized child care will become an economic necessity. Any potential benefits of productivity gains will continue to be eaten by those who are first to drink from the monetary spigot. While GDP and hours worked may increase, living standards may not.
- janalsncm 1y ago
  I’m 100% on board that GDP is increasingly becoming a poor proxy for well-being. That being said I can’t really think of many other things a state can do. The trends you are describing are national if not global. Also “having the state raise your children” sounds dystopian until you realize the alternative was them not being taken care of in many cases. Handing a kid an iPad is not raising them.
- throwawayqqq11 1y ago
  And what choice do you have regarding rising cost of living? There are many public services we already rely on and there are many countries that offer free child care already in some form. What you call (forced) liberation is just societal specialization and not bad per se. Focusing on fiscal/wage issues is a big and important topic though. I bet over time, budget hawks will reduce this public service like others and like in many other countries too. We are so many humans on our plentyful earth, we could achieve many things, yet, "we" lack money.
fragmede 1y ago
There will obviously be abuse and other issues. The question is, does New Mexico give up at the first sign of trouble like a bunch of losers, or do they push through, because of, or despite all the voters. It just takes one shitty person, in just the wrong place, and not enough good people fighting against him or her no matter, (or especially) how righteous he or she thinks they're being, to fuck it up for everyone else.
KetoManx64 1y ago
You don't understand how economics work if you think this is actually going to be helpful. By providing "universal" child care, you just moved the cost of childcare from the individual to the tax base so now everyone has to pay an ineffifient system that often eats up 30-50% of the incoming money in bureaucratic inneficiencies before it will even reach the child care system. On top of that the increased taxes are going to raise prices of everything because the businesses don't just eat the cost of taxes, they pass it off to the consumer. So all these families that get free childcare are going to be paying more for their groceries, rent, unilities and everything else. To top things off, you now have random strangers with no bond with your children looking after them in a ratio of maybe 1:8 or 1:10. So your children are going to be stressed out and anxious and are going to act out both at the childcare place and at home, so you're just going to be getting phone calls all day about your children fighting other children. All in all, you might feel like you're better off but once you do the math you're at about the same place if not worse off.
- nemomarx 1y ago
  You could say all of this about public schooling, but that one worked out.
  - KetoManx64 1y ago
    It has not at all. 20% of high school graduates are reading at a 5th grade level, which when you consider the billions of dollars poured into public schools every year is just asinine https://www.abtaba.com/blog/us-literacy-statistics https://www.abtaba.com/blog/us-literacy-statistics
    - ecshafer 1y ago
      US school outcomes vary drastically. It really works out well in nice neighborhoods, and doesn't work out in some bad neighborhoods. Its down to cultural and familial expectations. Why does the same curriculum in say Scarsdale not have the same success in the Bronx? They are only like 15 miles apart in the same state.
lenerdenator 1y ago
There are more important things women - and other people - can do than simply grow the economy. One of the reasons you must have a two-income household to be economically middle-class in most American metros now is because two-income households became the norm. When I was growing up 25-30 years ago, that made you comfortable. Then people realized that there was "untapped" value in that extra income and raised prices accordingly. If you're looking to buy the things that make up the "American Dream", you are now competing to buy against people who are willing to throw two incomes at the problem. Now that there are two incomes, the only way to grow is to start shedding other things that keep people from creating more value for their employers. Kids, home improvement, community involvement, all are - or have been - going by the wayside.
- orthoxerox 1y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, Elizabeth Warren has literally written a book about this problem, so it's not some reactionary desire to keep women in the kitchen.
shafyy 1y ago
> I hope they succeed and there is no abuse or other issues, because it will show how much an economy can grow I know you are meaning well, but while the economy growing can be a nice side effect of this (and probably is), I always find it a bit sad when economic profit is used as a reason to justify to create a more fair and equal society. It's similar with those studies showing hiring a diverse workforce is actually good for your business. It might be, but, like, it's also the right thing to do to not discriminate against minorities.
- bialpio 1y ago
  > I know you are meaning well, but while the economy growing can be a nice side effect of this (and probably is), I always find it a bit sad when economic profit is used as a reason to justify to create a more fair and equal society. Unfortunately, this is how some people think, so phrasing things in this manner is a way to win them over ("paying a bit more in taxes is actually going to benefit you").
erichocean 1y ago
> because it will show how much an economy can grow bleak
SilverElfin 1y ago
> because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential This feels like the wrong goal. Why does it matter how much an economy can grow? Is that worth not having a parent raise the child? In my opinion, it’s important for kids to spend more time with their families not less. Having one parent at home is very useful for bonding, development, etc. And frankly no childcare, even one with good ratios of workers to children, can substitute for it. I think the notion that “if the children are taken care of” is perhaps not recognizing that there are different levels of “taken care of”.
- gwbas1c 1y ago
  I stayed at home with my mom until I was old enough for school. My wife and I sent our kids to daycare. Our kids are fine. Turns out kids need a lot of time with other kids.
  - SilverElfin 1y ago
    It turns out that kids raised by their parents still get a lot of time with other kids though. Their parents don’t just keep them at home. They meet with friends. Go out and play. Their parents take them to classes and activities. Your view is “our kids are fine”, but most parents may say that about their own kids without knowing what the alternative could be. I’ve experienced both situations myself and also observed it as an adult. I think most childcare is a lot more of a free for all than parents think, rather than some sort of well designed experience. If you reduce the ratios significantly by having two kids per worker, maybe the quality improves to approach what a parent can provide. But that’s a lot more expensive.
