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Why Child Care Is So Expensive

theatlantic.com

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Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#411

Post by [deleted] »

jdbernard wrote: post #410
nilkn wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you really are missing the point, though. You may have found the comment entitled, but I don’t think there was anything fundamentally offensive about it, and your reaction reflects more about your discomfort with the existence of the upper middle class than it does about the actual topic under consideration. No one is asking you to feel sorry for them — they’re just illustrating a point about where money gets…

And I would like to emphasize your point and add that the dismissive observation really isn't helpful because the main point is especially true for those who really do struggle. If the highest-earners of the middle-class have their discretionary income locked up in housing costs, how much more difficult is it for those who don't have the same level of income. Housing then eats into non-discretionary expenses.

[deleted]

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#412

Post by HBKXNCUO »

pfranz wrote: post #341
HBKXNCUO wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think subsidized daycare is a great idea as long as it isn't too much of a disincentive for those who want to stay home with their kids. Why would you be OK with any kind of disincentive to parents staying home with their children? >There are other advantages to group care like being able to spot issues that aren't age appropriate. As a parent I don't have a large sample size for most milestones. "Normal" can have…

> Why would you be OK with any kind of disincentive to parents staying home with their children? I'm just recognizing the realities of incentivizing anything. There's a difference between a work requirement for both parents and attendance requirement for children and maybe, in some cases, a portion of your income tax would go to a program you don't take advantage of. > You don't have to dump your children off to be r…

>Where did I say this should be mandatory

Nowhere, just like where I suggested you said it should be.

>was the best and only option?

You said it was an advantage of daycare. My point is that there are better ways to get that advantage.

>I've found group daycare staff are often more qualified than individual nannies.

Minimum wage vs minimum wage.

>The situations I've seen caught did not "rely on the judgment and interest of minimum wage daycare workers" but were done through communication.

If you're relying on daycare workers to communicate to you that there is a potential issue, you are relying on them to be interested enough to make the observation.

>One thing I've seen come up a lot is older generations either don't know, or dismiss, "back to sleep" as a way to minimize SIDS.

And you're going to take the lady at daycare who has a high school diploma's word for it?

>I constantly have to give milestones for my kid; birth weight, when they rolled over, crawled, walked, first word, first sentence. As years pass I have a rougher idea about what's normal and completely forgot about more minor milestones like; parallel play, object permanence, when pronouns should be understood, etc. even when I'm close to other families kids hitting those milestones.

Some parents will be less likely to notice missed milestones than minimum wage daycare workers, I guess. Most children won't miss the milestones, but they will miss the time with their parents, whether they realize it or not.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#413

Post by tptacek »

novok wrote: post #409
tptacek wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually none of the labor Rayiner is describing is a consequence of his kids not being able to go out and play. As he related, and as anyone who's parented a 15-month-old knows in their bones, keeping them from killing themselves or destroying the house is indeed a full-time job.

I was talking more about the 7 year old than the 1 year old. Also grandparents, the village, other house spouses, etc helped with that early workload too.

That begs the question of the thread, whose premise is that the labor those grandparents or "the village" put in has a price, and it is surprisingly high.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#414

Post by AnimalMuppet »

axaxs wrote: post #398
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most states hover in the 5% revenue compared to what the federal government collects in that state ? I strongly disagree. For example, Utah's tax revenue was $9.9 billion in 2018-2019. Federal was $3.6 trillion. But Utah only has 1% of the US population. So if the rest of the states taxed at the rate Utah does, that would be $990 billion, which is about 1/4 of the Federal take. It's way more than 5%. And Utah is not…

Interesting math. Where does it come from if not income? Corporate taxes? Sales/fuel taxes?

Well, I looked at total revenue. So that will be income tax, sales tax, gasoline tax, property tax (if any of that goes to the state), car registration fees... everything. You can look at individual states and get the breakdown. For Utah, it's primarily income and sales tax.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#415

Post by ceejayoz »

aceofspades19 wrote: post #387
ihumanable wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Taxes are high so I won't try to make more money" - No one ever.

There are lots of people who don't try to make more money because of roadblocks put in by the government. Obviously the uber-rich like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates don't care that much about taxes but for someone in the low to middle income brackets it can be challenging to move up as you pay more in taxes and receive less help from the government. If you make enough money that you can live comfortably and you would…

> you would have to move up a lot to counter the offset to make more money in the next tax bracket

This is not how tax brackets work.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#416

Post by crashedsnow »

HBKXNCUO wrote: post #312
tristanstcyr wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it's a failure, it's that being taken out of the workforce for many years is damaging to careers. It's more than a matter of perception. Public school starts when kids are 5. If you have several kids, it could then take someone out of the workforce for a decade. While it's not impossible to recover from that, it's extremely difficult, especially at a point where you're past your prime years such as your…

>While it's not impossible to recover from that, it's extremely difficult On the other hand, it's impossible for your children to get back the time they could have spent in their most formative and vulnerable years around people that love them, rather than minimum wage daycare workers.

