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It's easy to promise things, but hard to deliver them. How can the state "guarantee no-cost universal child?" Will the state provide the child care itself? Or
by Nifty3929 1y ago
It's easy to promise things, but hard to deliver them. How can the state "guarantee no-cost universal child?"
Will the state provide the child care itself? Or will the attempt to provide funding, relying on the private market to provide the service. Are there a bunch of underworked child care providers just waiting around for new customers? Or would they expect the child care industry to go on a hiring spree?
Regardless who provides it, more workers would be required to deliver the service, and new facilities as well. What industries will those workers come from, who will now see reduced services and higher prices as a result? What doesn't get built while the construction workers are building new child care facilities?
Child care tends to be highly regulated. Is the government doing anything (aside from funding) to make it easier to open and run a child-care facility?
It's so easy to spend money. The hard part is the real-world actions and tradeoffs required. Everything comes at the cost of something else we could have had instead.
What you will see is: The funding will go to the people who are already receiving child-care services today, along with big price increases immediately and over time as government money chases supply that is slow to grow.
- monknomo 1y agoyou could sub in universal k-12 schooling and your concern trolling points would not need to be change. I applaud the versatile argument.
- sbrother 1y ago+1. That being said, universal k-12 schooling works because it is publicly run. A subsidized private sector model has a lot of bad incentives and issues to work out. As an example, I've sent my kids to a private school for the past five years, and last year our state introduced a voucher program to help subsidize private education. The school responded by raising the prices by almost the amount of the voucher, just for the age groups that it covered. See also: US healthcare.
- foobarian 1y agoLike I always said to my friend complaining you can't reserve a table at the Border Cafe: they don't need a reservation system if there is always a line around the block Of course they are gone now but point stands. :-)
- monknomo 1y agoI'm not in charge, but if I were, I'd just have the government provide the services. I don't think middlemen, especially for not-very-specialized services, provide a lot of value vs 'just buy/lease some space and hire some folks'
- titanomachy 1y agoIs this a for-profit school or something?
- marknutter 1y agoI would've thought we'd eventually move past the point of accusing people of "concern trolling" whenever they have a legitimate counterpoint, but here we are.
- SilverElfin 1y agoConcern trolling? This isn’t 2015. You can leave out the insults.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoI drive on roads, I use libraries, I have police and fire protection. My children go to school. My city and state provide services to me and fellow citizens. This is no different, and we pay for it with taxes. I like taxes, with them I buy civilization (which I also am fond of). (The evidence also shows economic benefits of enabling parents to work when they want to by providing childcare) https://illumine.app/blog/how-much-childcare-costs-by-state-in-usa https://illumine.app/blog/how-much-childcare-costs-by-state-... https://childcaredeserts.org/ https://childcaredeserts.org/ https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=up_policybriefs https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064...
- Isamu 1y agoI’m also fond of civilization. I like your point that enabling parents to work helps drive the economy to everyone’s benefit.
- defen 1y agoPortland OR is trying to do something similar ("Preschool for all") and is running into the exact problems OP identified, to the point that the Democratic governor is sending warning messages to the county: https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/26/kotek-multnomah-county-fix-preschool-for-all/ https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/26/kotek-multnomah-count... They aren't just theoretical concerns.
- toomuchtodo 1y agoI will find time to build an inventory of every example of where subsidized childcare works and reply with said inventory.
- hedora 1y agoYes, but can you find any that work well when the branch of the government that’s running it refuses to process paperwork from daycare providers or issue checks to pay those providers, and where its leader has prioritized getting the system shut down on the grounds that it’s “broken”? (Not strawmanning; just summarizing the situation in Oregon, according to that linked article.)
- holocenenough 1y agoYou could've answered 80% of these questions for yourself by just reading the linked press release. Edit: other user called what you're doing here concern trolling and I agree. If you disagree on principle with government assistance for childcare you're free to make the case, but this gish-galloping faux-naive JAQing off adds no value.
- gooeyblob 1y agoDamn you're right, let's just not do anything good and useful for people
- christhecaribou 1y agoI’m so sick of seeing people justify why we cannot have nice things, as though it were a fact of nature.
- afavour 1y ago> How can the state "guarantee no-cost universal child?" How can any state “guarantee no-cost schooling for all children”? Well, they do, so it’s clearly possible. Why would early childhood be any different? > everything comes at the cost of something we could have had instead Of course. That’s the nature of spending money. Your talking points here don’t really amount to much beyond “better things aren’t possible”.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- glenstein 1y agoIt's amazing how much of the opposition isn't a specific conceptual problem with the rightness or wrongness of the ideal behind the policy but re-litigating assumptions that are already accepted and baked into routine investments we already make to service and infrastructure. The way that the Gell-Man Amnesia effect is the term for instantly forgetting what you know about the gulf between popular narrative and expert familiarity, there should be a name for the phenomenon of newly re-discovering and re-litigating the social compact that undergirds basic services as if it was being proposed for the first time.
- 9rx 1y ago> What industries will those workers come from Tech.
- mythrwy 1y agoNew Mexico government does things very very poorly compared to other states I've lived in. Corruption at various levels of government is very common. I actually really like this idea (even though I'm red leaning) but hope they are able to effectively administrate it. I have my doubts they are.
- toast0 1y ago> Regardless who provides it, more workers would be required to deliver the service, and new facilities as well. What industries will those workers come from, who will now see reduced services and higher prices as a result? Paid for child care frees up some stay at home parents to enter the labor force; it's kind of circular, but some of those parents will work in child care. This won't fill the whole gap, but it will fill some of it.
- timeon 1y agoOutside of US there is whole world and maybe they are already doing something like that.
- qgin 1y agoWe're likely 5-10 years out from a world where tappy-tap computer keyboard jobs are in a death spiral and caregiving jobs are one of the only fields untouched by automation.
- alchemical_piss 1y agoEnjoy living on $14/h for the rest of your life.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]