    - gwbas1c 1y ago
      > I think most childcare is a lot more of a free for all than parents think, rather than some sort of well designed experience. That's important and healthy. Kids need time to play, and part of that is being a "free for all." (As long as kids aren't parked in front of a TV all day.) I even remember my preschool being mostly a free-for-all with some short lessons in between. It was great.
WalterBright 1y ago
My mom was a full time mom and I wouldn't trade that for anything.
- ksenzee 1y ago
  That’s great, but not every mom is your mom. You just lucked out. This is like saying “my dad was a doctor and we lived very well and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.” Some dads aren’t cut out to be highly paid professionals. Some moms aren’t cut out to be good stay-at-home parents.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    > Some moms aren’t cut out to be good stay-at-home parents That would be a rarity.
    - ksenzee 1y ago
      Just because women have been shunted into childcare for millennia doesn’t mean we’re naturally better at it. It just means we’ve had to do it. Do you similarly think it’s a rarity for men not to be cut out for subsistence farming?
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        The bond between a mother and her child is very special and intense. That doesn't happen with a paid caregiver. Heck, I was glued to my mom till I was 4. I'm sad for you that you don't seem to understand this, with words like "shunted". My parents are decades gone, but I miss them every day. Not so for any paid caregiver. My grandmother died when my dad was 9. In his 90s, he forgot that she was dead, and would cry wondering why she didn't visit him. The notion that this can be replaced with the state is absurd.
        habinero 1y ago
        Those are nice feelings _you_ have, but they don't have anything to do with women being forced into childcare. You're romanticizing things you never had to do.
chlodwig 1y ago
because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential. Disagree. Everyone needs to realize that having two parents who both have "greedy jobs" is a path to misery. Giving out childcare does not change the situation. One parent will always need to step back from their career or there will be misery, I've seen too many cases. Even if both parents are comfortable putting their kid in daycare 9 to 11 hours a day (to cover both the workday and the commute), which they should not be, they still have to deal with many sick days, needing to be out of work by 6pm every day, not going on business trips, teacher's conferences, school plays, PTA meetings, not getting a good night sleep because baby or toddler is having a sleep regression, etc. etc. There is no world where you provide everyone universal childcare and now both parents can "work to their full potential" and "give the economy their best." The reality furthermore is that there are few non-greedy jobs that are non-subsidized/non-fake and that contribute to the economy enough to be of more value than childcare. Subsidizing childcare, so the second parent can get a non-greedy job as a neighborbood coffeeshop owner, or working as a strict 9-5 government lawyer, isn't really a win for the economy.
- swed420 1y ago
  Agreed. We should have been freed a long time ago: https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ Unfortunately late capitalism made sure we went in the opposite direction.
- benterix 1y ago
  Not sure about your point. I live in Europe, and State pays for the first 1 year or two. Then you get your kid to preschool which is either paid or free. In this way the mother (who usually has more burden related to breastfeeding etc.) can finally breathe freely. Can she go to work? Yes, and in some Europaen countries she has the right to ask for part work with the current employer, and they can't refuse. A few years later the kid goes to school (again, paid or free) and parents can decide how they organize their lives based on their needs an expectations. If your kid is sick, you can stay with them, and I always assumed this is normal and civilized way, I can't imagine otherwise.
gedy 1y ago
I think this just makes it harder for single income families tbh. Not a social or moral commentary, just unfortunate observation
- ksenzee 1y ago
  How so? What do they have now that they will be losing under the new system? It seems like having childcare paid for would be beneficial to any single working parent.
prewett 1y ago
> parents can give the economy their best Surely parents should be giving their child(ren) the best, no? Giving the economy your best only makes sense in Communism, and since that has never gone well, I'll assume that what was meant was "self-fulfillment via work" or "better standard of living". The first just seems like one of these modern lies. I'm neither a mother nor a woman, but I've never understood why women are so eager to go work. Work has never been particularly fulfilling, although I have generally more or less enjoyed it. I've met no father (or mother) who say they wished they had more time at work rather than their children. I have heard both fathers and mothers say that it is the most fulfilling part of their lives. The second is just prioritizing the self. I've never met a child who was excited that his/her parent(s) are working and/or making lots of money instead of being with them. I don't think a goal of career or comfort/wealth is compatible with flourishing children. Second, are the children actually taken care of? Assuming everything is well-run, then sure, their physical needs and safety are taken care of. They aren't getting love from parents during that time. They aren't living in a loving community. Instead they are getting socialized into being atomized, like the rest of us, where loneliness is epidemic. I'm really thankful my mother stayed home with us. (She started teaching part-time once we all got into all-day school)
- ksenzee 1y ago
  > I’ve never understood why women are so eager to go work. Work has never been particularly fulfilling Understandable, but the thing is, staying home with kids is work. It’s a vocation. Everyone should get to choose what work is fulfilling for them personally. In the absence of reliable child care, parents don’t get to make that choice freely. It sounds like in a perfect world, you might have enjoyed staying home with kids, if that seems more appealing than the work you ended up doing. I can tell you I tried it for 18 months and I just about went crazy. I am a much better software developer than I am a stay-at-home parent. I feel for women who don’t get to make choices the way I did. > are the children actually taken care of? There is a lot of data by now comparing outcomes for children in childcare versus with stay-at-home parents. Both groups do fine. > I’m really thankful my mother stayed home with us It sounds like she did a good job of it; it was probably a vocation for her. You do need to understand that not every woman is cut out for that.
- 1y ago

