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Then do it today so mothers can continue to work and help the economy.
by tock 11mo ago
Then do it today so mothers can continue to work and help the economy.
- jagged-chisel 11mo agoThey would need to be building tanks and airplanes.
- TylerE 11mo agoWhy? We don’t need tanks and planes. We have plenty.
- echelon 11mo agoMain battle tanks are probably less useful in the future of armed conflict due to the effectiveness of drones. Spending on childcare means we need to offset those debts with other revenues. We have close to full employment, so I'd argue that freeing up labor isn't as strategic as other categories of spending. It all depends on what you want to prioritize. For the long term health of the nation, these areas seem key for continued economic resiliency: - pay down the debt so it doesn't spiral out of control (lots of strategies here, some good, some bad: higher taxes, lower spending, wanton imperialism, inflation, etc.) - remain competitive in key industries, including some catch-up: robotics, batteries, solar, chip manufacture - if we're going for a multipolar world / self-sufficiency play, we need to rebuild the supply chain by onshoring and friendshoring. This means the boring stuff too, like plastics and pharmaceutical inputs. - lots of energy expansion and infrastructure
- TylerE 11mo agoI think we should act with empathy and care for each other. The government does not need to be run like a fucking business.
- echelon 11mo agoIt's because it runs like a business that we're able to enjoy a high standard of living. If the economy stops growing, or worse, degrades, everyone will suffer incredibly. Job loss, investment loss, higher cost of living. There's a wide gulf between childcare for none and childcare for all. I'm an atheist, but some of the cheapest childcare is at churches. Orders of magnitude cheaper than private childcare because they already have the infrastructure for it. I've had affluent people turn their nose at the idea of Christians watching their kids. But there are entirely affordable options if you're not being choosey.
- TimorousBestie 11mo agoI don’t understand the conjunction of “the state should not subsidize childcare with taxes” and “the church should subsidize childcare with underpaid labor and tithes.”
- tbrownaw 11mo agoChurch membership is voluntary.
- TimorousBestie 11mo agoBeing atheist, GP is presumably not a member (or at worst, is a member in bad faith, pun intended).
- int_19h 11mo agoThe economy will stop growing eventually. Nothing grows forever. If we have built our society around the notion of perpetual economic growth, we have already accepted that "everyone will suffer incredibly", and we're only arguing about which generation will be the one to bear it.
- echelon 11mo ago> The economy will stop growing eventually. That isn't necessarily true. If we find continual efficiency gains, it may never stop growing for thousands of years. Most growth curves in life are S-curves. Population growth, etc. But technological advancement could continue until we become a type II civilization. That's absolutely sci-fi speculation, but there are no signs of technological advancement ending. If each round of advancement increases efficiency, growth continues. I don't see an end in sight.
- lenkite 11mo agoEveryone should learn how to build drones.
- nradov 11mo agoWe've strayed pretty far from the original topic here, but the reality is that the US military is literally running out of working aircraft because they're so old. The average age of USAF aircraft is now about 28 years. The fleet was allowed to decay and not substantially recapitalized during the GWOT. Many of the fighters in the combat coded inventory aren't even allowed to hit their original 9G maneuvering limit any more due to accumulated airframe fatigue. Now we're paying an overdue bill. And let's please not have any uninformed claims that somehow cheap "drones" will magically make large, expensive manned aircraft obsolete. Small, cheap drones are effective in a trench warfare environment like the current conflict in Ukraine but they lack the range, speed, and payload necessary to be useful in a potential major regional conflict with China. And the notion of relying on AI for any sort of complex mission in a dynamic environment remains firmly in the realm of science fiction: maybe that will be feasible in a few decades but for now any really complex missions still rely on humans in the loop to execute effectively.
- WalterBright 11mo agoThe problem is that fighter aircraft have gotten too expensive to afford to build, even for a nation.
- nradov 11mo agoSure, that is a problem. Ironically the best solution from an overall expense management standpoint is to drive economies of scale by building more and retiring older units on an accelerated schedule to cut maintenance costs. Keep production lines running continuously instead of periodically starting and stopping. The F-35A, while badly flawed in certain ways, is at least relatively affordable due to high production volumes.
- mlhpdx 11mo agoNot to build, but to build and maintain. We never budget for maintenance (we as in companies and governments).
- int_19h 11mo agoIf Sweden can do it...
- tbrownaw 11mo agoIf the tax man can't see it, it doesn't exist. . Scenario A: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. Max stays home with them, and Alex has a job with a coworker named Avery. Scenario B: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. They both work, and hire Avery to watch the kids. The same total work gets done by the same group of people in both cases, but the second measures as "better" for "the economy".
