Kentucky made child care free for child care workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#141

Post by 11101010001100 » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 8:15 PM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #100

bryanlarsen wrote: post #5

Similarly, Quebec asserted that it's (then) $7/day daycare program paid for itself. https://www.thestar.com/life/quebec-s-child-care-scheme-pays...

The idea that it pays for itself is really dubious. If it really did, there would be no need for a government subsidy. Second, there's actually a massive shortage of daycare spaces and workers[0]. It was a major election issue. [0] https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/daycare-bill-gives-quebec-5-year...

It pays for itself in the sense that the government is able to receive greater tax revenue from the increased number of parents in the workforce.

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#142

Post by nuancebydefault » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 8:30 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #13

steven-xu wrote: post #9

Setting aside the philosophical free market questions, additional government subsidy childcare seems fine. There’s a positive externality of readily available childcare: one adult to many children is more efficient than home care, and parents being able to work generates economic production, taxes, etc. But couldn’t we come up with a subsidy with less market distortion? A specific subsidy to pay for childcare for chi…

> couldn’t we come up with a subsidy with less market distortion? Yes. Universal childcare. Alternatively, payment for children (as a refundable tax credit or e.g. social security payment for one's first N years).

Is payment for children not a world-wide established thing (except 3rd world I suppose)?

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#143

Post by nuancebydefault » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 8:47 PM UTC

steven-xu wrote: post #9

Setting aside the philosophical free market questions, additional government subsidy childcare seems fine. There’s a positive externality of readily available childcare: one adult to many children is more efficient than home care, and parents being able to work generates economic production, taxes, etc. But couldn’t we come up with a subsidy with less market distortion? A specific subsidy to pay for childcare for chi…

When reading expressions like "market distortion" in the context of a topic like child care, I am a bit astonished. Children are our future, they will work when we retire. Investment pays off. In relation, I find the balance of how the subsidy is spread across the labour market is of a secondary order.

Please don't take this personally. I fairly wonder if the way of looking at these topics is a cultural or political thing.

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#144

Post by foogazi » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

beerdoggie wrote: post #48

The argument no one has brought up yet: why should society have to pay up even more for breeders' personal choices? People without kids have to pay higher taxes (via rebates for parents), utilize less resources (public schools), effectively subsidizing people who want to have kids. I'm all for protecting what's best for children, but I am not happy with people having children they cannot adequately support, causing o…

Sorry that you are not happy

Our society need people to throw at the money making machine

Time to start paying for them

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#145

Post by foogazi » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 9:18 PM UTC

isykt wrote: post #80

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rich get handouts in Kentucky On what planet are child-care workers the rich?

The key phrase here is “regardless of household income.” There’s a very simple way to make sure rich people don’t get free shit, and that’s capping stuff like this so that rich people don’t get to take advantage of it. I’ll give you an example: there is no universe in which I personally ought to have had my student loans forgiven. My household income tipped into the seven figures during the pandemic. But some debt fo…

Now you are free to take those would be payments and donate them to someone not as lucky as you.

You can help payoff someone else’s debt just as Uncle Sam paid for yours.

It evens out in the end

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#146

Post by Ericson2314 » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #85

rpcope1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that the goal? Who decided that it is an appropriate goal? This whole argument is silly for a lot of reasons, but honestly it's a bait and switch amongst other things: "Oh we'll eventually get to reduced hours, you just need to both start working now and let someone else raise and watch your children." Sounds like a scam to me.

> Sounds like a scam to me It seems more scammy to me that universal childcare, pre-school, et cetera are twisted to mean mandating both parents work. It doesn't. Countries with universal childcare still have plenty of stay-at-home parents. What they don't have is parents, predominantly moms, forced to stay at home with their kids.

Yup. People need to understand optionality. Markets are about adjacent hypotheticals.

Right now it's not like parent needing to do other things is some low-simmering quasi-strike disciplining labor markets. It's more like the expense of having kids disciplinarians would-be parents.

A post of post-work post-scarity stuff runs through more people working. It is counter intuitive, but that is how things work. So long as people who would like to work are not, it will hang over our heads and we won't be able to shrink the workweek.

If you need some real-world evidence, see right now, at this period of record low unemployment, the one of the UAW's demands is a shorter work-week.

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#147

Post by em-bee » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

lliamander wrote: post #129

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People starting families don't just want a house, what they want is enough space. Mothers want a yard they can send the kids out into when they need a moments peace, closets to store everyone's junk, and bathrooms big enough to walk into while pregnant All of this also means said mother can't go to the corner to pick up supplies, but must drive to the store. There isn't an abundance of neighbors to help out or rest…

There is value in mixed use neighborhoods - low density doesn't automatically mean suburban sprawl. Most of human history has been spent in much lower density living situations than we have now, and I'm pretty confident there is a negative correlation between housing density and fertility.

there is a middle ground between low and high density.

there is no need for each home to have their own garden. but a multi story building with a dozen or more families that can share one.

take a look at some cities in germany. stuttgart, ruhrgebiet, and many others. they are actually a lot of small cities close together with lots of green space in between. each has their own shops, offices, schools, etc within walking distance and an extensive public transport network to connect them.

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#148

Post by Ericson2314 » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #58

steven-xu wrote: post #9

Setting aside the philosophical free market questions, additional government subsidy childcare seems fine. There’s a positive externality of readily available childcare: one adult to many children is more efficient than home care, and parents being able to work generates economic production, taxes, etc. But couldn’t we come up with a subsidy with less market distortion? A specific subsidy to pay for childcare for chi…

Childcare is always going to be pushing up or near pushing up against Baumol's cost disease constraints. The only way to make it at all "productive" is cheap dense housing, something that America currently sucks terribly at. Additionally, the fact that it is a gazillion private providers rather than a simple public service like schools makes it messier. My prediction is that eventually the housing stuff will be figur…

Just be clear, the rise of childcare and restaurants are very clear evidence of the shifting boundary between the private and public spheres. But that shift cannot continue if it just hits more and more commute time constraints. It is like trying to do a faster integrated circuit without shrinking the scale.

Just as we bring the compute to the data, so we bring production closer to the home with mixed things, etc.

And in generally, people don't get what density can offer. For a silly example example, I've bought the clothes I will wear at an event while traveling to that event. Our suburban culture is not keeping up the material possibilities.

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#149

Post by Ericson2314 » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #137

Ericson2314 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weight of my t-shirt upon my shoulders is also technically a burden. Who cares. Quantitative distinctions matter, binary burden/non-burden thinking is not helpful.

I pay $500/mo in property tax. If I were to watch kids to pay my rent to the government, it would take at least one full time kid. That is residential; I assume commercial tax rate would be higher. And that one kid may represent 10-25% of a caregiver's capacity.

Once we improve the tax to be a land value tax, and get rid of the stupid blockers of development, you can convert your house into an apartment and pay way less tax.

If you are a tenant in cross-subsidized apartment building, it is really easy to work as a building-wide childcare. You want to live in as big a building as possible to have as much addressable market as possible. (Basically you might not be the best nanny but you want as many kids as ludicrously conveniently nearby as possible.)

Re: Kentucky made child care free for child care workers

#150

Post by isykt » Fri, Oct 06, 2023, 9:45 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #124

isykt wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another poster in this comment thread said that the money is clawed back automatically through tax returns. So which is it?

> which is it? The answer obviously depends on the specifics of the system in question.

The system in question is the one linked in the article :)