by dzink 1y ago

mothballed 1y ago

Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred.

bombcar 1y ago
There are many things that may be better overall, but because they're not financialized, they don't show up on GDP and so are deemed "worthless." Breastfeeding doesn't move money around, but formula does; things like that. Cooking your own meal doesn't raise GDP beyond the cost of supplies, but door-dashing from a restaurant does.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ch4s3 1y ago
  More realistically here, there’s a limit to the funding any individual state can come up with to fund benefits. Tradeoffs have to be considered and increased workforce participation increases the tax receipts that fund these programs. It’s not much more complicated than that.
  - xp84 1y ago
    It's sometimes surprising to read a comment like this, which applies just common sense, basic math, and logic, instead of the typical online comment mixture of hysteria, panic, and portraying one's non-favorite "team" as a bunch of mustachio-twirling cartoon villains.
    - ch4s3 1y ago
      You read a lot of books about economics, history, and political science and suddenly everything starts to look like it's complicated. The recent trend of commentators shouting "it's actually not complicated" is troubling. I try to present commentary with some nuance and humility. I have a perspective, but I endeavor to leave room for the possibility that I don't have a full understanding or that my model of the world doesn't fit every set of circumstances.
      - bombcar 1y ago
        The key I realized is that there is always complexity, but the "simple" understanding is still "mostly" right. No complexity can make a $1 billion expense able to be paid with $1m of revenue.
        ch4s3 1y ago
        > but the "simple" understanding is still "mostly" right. I rarely find this to be the case for anything big or important.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    I find it dubious that adding the people who don't find it financially feasible to use childcare to cover working hours will generate tax revenue to cover this due to the low income and low tax nature. Not to mention the addition of the cost from all the current paying families.
    - ch4s3 1y ago
- rml 1y ago
  In the book 'Double Entry' the author explains that the guy who created GDP was actually in favor of having family caregiving and household activities accounted for in GDP. If that had happened, different world
  - toomanyrichies 1y ago
    Thanks for mentioning this book. I just bought it, looking forward to reading it.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    This actually DOES occur at the margins, in some cases. If you have a severely disabled child (who is on SSA), you often can get certified by the state and get paid as the caretaker. Then the action appears on the GDP.
- motorest 1y ago
  > There are many things that may be better overall, but because they're not financialized, they don't show up on GDP and so are deemed "worthless." I think you're confusing GDP with a measure of worth or quality. It is not. Just because you can earn money doing double-shifts in a coal mine that doesn't make it better than spending the same time at a beach doing nothing.
  - bombcar 1y ago
    It's a confusion the whole world seems to have, even if you ask everyone and they'd deny it. GDP of a country is flat for 10 years, but everyone is happier and healthier and feels better? Bad country! GDP is soaring for ten years, but everyone is depressed, suicidal, deep in debt, overweight, and dying early? Good country!
dzink 1y ago
Depending on how they structure the childcare, women who want to stay with their kids can be childcare providers at one of the centers, so they take care of not just their kids but also others. Similar to the Israeli Kibbutz system.
- bluGill 1y ago
  One of the reasons to care for your own kids is you can give them individual attention. Unless you have so many kids that you are only caring for your own anyway your plan diverts their attention away to other kids (or those other kids get less attention)
  - hedora 1y ago
    One reason to send your kids to daycare is so they can socialize and make friends. Also, the daycares typically have structured programs that are fun and helpful for toddler development.
  - jjk166 1y ago
    The argument is that stay at home parents should get the same credit as childcare providers because they perform the same service to society. If you're only caring for your own kids, you are providing significantly less to society than those caring for many kids. You want to focus on raising your own kids, that's fine, but do it on your dime.
    - pbhjpbhj 1y ago
      >you are providing significantly less to society than those caring for many kids And getting paid considerably less. You're almost certainly providing proportionally more for your pay. A childcare provider can register and only look after 1 child, usually, but wouldn't because they want/need more income. Presumably nannies (careworker for children from a single family) are registered childcare providers where you are; would a nanny be subsidised able to get paid with a subsidy?
      - 1y ago
jvuygbbkuurx 1y ago
This is how it works in Finland, but with some adjustments based on family income. You are eligible for up to 500€/month if you take care of your child. The other option being childcare costing up to 300€/month.
Aurornis 1y ago
> Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. This is a great way to kill a policy. It would technically be most fair if every parent was given the same amount of money per child, period. Then they could do what they needed or wanted with it. But doing so would not only increase the costs dramatically (by a multiple) it would give money to many parents who didn’t need it for child care. That’s great in a hypothetical world where budgets are infinite, but in the real world they’re not. The more broadly you spread the money, the less benefit each person receives. If you extended an equal benefit to parents who were already okay with keeping their children home, it’s likely that the real outcome would be reduced benefits for everyone going to daycare. Now you’re giving checks to parents who were already doing okay at home but also diminished the childcare benefit for those who needed it, which was the goal in the beginning.
- itake 1y ago
  I guess Youre not a fan of UBI?
  - ian-g 1y ago
    That feels like an entirely separate policy. This one is about making sure small children have care, not whether or not people deserve a minimum guaranteed income
    - Pxtl 1y ago
      This is basically UBI for parenting, so it's hard to see it as "entirely separate".
    - itake 1y ago
      A core tenant of UBI is the universal part: everyone receives the benefit. High income, low income, rich, poor. If you remove the cost of regulating a benefit, then there will be more money available for people to get this benefit.
  - mcbobgorge 1y ago
patrickthebold 1y ago
I agree. Ideally we could just increase the tax credits so it's large enough to cover the childcare expenses (and other necessities), and let the families decide what is best. And yes, some people are going to do a bad job taking care of their kids and spend the money on something else. But my understanding is that it generally works well to just give people money, rather than pay for specific things.
motorest 1y ago
> Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. I don't know how can anyone arrive at that conclusion. > This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred. This assertion is baffling and far-fetched. There is only one beneficiary of this policy: families who desperately needed access to childcare but could not possibly afford it. With this policy, those who needed childcare but were priced out of the market will be able to access the service they needed. I don't think that extreme poverty and binding a mother to homecare is a valid incentive cor "children staying with their mother".
- bluGill 1y ago
  > With this policy, those who needed childcare but were priced out of the market will be able to access the service they needed. And the rich parents who can afford childcare are also given a subsidy. A married parent who wants to stay home but can't quite afford it is forced to work. Is this really what you want? If it is the poor your care about why not subsidies just them?
  - motorest 1y ago
    > And the rich parents who can afford childcare are also given a subsidy. That's fine. > A married parent who wants to stay home but can't quite afford it is forced to work. I don't get what point you think you're making. Do you believe that not offering universal child care changed that?