- danorama 11mo agoBut what if Avery has the skills and training to watch 5 kids at once in a group?
- hypertele-Xii 11mo agoHow do you "skill" yourself more attention to give?
- mlrtime 11mo agoWhat age? 0-18 months, there is no skill other than being the parent(s).
- gcapu 11mo agoThey are very different. In scenario A, the labor of watching the kids is untaxed. In Scenario B is Avery watches many kids and the effort per kid is reduced, but you get taxed.
- phantasmish 11mo agoI have a suspicion a lot of the “why did wages stop keeping pace with the growth of the economy?” problem is because real productivity hasn’t been growing nearly as fast as our measures of it. But the measures are tied to ways for capitalists to extract more money, so that fake-growth does make line go up for owners. But there’s not nearly as much more actual work getting done as one might think from the numbers. I mean what, 10ish% of our entire GDP in the US, and IIRC that’s generously low, is being throwing in a fire from excessive spending on healthcare for effectively no actual benefit, versus peer states. And that’s just one fake-productivity issue (though one that affects the US more than most). But our GDP would drop if we fixed that!
- jazzyjackson 11mo agoChild rearing is the most economically important task a mother can do, it's just not compensated for fairly. The wrong thing to do is ensure the parents are working for low wages + have children raised by low wage workers.
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago> Child rearing is the most economically important task a mother can do This is really only true in the post-WWII Western nuclear family. Most cultures historically and today have group elements to childbearing.
- mlrtime 11mo agoRight, and that's exactly the point. It was extended family and close community, not institutional strangers. Grandma watching the kids while mom works the fields is completely different from dropping an infant at a commercial daycare center with a 1:6 caregiver ratio. The "it takes a village" argument doesn't support modern daycare, it actually undermines it. Those historical models were built on trusted relationships and continuity of care, not economic transactions with rotating staff.
- int_19h 11mo agoIt reminds me of Bujold. “Oh, certainly, you could produce quantities of infants — although it would take enormous resources to do so. Highly trained techs, as well as equipment and supplies. But don’t you see, that’s just the beginning. It’s nothing, compared to what it takes to raise a child. Why, on Athos it absorbs most of the planet’s economic resources. Food, of course — housing — education, clothing, medical care — it takes nearly all our efforts just to maintain population replacement, let alone to increase. No government could possibly afford to raise such a specialized, nonproductive army.” Elli Quinn quirked an eyebrow. “How odd. On other worlds, people seem to come in floods, and they’re not necessarily impoverished, either.” Ethan, diverted, said, “Really? I don’t see how that can be. Why, the labor costs alone of bringing a child to maturity are astronomical. There must be something wrong with your accounting.” Her eyes screwed up in an expression of sudden ironic insight. “Ah, but on other worlds the labor costs aren’t added in. They’re counted as free.” Ethan stared. “What an absurd bit of double thinking! Athosians would never sit still for such a hidden labor tax! Don’t the primary nurturers even get social duty credits?” “I believe” — her voice was edged with a peculiar dryness — “they call it women’s work. And the supply usually exceeds the demand — non-union scabs, as it were, undercutting the market.”
- abustamam 11mo agoI'd argue that that's the wrong goal. Ideally, families can afford to live off of one salary so that mothers could choose to continue to care for their children if they wanted to do so. Currently, very few families are privileged enough to live off of one salary. Both parents need to work in order to make ends meet. I'm not saying it's an easy problem to solve, or that free childcare isn't a good interim solution. But important to keep the end goal in mind.
- Braxton1980 11mo agoThe government can set up free child care as it has already set up other similar programs. How would the government make it so that a single salary can provide for a family? Wouldn't this require massive interference with the economy?
- venturecruelty 11mo agoI mean, a lack of cheap housing is also a policy failure. Also, there's already massive interference with the economy, all the time, every day. It's just hard to see, and the working class doesn't benefit from it. Housing isn't just magically expensive by some law of nature.
- abustamam 11mo agoYeah, that's why I said it wasn't an easy problem to solve. No need to let the infeasibility of a perfect solution get in the way of a possible, yet however unideal solution.
- int_19h 11mo agoRaising children is basically a full time job. Why not compensate it as such?
- abustamam 11mo agoI'd be on board with that. That was Andrew Yangs whole proposition with UBI. https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/ https://2020.yang2020.com/policies/the-freedom-dividend/ Sure it goes to everyone, but I think that's okay. Some parents would still choose to both work, and use their monthly check to pay for daycare. I think the important thing is freedom to choose.