9 ms·

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

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
      > generate tax revenue to cover this due That's not the claim I'm making. Someone entering the workforce has tax implications for a local government far beyond their individual tax receipts and will increase their future earning potential.
      - giantg2 1y ago
        You imply an overall net netral to net positive. I find it hard to believe that would total $12k per year. If there are complicated n-order effects, then perhaps you should call them out instead of saying it's not complicated.
        ch4s3 1y ago
        > I find it hard to believe that would total $12k per year. Again I didn't claim that. The tradeoff is generating some percentage of X benefit in economic activity vs some much lower percentage of X while X is also much larger.
        giantg2 1y ago
        I fail to understand what value your initial comment holds. The grandparents of that comment was talking about financial feasibility of the program in the context of a proposed waiver. This necessarily implies that on-topic responses to that should be weighing financial feasibility of the program with and without the waiver. Your most recent comment seems to just be clarifying that your initial comment is just the same generalized explanation for the current expansion - expanding the benefit to the currently working higher earning parents where the return is unclear and logically dubious, thus providing some much lower percentage of X while X is much larger. The only way to claim what your comment is trying to is to also display some evidence that this current expansion will provide economic activity benefit beyond the previous program that had 4x poverty level means testing. Otherwise, it's simply "some much lower percentage of X while X is also much larger" vs the same thing with X being even larger.
- 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.

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
    > generate tax revenue to cover this due That's not the claim I'm making. Someone entering the workforce has tax implications for a local government far beyond their individual tax receipts and will increase their future earning potential.
    - giantg2 1y ago
      You imply an overall net netral to net positive. I find it hard to believe that would total $12k per year. If there are complicated n-order effects, then perhaps you should call them out instead of saying it's not complicated.
      - ch4s3 1y ago
        > I find it hard to believe that would total $12k per year. Again I didn't claim that. The tradeoff is generating some percentage of X benefit in economic activity vs some much lower percentage of X while X is also much larger.
        giantg2 1y ago
        I fail to understand what value your initial comment holds. The grandparents of that comment was talking about financial feasibility of the program in the context of a proposed waiver. This necessarily implies that on-topic responses to that should be weighing financial feasibility of the program with and without the waiver. Your most recent comment seems to just be clarifying that your initial comment is just the same generalized explanation for the current expansion - expanding the benefit to the currently working higher earning parents where the return is unclear and logically dubious, thus providing some much lower percentage of X while X is much larger. The only way to claim what your comment is trying to is to also display some evidence that this current expansion will provide economic activity benefit beyond the previous program that had 4x poverty level means testing. Otherwise, it's simply "some much lower percentage of X while X is also much larger" vs the same thing with X being even larger.
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.