  - afthonos 1y ago
    > A married parent who wants to stay home but can't quite afford it is forced to work. I’m confused; how does your preferred policy solve this problem?
    - bluGill 1y ago
      I don't have a stated preferred policy here. I'm questioning if the post I replied to really preferred this policy. Policy is a constant battle of unintended consequences. I clearly understand that nothing isn't immune from those consequences, and so I'm constantly adjusting my preferred policy trying to find the least bad compromise.
zamadatix 1y ago
I'm not sure there is equal value, in economic terms at least. A stay at home parent caring for 1-2 children comes at the opportunity cost of a full time worker, which would typically be a lot more than 12-24 thousand dollars this is saving them in childcare costs. On the flip side, a childcare worker in NM can care for the children of ~6+ such stay at home parents (depends on randomness of ages and number of children each had). None of that is a statement that it wouldn't be nice for everyone to be able to be paid as a full time parent, just that the economic value is not necessarily equal with a waiver.
- mguerville 1y ago
  and these $12-24k are net dollars so the parents needs more like $20-40k of gross income to pay for it, but now they can have a small job or small business that nets them even as low as $15k and still come out ahead
thinkingtoilet 1y ago
Sure. Right after I get all my tax money back from all the userless wars we've fought in the last 20 years because I was against them.
- ndriscoll 1y ago
  Weird to assume people who support an increased child credit aren't also against devoting resources to pointless wars.
  - thinkingtoilet 1y ago
    That's clearly not the assumption at all. The idea that we can pick and choose what we pay taxes for is not a reality. That's not how this works. There are tons of subsidies, pork, and other ways my tax dollars get used that don't benefit me at all. Just because you don't have a kid or choose not to use the new system, doesn't mean you shouldn't pay your share of taxes, just like everything else in this country.
    - ndriscoll 1y ago
      No one said they're not going to pay taxes. They advocated for what they consider to be a better policy. What you're saying is like responding to someone who thinks we shouldn't start random wars with "we don't get to choose what we pay taxes for". Uh, yeah, we do get to advocate for and vote on how the government spends our money. We can and should point out that starting pointless wars is bad and we should encourage others to support a policy where we stop doing it. Arguing against specific uses and for other uses of taxes to build consensus for your point of view is exactly what people are supposed to do in a democracy.
forbiddenvoid 1y ago
In what way does this disincentivize anyone? If you want to stay home with your kids, stay home with your kids. This is literally not preventing anyone from being a stay at home parent.
- programjames 1y ago
  Lots of two-parent working families do the maths, and realize they would pay more in childcare than the income from a second job. This incentivizes one of them to stay at home. Here, the incentive is gone. This is worse for the economy and probably the family.
  - macintux 1y ago
    I can see arguments that it's worse for the family, but why is it worse for the economy to have two parents working?
    - programjames 1y ago
      Suppose childcare is $15k/year and you work minimum wage making less than $15k/year. Then there's less wealth to go around, just more in your pocket. But actually, you probably don't take home all the wealth you create, so it can actually still be better for the economy. It is still worse for the economy, but not for that reason. Probably because labor has a backward-bending supply curve, and most people are already working more hours than is optimal. As another commenter said, it would probably be better for the economy to make a 30 hour work week.
clickety_clack 1y ago
I totally get the reasoning behind that, but the majority of women are not stay at home moms, and most families don’t have the resources to make it happen. Society is just not oriented to family creation, and both women and men (to a lesser extent) take a hit when they decide to start a family. The entire world is in a fertility crisis now that could easily endanger the very society we live in, with all the ideals and principles we take for granted, and that calls for solutions that may not end up being absolutely fair to everyone in it. If the tradeoff is between childcare that actually works versus a watered down version because we are also paying people who don’t avail of it, I think the former option will do most to support families.
- rpcope1 1y ago
  I agree with you except the part about the policy making a dent. Scandinavian countries have all sorts of "universal childcare" and benefits, and their TFR is still going straight into the shitter. All this talk about expanding the GDP and going towards total workforce participation IMO is why family formation is slowing to a crawl (I mean look at South Korea, where it's all about being a workaholic and they basically will cease to exist in maybe 50-100 years, literally). If we want to continue as a nation or entity of people, I believe the people and the government are going to need to put their thumb on the scale in a way more aggressive way, including both childcare credits for all, paying stay at home parents a salary, major cultural changes (including our own version of the Soviet Mother Heroine/Order of Parental Glory that carry real status with them, perhaps), and economic and cultural pushback on being a DINK or similar. We have no future the way we're going, and these sort of policy interventions have been tried elsewhere and they don't do shit. We really have got to rethink a lot of things, in a way that's probably painful or irritating to the readership here, otherwise we're basically done.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    You don’t want just kids, you want well raised kids. Badly raised kids are easily a net negative, so just paying people to be parents isn’t going to work. The only thing that might incentivize people to think about the long term is getting rid of all old age benefits (including continuous bail outs of broad market assets by the federal government by sacrificing the purchasing power of the currency). Right now, we take productivity from people who sacrifice to raise kids well and give it to those who don’t raise kids well, or not have them at all. This obviously leads to an arbitrage opportunity (as evidenced by DINK lifestyles). I do not see any other way other than to remove this arbitrage opportunity. Which probably will not happen in any democracy due to old people’s voting power.
koolba 1y ago
I’m sure people will find creative ways to scam the system where I watch your kids and you watch mine, and both of us get paid for it.
Pet_Ant 1y ago
> Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. They are strictly less efficient than commercial daycare because the adult-child ratio is much higher. How many women would be of out of the work for if they were taking care of children? Also, it prevents trickle down and the lifting of the poorest in society.
- SilverElfin 1y ago
  Less efficient? No they aren’t strictly less efficient because they provide MUCH better quality of care.
  - Pet_Ant 1y ago
    To less children. Even if the area under the curve was the same (and I suspect that there very much are diminishing returns) they have a very negative effect on the Gini coefficient and that is a negative externality that should not be incentivised. If your position is that people should not be compelled to contribute to overall society and the lifting of the boats of others, than there isn't enough alignment of values for a meaningful conversation.
    - tomrod 1y ago
      It does offer a potential backdoor to UBI while also encouraging desirable outcomes -- increased birth rate for wanted children, more people willing to foster, optionality for women to enter workforce, etc. I suspect there will be some fraud (I have 30 kids, wheee!) as well as foster/adoption abuse -- probably AZ's experiment with paying parents to home school would be instructive.
  - tomrod 1y ago
    At the median: probably. At the tails: probably not.
- orthoxerox 1y ago
  However, they provide superior level of childcare.
TulliusCicero 1y ago
> Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. From the government's point of view, they want more people out in the workforce, so it probably doesn't make sense that way.
jimbo808 1y ago
While true, social policies do not need to provide an equal benefit to everyone. People who can afford to stay home with the kids are not the ones who need this sort of policy.