It's extremely difficult to correlate this to long-term happiness or well-being. If parents can accelerate their time to retirement they get to spend more time with children as teenagers or young adults. Is that better or worse? More or less memorable? I don't remember much before I was 5-ish. Do we really know that having stay-at-home parents during that time alters a lot? Does having the extra money for "better" college outweigh time in "formative" years? How about having more wealth to transfer to children when you're gone? What if the stay-at-home parent is desperately unhappy with staying at home? Is it better to have a happy, harmonious environment?

It's complicated, and just saying it's better to have a stay-at-home parent versus "minimum wage daycare workers" (who in my experience are actually often highly qualified), is an incomplete perspective (IMO).

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#417

Post by fortran77 »

pfortuny wrote: post #57
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…

“It would allow more women to enter the workforce”. I understand what the quote means but, honestly, this is one of the big wrong points of our society: that caring for the children full-time is NOT being part of the workforce. This is one of those cultural ideas embedded in XXI Century logic which only does harm and transmits the wrong message: people’s life is as valuable as the money the work or the “job” they hav…

Also why can't men take care of the children and women work?

If childcare is so expensive, maybe in two-parent households, one parent's job should be to raise the children while the other works.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#418

Post by jonstewart »

tharne wrote: post #209
klipt wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is subsidized daycare necessary in these cases though? In America if daycare costs X and you earn Y much greater than X, then obviously you'll make more money going to work and sending your kid to daycare than being a stay at home parent. The people who choose to stay at home often either have multiple kids (higher X) or earn little enough (lower Y) that it's not an economic advantage for them to work. But those…

100%. We shouldn't be creating perverse incentives. Subsidizing a low-wage job is a net loss for everyone. For taxpayers, it's just more money out of their pocket and for the parents, you're being encouraged to leave your children with strangers so you can go and work a job that doesn't pay enough to cover the cost of paying those strangers. We need to get past the ridiculous idea that staying home with one's childre…

The US Dept of Labor had a paid family leave report out a few years ago that convincingly argued that paid family leave—which is typically measured only in weeks—had a measurable improvement on women’s retirement savings, because it meant they were more likely to stay in the workforce and save more for retirement.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#419

Post by jonstewart »

HBKXNCUO wrote: post #312
tristanstcyr wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that it's a failure, it's that being taken out of the workforce for many years is damaging to careers. It's more than a matter of perception. Public school starts when kids are 5. If you have several kids, it could then take someone out of the workforce for a decade. While it's not impossible to recover from that, it's extremely difficult, especially at a point where you're past your prime years such as your…

>While it's not impossible to recover from that, it's extremely difficult On the other hand, it's impossible for your children to get back the time they could have spent in their most formative and vulnerable years around people that love them, rather than minimum wage daycare workers.

Both my kids have been in nanny shares. That’s a bit higher end than minimum wage daycare, but, trust me, they’ve been better taken care of and more loved than if I’d had to take care of them. Comparative advantage works another way with daycare: you can benefit from hiring a professional.

Re: Why Child Care Is So Expensive

#420

Post by tehjoker »

darawk wrote: post #186
pfortuny wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It would allow more women to enter the workforce”. I understand what the quote means but, honestly, this is one of the big wrong points of our society: that caring for the children full-time is NOT being part of the workforce. This is one of those cultural ideas embedded in XXI Century logic which only does harm and transmits the wrong message: people’s life is as valuable as the money the work or the “job” they hav…

I think you're missing the point of the "childcare is not part of the workforce" argument. It's not that it isn't work, and it's not that it isn't important. It's that, in many cases, the economic comparative advantage for the (often) female caretaker of those children is not being fully utilized. That is to say, caring for a child is a service that costs X. But it is being performed by a person who's skills are valu…

Subsidized childcare is good, but even though it has liberatory potential this is still coercive to women because now they have a financial incentive to work for somebody other than themselves. This means that this reform is beneficial to the buisness community and many women, but not all women as some would prefer to do the work themselves.

We should subsidize childcare in efficient group settings, but we should also pay women that decide to stay home and do that work from public funds at decent salaries.

Only then, when women are free to choose their own destiny free of financial pressure can we say we've made the kind of difference in the world we want to see.

EDIT: In fact, there are probably many different childcare arrangements that women would pick: alone, in groups with friends or relatives, or in the employed laborforce. All of these should be realistically on the table.

EDIT2: While practically speaking in our current society, women would be the most affected, this should apply to any primary caregiver regardless of gender identity.

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