Why Child Care Is So Expensive • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#111

Post by ouid » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #66

ChaosDegenerate wrote: post #6

The thing with female workforce participation: isn't it just symptom of the society getting poorer. My wife worked her ass off. I was making about 130k / year. She was making about 60k / year. Then we not only moved from the US to Poland (where live is just so much cheaper). But I also started making about 330k / year. All the willingness to work evaporated on her part :-) Instead we have another kid. She stopped tal…

> The dirty secret is that most women work because they HAVE TO. It's not a choice. If you can have a house, nice car, four kids, vacation home, 40 hour week, no credit card debt, no school debt, and all of that on carpenter salary -- why not to enjoy life instead of spending 50-60 hours at the office? I think you can replace "women" with people and make this statement more accurate. I don't see why this would be uni…

That too is an undergeneralization. People work because they want to just like they breathe because they want to. Claiming that there is some sort of innate desire to work or not work is ludicrous.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#112

Post by yorwba » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

jaltekruse wrote: post #45

jperras wrote: post #7

It doesn't have to be this way. Québec has had subsidized daycare for almost 25 years, and the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/affordable-daycare-su... > In Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, a day of child care cost on average $10 in 2016 > Quebec’s program, which introduced lo…

I'm not sure this is the strongest case you could make for saying this ought to be the responsibility of the government. If people can make more working than childcare costs, then they can make their own decision about how to invest their own time and money. Why does the government need to pay for this, if they argument is ultimately that the wages of women now working is what ends up paying the cost of the service?…

> If people can make more working than childcare costs, then they can make their own decision about how to invest their own time and money. Why does the government need to pay for this, if they argument is ultimately that the wages of women now working is what ends up paying the cost of the service?

Before a stay-at-home parent enters the workforce, they may not have the money to pay for the childcare that would free up time to work. Essentially only governments have both the money and the incentive to invest in making childcare widely available.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#113

Post by username90 » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 7:58 PM UTC

mkoryak wrote: post #22

FactolSarin wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's necessarily woman-specific. I'm a guy, and if I could stay at home all day and spend time with my kids, I would too. Certainly, I would if my wife was making 330k/year :D

wait, are you saying that staying at home with the kids is not work?! It is arguably a harder job than most white collar jobs out there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWcJZ210AaM

100 hour workweeks kills people, 40 hours of work and 60 hours of parenting doesn't, 100 hours of parenting doesn't. Parenting therefore isn't work, parenting is life on the work-life balance spectrum, so it isn't soul crushing in the same way work is. Parenting can still be a lot of work of course, but it isn't work in the same way a job is work, it is more work in the way a vacation trip is work or a hobby is work.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#114

Post by qqqwerty » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

vturner wrote: post #21

This may be somewhat off-topic, but I'm often surprised that leftist policies like the article advocates are often proposed at a national level? Why is this? Why not propose a state-sponsored child-care system in a leftist state - California, Washington, Massachusetts, etc. I'm not trying to start a war here, simply genuinely interested why people on the left push national social programs versus propose them in very…

They do, to some extent. See this link for example[1]. But states are constrained in ways that the federal government is not.

The main difference is that the federal government can 'print money' to fund spending (the most recent tax cuts were essentially funded that way) and hope that long term economic growth from the policy change negates the increased deficit.

The second reason is that the Federal government takes more of the tax pie than states do. According to this link[2], the federal government gets 65%, states take 20%, and cities/municipalities 15%. And keep in mind that a good chunk of the federal money goes back to the states via federal programs. So if you are going to target your policy initiatives, might as well aim for the biggest slice of the pie.

[1] https://www.chs-ca.org/child-care-payment-program [2] https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-breakdown...

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#115

Post by jperras » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

glofish wrote: post #80

jperras wrote: post #7

It doesn't have to be this way. Québec has had subsidized daycare for almost 25 years, and the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/affordable-daycare-su... > In Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, a day of child care cost on average $10 in 2016 > Quebec’s program, which introduced lo…

The article specifically calls out the Quebec experiment as having a negative impact on the children: > So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids.

And it was about as vague as could possibly be:

> But young Canadians who were eligible for the program experienced, as teenagers, “a significant worsening in self-reported health and in life satisfaction” relative to Canadians from other provinces. So, did the Quebec child-care experiment “work”? Yes, for parents and public financing. Perhaps not for the kids.