ryandrake 1y ago
I just don't understand this mentality. My wife is a stay-at-home mom. We are lucky that we can afford to do this. Most of our kid's friends have both parents working and they pay for child care. If suddenly they were able to have that childcare paid for, that would be wonderful! It doesn't affect our situation at all. Why would we oppose it? I don't need to have my own "waiver" payment in order for me to be in favor of my neighbor's burden being lifted. It's like free school lunch. We pack our kid a lunch every day, but some families rely on the school-provided free lunch. It's never even occurred to me that we should get a $3/day payment because we don't take advantage of free lunch. Having free lunch available is unequivocally a good thing, regardless of whether we personally partake.
- mothballed 1y ago
  Why wouldn't you want your friends to better be able to afford what you have, by getting an equal value stipend to stay at home if you're for universal childcare? There are many families that might be only one or two tuitions away from being able to stay at home with their child like they had wished, and assigning the waiver/voucher to the child instead of to the daycare can make that happen. And no it's not a free lunch. If stay-at-home in a family isn't reimbursed, they are actually worse off, because now they have an additional tax they are paying that they did not have before. So now even more people like you who wanted a parent to stay at home are driven out of it because their family budget comes upon this tax.
  - stickfigure 1y ago
    Let it go. Everyone gets some tax benefits that others don't. Childless people get many fewer social benefits than people with children. We don't need to quibble over microgrievances.
    - hellojesus 1y ago
      We shouldn't provide any welfare services. Then we will all be equal. For as much as you Elsa folks quible about people being against giveaways, what is so harmful about not giving thigs away involuntarily?
crazygringo 1y ago
> This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred. It does no such thing. If you could afford to be a stay-at-home mom before, this isn't going to make any significant difference to that. Think of whether it would make sense if you applied your logic to other areas -- do public schools disincentivize people sending their kids to private schools? That would be absurd to say. Creating choice where there wasn't any before doesn't "disincentivize" anything. It gives people options to make the choices that are best for them.
daveswilson 1y ago
As a resident of New Mexico I can tell you that it is a miracle that we can afford to launch this program at all. Perhaps when the long-term economic benefits begin to pay out, we'll be able to pay people to support their personal preferences. As it stands, while I don't have kids at home anymore, I can see the long-term economic benefit to the state, and am very pleased that my tax dollars are helping to get this done.
lillecarl 1y ago
In Sweden we value equality and everyone working. If someone is wealthy enough to have a stay-at-home parent it's their choice to do so, we shouldn't subsidize the rich. It is good for children to go to a place where they learn to interact with others early. We give 480 days off to the parents to share (90 "mandatory" per parent), then they go to childcare. Individualism breeds privileged shits, if you want your kid to be one of those then you pay out of your own pocket. We subsidize childcare so everyone can afford to work.
- mothballed 1y ago
  You don't subsidize the rich, yet you subsidize rich child care corporations (or high-level bureaucrats in the event it is public) at the expense of not subsidizing stay at home moms. You don't want people paid for taking care of their children, but it's OK if other people are paid for taking care of their chidlren. None of this makes sense. Especially not this false dichotomy that either you send your kids to daycare or they don't learn to interact with others early.
  - lillecarl 1y ago
    We live in different societies, yours is extremely on the individualism spectrum and ours is on the "common good" spectrum. We don't subsidize the childcare corporations here, we do what's best for society.
    - mothballed 1y ago
      I might be wrong, but I believe in Sweden salaries are able to be publicly found. Find some high level people in the public or private childcares in your nation who are beneficiaries of these subsidies and then tell me how rich they are compared to the average stay at home mom.
      - lillecarl 1y ago
        There are barely any stay at home moms because it's socially detrimental, the ones who are are either social outcasts by lack of capability or religious oppression. We should not subsidize stay at home moms or dad's because it's bad for society, if they can afford to do it or stretch their economy to do it for other reasons it's their bad choice, and we allow free choice even if it's bad, that's why cigarettes are still allowed. I don't know who to look up, but if you have some suggestions I could look it up through ratsit.se
jrflowers 1y ago
This makes sense. If something objectively good happens, it is not actually that good if a completely different good thing did not happen.
onlypassingthru 1y ago
Your taxes pay for the public service whether you use it or not. Take a look at your property tax statement and I bet you can find all sorts of things you may or may not use: parks fees, library fees, health/hospital fees, schools, etc. Should everyone who reads but doesn't use the public library get a book voucher? I'm a stay-at-home-reader, why shouldn't I get the government to subsidize my reading?
mattmaroon 1y ago
I don’t get a voucher for not receiving medicaid or food stamps. Fairness is a concept meant to tame unruly preschoolers, let’s just solve problems.
eirikbakke 1y ago
Norway does this. Kindergartens are nearly free ($120/mo), but with a "cash-for-care" benefit for parents who choose to stay at home with the child ($750/mo). https://www.nav.no/kontantstotte/en https://www.nav.no/kontantstotte/en
- SilverElfin 1y ago
  I wonder why they don’t have the same allergy to a voucher program that is prevalent in the US on the political left. For some reason, letting people exercise their agency and do things their own way is seen as a threat here.
  - OkayPhysicist 1y ago
    It's not an allergy to vouchers. It's an allergy to diverting tax payer dollars away from public schools and into subsidizing religious indoctrination centers. There are good religious schools: I've been largely impressed by the Jesuit-run schools I've seen. But most religious private primary and high schools in the US are run by weird little cults that fundamentally fail to meet muster in the whole "not being thinly-veiled excuses for indoctrination" side of things. Americans are stupid enough without stripping them of what little education we do offer them.
    - SilverElfin 1y ago
      > It's an allergy to diverting tax payer dollars away from public schools and into subsidizing religious indoctrination centers. All schools are indoctrination centers. Some very progressive cities push a lot of political programming into their curriculums. Why does it matter if someone wants their child’s education to have THEIR flavor of religious indoctrination? The money follows the child. The money for kids staying in public schools stays with them. So it doesn’t divert anything away.
- magicalist 1y ago
  > You can receive cash-for-care benefit for children between 13 and 19 months, starting the month the child turns 13 months, up until and including the month the child turns 19 months. You can receive cash-for-care benefits for a maximum of 7 months. so, no, extremely limited compared to what's being discussed.
hereme888 1y ago
Absolutely. Nothing is free. This means less resources for something else, marketed as "compassion". Mothers generally take much better care of their own children than childcare. Childcare was already previously available for low-income families. To incentivize women to work when they can afford to care for their children is very bad for a country in the long term.
angmarsbane 1y ago
I see benefits for stay at home Moms, universal childcare means she has somewhere safe to drop her kid off while she goes to her own doctor appointments, or when she needs a break, or if there’s a family emergency she needs to attend to or even if she’s going into labor to bring kid number 2 or 3 into the world. There are a lot of stay at home parents that don’t have family near by or a reliable sitter and this can help plug some gaps.
arathis 1y ago
Nonsense. Absolute Fucking nonsense.

dzink 1y ago

This would solve a lot of Republican’s problems as well. Israel has the kibbutz system and they have the highest birth rate of developed economies. They also have amazing tech and women participation and excellent contributions even in the military. If you raise the country’s children well, you get more GDP and less prisons and less need for policing, and less need for welfare programs. Plus you get quality workers for those american-made factories.

watwut 1y ago
[flagged]
ch4s3 1y ago
Only about 1-2% of Israelis live on a kibbutz, and unsurprisingly that number has recently fallen. You actually see the elevated birth rates even in Tel Aviv. There’s a broader cultural expectation that would be impossible to recreate elsewhere.
Der_Einzige 1y ago
[flagged]
- _DeadFred_ 1y ago
  The USA is barely getting around to banning legal child marriage. Many many countries have not only child marriages, but arranged child marriages which can fall into selling these 'brides'. Not sure the Israel is any worse than other countries.
AndyMcConachie 1y ago
[flagged]
- reliabilityguy 1y ago
  what does it mean “fake country”? What is the test one can use to determine a “real” country?
1y ago

WD-42 1y ago

You realize a lot of people actually prefer to give their child their best instead of outsourcing it so they can focus on bettering the economy, right?

dzink 1y ago
And with this option they can have that choice. Right now, many don’t.
- WD-42 1y ago
  Yea and I think that’s great. OP makes it sound like every parent is pining to contribute to the churning of capitalism if only they didn’t have to worry about raising a child. It’s not so.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > every parent is pining to contribute to the churning of capitalism People don’t want to work because they’re “pining to contribute to the churning of capitalism”. They want to work for income, for career development, or even because they like what they do. This is such a dismissive way to phrase it that doesn’t even acknowledge why people work. Reducing everything to “capitalism” is missing the point.
- Ajedi32 1y ago
  With this option, they are now financially penalized for making that choice in order to subsidize those who don't. I'm not so sure that's a good thing.
  - nerpderp82 1y ago
    Can you spell it out with math?
    - Ajedi32 1y ago
      Tax $100 each from couple A and couple B. Couple A leave their kids at a daycare and work. They get $200 in childcare costs reimbursed by the government. Couple B has one parent stay home to take care of their kids. They get nothing. Couple A: -$100 + $200 = +$100 Couple B: -$100 + $0 = -$100

alt227 1y ago

> it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential Why bring gender into it? There are plenty of families who choose to have stay at home Dads while the mother goes back to work full time. We are not in the 1950s any more.

inetknght 1y ago
I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. I'm hopeful that the parent comment simply didn't think about Dads because it's not in their "worldview", and perhaps also not in many others'. Nonetheless, I think your point is completely valid.
holocenenough 1y ago
[dead]
JKCalhoun 1y ago
I would suspect the numbers show we're closer to the 1950's than you think. But I'm happy to be proven wrong.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Even if it is only 5% stay at home fathers, that is still 5% that is ignored. Staying at home as a parent isn't the right choice for everyone, but when society assumes that it is only mothers that is a disservice to the fathers who want to (and in some cases the couples who want a parent staying at home but it never occurs to them that it could be dad)

chongli 1y ago

I appreciate your optimism but I’m skeptical. I dated someone who worked in child care (with a degree in ECE). She was quite miserable caring for a dozen screaming babies all day. I think the burnout and turnover for such a job (which requires a degree but still paid minimum wage) is likely to be extremely high. The other thing that doesn’t make sense to me is the economics of it. The pay for the staff is very low but the cost of service to parents is very high. That means so much of the cost is overhead which would make the whole thing quite unsustainable, even when ostensibly covered by the government. I live in Canada and a similar issue is occurring with our universal health care system. The costs are skyrocketing even as wait times are increasing.

nemomarx 1y ago
Burnout and turnover for teachers are also like that, so it's what you'd expect? maybe they can unionize like teachers though
- hedora 1y ago
  It sounds like she was a poor fit, or the child care center sucked. Try to find one that has long average tenure (10+ years, if possible).
  - chongli 1y ago
    Sure, if the place paid everyone a lot and had much higher staff:child ratios then everything would be great. Except it would cost an absolute fortune for parents thus even less viable under a government program. Government programs almost universally have higher overhead and more waste than private businesses. There is no incentive for government employees to improve efficiency, reduce budgets, or cut costs.
    - hedora 1y ago
      We didn’t notice a positive correlation between teacher tenure and cost when we looked around. If anything, there was a negative correlation: The big corporate ones had high teacher turnover, more levels of administration, and turned a healthy profit for ownership/shareholders. They were priced to match. Also, government run programs usually are less expensive (take pretty much any privatization program anywhere as an evidence). The government programs don’t have to pay money to shareholders, and aren’t siphoning resources for expansion, marketing, etc. If government leadership is corrupt as we see in the US right now, then, of course, prices skyrocket, though that usually comes hand in hand with outsourcing/subcontractors/privatization. It’s hard to collect bribe money from civil servants…

colechristensen 1y ago

The problem with more people entering the workforce is that the people never end up better off. Prices just go up and people end up working more for the same result. Changing the definition of full-time hours to 30/week would do far more for families and children than giving free childcare so mothers can work more. Making mortgages with a > 20 year term illegal, putting limits on the total principal allowed to loan as a multiple of income, and barring entirely non-human (i.e. any business entity) ownership of single family homes would do far more for families and children by removing the burden of ridiculous housing costs by removing the ability for people to compete for ridiculous housing prices.

Loudergood 1y ago
That last part is just going to make more housing cheaper for landlords and force more people into renting.
- orthoxerox 1y ago
  Not if the tax rate is base_rate*phi^n where n is the ordinal number of property the person owns.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  No I think there should be extreme limits on anybody owning a single family home that they don't live in. With enormous tax penalties for those who do. Don't let people get 30 year mortgages. Don't let people own houses they don't live in.
9rx 1y ago
> Changing the definition of full-time hours to 30/week would do far more for families and children than giving free childcare so mothers can work more. You want to change what now? The dictionary definition does not specify any particular time. There is no legal definition for full-time. The IRS uses the term full-time, but they actually use it exactly like you wish: 30 hours per week. People out on the street often casually use full-time to refer to 40 hours per week. I anticipate that is what you are referring to. But that usage is simply used to refer to how many hours they are working. 40 hours under that usage is an observation, not a commandment.

bcrosby95 1y ago

Any system, program, or social group involving tens of thousands of people is going to have issues. But if you systematize it you can work to address them rather than ignoring them in search of the perfect system (which doesn't exist).

bluGill 1y ago

Why the sexist word "women"? Do you really mean to imply that men/fathers should not be stay at home dads? I know several stay at home dads who by all reports do a very good job of raising their kids while mom works. (granted the vast majority of stay at home parents are mothers). Fathers are people too, and they should be treated like the great parents they can be (until proven otherwise).