The paper itself expands on it a little bit more:

> A recent view of effects of previous child care exposure on outcomes in adolescence suggest that more hours in child care in general does not affect test scores, but has a negative effect on non-cognitive outcomes, such as impulsivity and risk-taking (Vandell et al., 2010).

These negative findings have nothing at all to do with subsidized vs. non-subsidized childcare. They're essentially comparing children in daycare vs. children that are able to be raised by one or more parents, full-time.

Would kids be better off being raised by their parents more than being raised by specialized childcare workers? Perhaps. But not everyone is given that opportunity, regardless.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#116

Post by WhompingWindows » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #85

The easiest solution to 'child care' -- allow children to come to the office. Most people have cushy office jobs. Kids 0 - 5 do not take up much space. Parents can take staggered lunch breaks to watch the children. Children would be in a common area that'd be appropriately gated off. In dual-income families, either mom or dad can take the child to their office. Benefits: (1) Both parents can work and be with their ch…

Eh, I don't want babies in my building. They are distracting and we would definitely get a lot less done. I'm fine with there being a daycare center within the office park, however I'm not fine with it being a communal thing where all the parents take work-time to watch the kids.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#117

Post by Konnstann » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #32

ChaosDegenerate wrote: post #6

The thing with female workforce participation: isn't it just symptom of the society getting poorer. My wife worked her ass off. I was making about 130k / year. She was making about 60k / year. Then we not only moved from the US to Poland (where live is just so much cheaper). But I also started making about 330k / year. All the willingness to work evaporated on her part :-) Instead we have another kid. She stopped tal…

I actually just wrote about this lol https://austingwalters.com/tiny-handcuffs/ My general thoughts are that 90% of people don’t want to work - so yea none of us would if we didn’t have to. One thing that’s always astonishing to me is that it’s not the the poor are necessarily getting poorer... it’s that we want to give more resources to our kids. You can have 10 kids on a salary of $120k a year, you just have to liv…

Given the amount of research that shows that the amount of resources kids have directly impacts their success later in life doing that would severely impact your kids' ability to have a salary of $120k in the future.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#118

Post by WhompingWindows » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 8:00 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #87

My mother always said raising kids was a full time job. The difference today is that we measure it.

And the difference is that other the economy's full time jobs pay a lot less than they used to, relative to costs like housing, education, and healthcare, which have all vastly outstripped wage growth.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#119

Post by jperras » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

ativzzz wrote: post #61

jperras wrote: post #7

It doesn't have to be this way. Québec has had subsidized daycare for almost 25 years, and the program literally pays for itself (and more!) via increased income taxes from parents that would have otherwise chosen to stay at home. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/12/affordable-daycare-su... > In Montreal, Quebec’s largest city, a day of child care cost on average $10 in 2016 > Quebec’s program, which introduced lo…

Guess you didn't read the original article, because it mentions the exact program you linked towards the bottom about Quebec. One negative found was > But young Canadians who were eligible for the program experienced, as teenagers, “a significant worsening in self-reported health and in life satisfaction” relative to Canadians from other provinces. So a success for parents and for the economy, but not for the well be…

I did read the article. It didn't link to the CityLab article that I posted, which I found to be a bit easier to read.

If you read the meta-analysis paper that they link to that describes the "not so good for the well being of the kids", you'll see that they're comparing children that attend daycare to children that are wholly raised at home with one or more parents:

> A recent view of effects of previous child care exposure on outcomes in adolescence suggest that more hours in child care in general does not affect test scores, but has a negative effect on non-cognitive outcomes, such as impulsivity and risk-taking (Vandell et al., 2010).

These negative findings have nothing at all to do with subsidized vs. non-subsidized childcare.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#120

Post by OnlineGladiator » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 8:02 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #102

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to do something is different from the want to do something. How many people have fought for their right to vote? And yet how abysmal is voter turnout every year? The desire for education is very different from the desire for work. I am not saying there are no women (or even the majority of women) who want to work because it is their choice. But I think we are making it a gender issue when really it isn't. D…

> Social mores have dictated the man be the provider for centuries, if not millenia. That is kind of not true. 1.) That is what happens when there is no war, country is rich and when industrial revolutions take people to factories. When they worked on small family farm, both genders had to tend animals, do crafts and so on. Most of things had to be made. The work was gendered, physical strength mattered, but it was n…

Those are all valid points, but aren't those all (edit: mostly) examples of women being forced to work instead of choosing to work? Also I'd say those are exceptions to the rule, not the norm. If anything I'd say you bolstered the top comment's argument (I do not know your stance and am not trying to be combative).