dataflow 1y ago
>> when women are allowed to work to their full potential > Why the sexist word "women"? Do you really mean to imply that men/fathers should not be stay at home dads? That's... not even remotely what the sentence said? Or are you offended because you believe childcare obligations have historically prevented men from working their full potential?
- bluGill 1y ago
  Women was used in several different places. Each is offensive, because in each case a man could do the same work, and the work could be done. I have no opinion on if a man or woman should be caregiver - I've seen both cases work well - every situation must be taken case by case. What does full potential even mean? If someone wants to do something, but they have to do something else or they would starve (that is play vs work) which is living up to their full potential - what they want to do, or what they must do?
tuckerman 1y ago
I mean, I’m a gay dad, so I get that what you are saying is a real problem, but I don’t think it’s a problem in this thread. If you had a goal of improving women’s ability to participate in the workforce you’d likely come up with a policy like this (that would also help some dads too, even if that weren’t the primary goal). Women are far more likely to be the primary, stay at home caregiver if one exists and face a lot of discrimination in the workforce as a result of those expectations (on top of already facing other workplace discrimination issues).

giantg2 1y ago

I suppose if maximizing GDP is the goal, your comment makes sense. But if feel this is more of a bandaid of deeper underlying labor/pay issues.

palmfacehn 1y ago

Worker productivity has consistently increased, yet workers are struggling to support their families or delaying having a family, because they cannot meet the cost of living. Instead of looking towards the inflation of the monetary base as a driver of price inflation, families are supposed to let the state raise their children. Pricing parents out of the house and into the workforce is instead marketed as "liberation". Liberty implies that a choice is given. Mothers or fathers should have the ability to choose to stay home and benefit from the increases in productivity. Citing GDP growth is cute, but as nothing has been done to address the underlying drivers of price inflation, we can reasonably expect that socialized child care will become an economic necessity. Any potential benefits of productivity gains will continue to be eaten by those who are first to drink from the monetary spigot. While GDP and hours worked may increase, living standards may not.

janalsncm 1y ago
I’m 100% on board that GDP is increasingly becoming a poor proxy for well-being. That being said I can’t really think of many other things a state can do. The trends you are describing are national if not global. Also “having the state raise your children” sounds dystopian until you realize the alternative was them not being taken care of in many cases. Handing a kid an iPad is not raising them.
throwawayqqq11 1y ago
And what choice do you have regarding rising cost of living? There are many public services we already rely on and there are many countries that offer free child care already in some form. What you call (forced) liberation is just societal specialization and not bad per se. Focusing on fiscal/wage issues is a big and important topic though. I bet over time, budget hawks will reduce this public service like others and like in many other countries too. We are so many humans on our plentyful earth, we could achieve many things, yet, "we" lack money.

fragmede 1y ago

There will obviously be abuse and other issues. The question is, does New Mexico give up at the first sign of trouble like a bunch of losers, or do they push through, because of, or despite all the voters. It just takes one shitty person, in just the wrong place, and not enough good people fighting against him or her no matter, (or especially) how righteous he or she thinks they're being, to fuck it up for everyone else.

KetoManx64 1y ago

You don't understand how economics work if you think this is actually going to be helpful. By providing "universal" child care, you just moved the cost of childcare from the individual to the tax base so now everyone has to pay an ineffifient system that often eats up 30-50% of the incoming money in bureaucratic inneficiencies before it will even reach the child care system. On top of that the increased taxes are going to raise prices of everything because the businesses don't just eat the cost of taxes, they pass it off to the consumer. So all these families that get free childcare are going to be paying more for their groceries, rent, unilities and everything else. To top things off, you now have random strangers with no bond with your children looking after them in a ratio of maybe 1:8 or 1:10. So your children are going to be stressed out and anxious and are going to act out both at the childcare place and at home, so you're just going to be getting phone calls all day about your children fighting other children. All in all, you might feel like you're better off but once you do the math you're at about the same place if not worse off.

nemomarx 1y ago
You could say all of this about public schooling, but that one worked out.
- KetoManx64 1y ago
  It has not at all. 20% of high school graduates are reading at a 5th grade level, which when you consider the billions of dollars poured into public schools every year is just asinine https://www.abtaba.com/blog/us-literacy-statistics https://www.abtaba.com/blog/us-literacy-statistics
  - ecshafer 1y ago
    US school outcomes vary drastically. It really works out well in nice neighborhoods, and doesn't work out in some bad neighborhoods. Its down to cultural and familial expectations. Why does the same curriculum in say Scarsdale not have the same success in the Bronx? They are only like 15 miles apart in the same state.

lenerdenator 1y ago

There are more important things women - and other people - can do than simply grow the economy. One of the reasons you must have a two-income household to be economically middle-class in most American metros now is because two-income households became the norm. When I was growing up 25-30 years ago, that made you comfortable. Then people realized that there was "untapped" value in that extra income and raised prices accordingly. If you're looking to buy the things that make up the "American Dream", you are now competing to buy against people who are willing to throw two incomes at the problem. Now that there are two incomes, the only way to grow is to start shedding other things that keep people from creating more value for their employers. Kids, home improvement, community involvement, all are - or have been - going by the wayside.

orthoxerox 1y ago
If I'm not mistaken, Elizabeth Warren has literally written a book about this problem, so it's not some reactionary desire to keep women in the kitchen.

shafyy 1y ago

> I hope they succeed and there is no abuse or other issues, because it will show how much an economy can grow I know you are meaning well, but while the economy growing can be a nice side effect of this (and probably is), I always find it a bit sad when economic profit is used as a reason to justify to create a more fair and equal society. It's similar with those studies showing hiring a diverse workforce is actually good for your business. It might be, but, like, it's also the right thing to do to not discriminate against minorities.

bialpio 1y ago
> I know you are meaning well, but while the economy growing can be a nice side effect of this (and probably is), I always find it a bit sad when economic profit is used as a reason to justify to create a more fair and equal society. Unfortunately, this is how some people think, so phrasing things in this manner is a way to win them over ("paying a bit more in taxes is actually going to benefit you").

erichocean 1y ago

> because it will show how much an economy can grow bleak

SilverElfin 1y ago

> because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential This feels like the wrong goal. Why does it matter how much an economy can grow? Is that worth not having a parent raise the child? In my opinion, it’s important for kids to spend more time with their families not less. Having one parent at home is very useful for bonding, development, etc. And frankly no childcare, even one with good ratios of workers to children, can substitute for it. I think the notion that “if the children are taken care of” is perhaps not recognizing that there are different levels of “taken care of”.

gwbas1c 1y ago
I stayed at home with my mom until I was old enough for school. My wife and I sent our kids to daycare. Our kids are fine. Turns out kids need a lot of time with other kids.
- SilverElfin 1y ago
  It turns out that kids raised by their parents still get a lot of time with other kids though. Their parents don’t just keep them at home. They meet with friends. Go out and play. Their parents take them to classes and activities. Your view is “our kids are fine”, but most parents may say that about their own kids without knowing what the alternative could be. I’ve experienced both situations myself and also observed it as an adult. I think most childcare is a lot more of a free for all than parents think, rather than some sort of well designed experience. If you reduce the ratios significantly by having two kids per worker, maybe the quality improves to approach what a parent can provide. But that’s a lot more expensive.
  - gwbas1c 1y ago
    > I think most childcare is a lot more of a free for all than parents think, rather than some sort of well designed experience. That's important and healthy. Kids need time to play, and part of that is being a "free for all." (As long as kids aren't parked in front of a TV all day.) I even remember my preschool being mostly a free-for-all with some short lessons in between. It was great.

WalterBright 1y ago

My mom was a full time mom and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

ksenzee 1y ago
That’s great, but not every mom is your mom. You just lucked out. This is like saying “my dad was a doctor and we lived very well and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.” Some dads aren’t cut out to be highly paid professionals. Some moms aren’t cut out to be good stay-at-home parents.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  > Some moms aren’t cut out to be good stay-at-home parents That would be a rarity.
  - ksenzee 1y ago
    Just because women have been shunted into childcare for millennia doesn’t mean we’re naturally better at it. It just means we’ve had to do it. Do you similarly think it’s a rarity for men not to be cut out for subsistence farming?
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      The bond between a mother and her child is very special and intense. That doesn't happen with a paid caregiver. Heck, I was glued to my mom till I was 4. I'm sad for you that you don't seem to understand this, with words like "shunted". My parents are decades gone, but I miss them every day. Not so for any paid caregiver. My grandmother died when my dad was 9. In his 90s, he forgot that she was dead, and would cry wondering why she didn't visit him. The notion that this can be replaced with the state is absurd.
      - habinero 1y ago
        Those are nice feelings _you_ have, but they don't have anything to do with women being forced into childcare. You're romanticizing things you never had to do.

chlodwig 1y ago

because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential. Disagree. Everyone needs to realize that having two parents who both have "greedy jobs" is a path to misery. Giving out childcare does not change the situation. One parent will always need to step back from their career or there will be misery, I've seen too many cases. Even if both parents are comfortable putting their kid in daycare 9 to 11 hours a day (to cover both the workday and the commute), which they should not be, they still have to deal with many sick days, needing to be out of work by 6pm every day, not going on business trips, teacher's conferences, school plays, PTA meetings, not getting a good night sleep because baby or toddler is having a sleep regression, etc. etc. There is no world where you provide everyone universal childcare and now both parents can "work to their full potential" and "give the economy their best." The reality furthermore is that there are few non-greedy jobs that are non-subsidized/non-fake and that contribute to the economy enough to be of more value than childcare. Subsidizing childcare, so the second parent can get a non-greedy job as a neighborbood coffeeshop owner, or working as a strict 9-5 government lawyer, isn't really a win for the economy.

swed420 1y ago
Agreed. We should have been freed a long time ago: https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ Unfortunately late capitalism made sure we went in the opposite direction.
benterix 1y ago
Not sure about your point. I live in Europe, and State pays for the first 1 year or two. Then you get your kid to preschool which is either paid or free. In this way the mother (who usually has more burden related to breastfeeding etc.) can finally breathe freely. Can she go to work? Yes, and in some Europaen countries she has the right to ask for part work with the current employer, and they can't refuse. A few years later the kid goes to school (again, paid or free) and parents can decide how they organize their lives based on their needs an expectations. If your kid is sick, you can stay with them, and I always assumed this is normal and civilized way, I can't imagine otherwise.

gedy 1y ago

I think this just makes it harder for single income families tbh. Not a social or moral commentary, just unfortunate observation

ksenzee 1y ago
How so? What do they have now that they will be losing under the new system? It seems like having childcare paid for would be beneficial to any single working parent.

prewett 1y ago

> parents can give the economy their best Surely parents should be giving their child(ren) the best, no? Giving the economy your best only makes sense in Communism, and since that has never gone well, I'll assume that what was meant was "self-fulfillment via work" or "better standard of living". The first just seems like one of these modern lies. I'm neither a mother nor a woman, but I've never understood why women are so eager to go work. Work has never been particularly fulfilling, although I have generally more or less enjoyed it. I've met no father (or mother) who say they wished they had more time at work rather than their children. I have heard both fathers and mothers say that it is the most fulfilling part of their lives. The second is just prioritizing the self. I've never met a child who was excited that his/her parent(s) are working and/or making lots of money instead of being with them. I don't think a goal of career or comfort/wealth is compatible with flourishing children. Second, are the children actually taken care of? Assuming everything is well-run, then sure, their physical needs and safety are taken care of. They aren't getting love from parents during that time. They aren't living in a loving community. Instead they are getting socialized into being atomized, like the rest of us, where loneliness is epidemic. I'm really thankful my mother stayed home with us. (She started teaching part-time once we all got into all-day school)

ksenzee 1y ago
> I’ve never understood why women are so eager to go work. Work has never been particularly fulfilling Understandable, but the thing is, staying home with kids is work. It’s a vocation. Everyone should get to choose what work is fulfilling for them personally. In the absence of reliable child care, parents don’t get to make that choice freely. It sounds like in a perfect world, you might have enjoyed staying home with kids, if that seems more appealing than the work you ended up doing. I can tell you I tried it for 18 months and I just about went crazy. I am a much better software developer than I am a stay-at-home parent. I feel for women who don’t get to make choices the way I did. > are the children actually taken care of? There is a lot of data by now comparing outcomes for children in childcare versus with stay-at-home parents. Both groups do fine. > I’m really thankful my mother stayed home with us It sounds like she did a good job of it; it was probably a vocation for her. You do need to understand that not every woman is cut out for that.
1y ago