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San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

theguardian.com

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Re: San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

#121

Post by mapotofu »

socalgal2 wrote: post #56
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also great (by American standards) public transit into/through the city. Caltrain and BART can get you into SF quickly from quite a large area nearby.

"by American standards" is doing a lot of lifting. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give SF about a 4 compared to cities like Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, London, Amsterdam, Seoul, Singapore, ...

I don’t understand the boosters saying BART and Caltrain are good systems. When I lived there, and part of the reason I left, those systems were frequently delayed, full of drug addicts, and they lacked comprehensive service throughout SF, requiring dependence on Muni, which is worse than the other 2. I don’t think those who say this is a great system have been exposed to how other places in the world handle these things.

Re: San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

#122

Post by mapotofu »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #55

In a lot of 3rd world and less well off countries, childcare is done by the grandparents(mostly grandmothers), I'm always surprised why this isn't true in the west. Here we have an aging population, so grandparent/grandchild ratio should be very high.

My observations include a wholesale generational problem, where the group that would be responsible for this (boomers) tend to be highly narcissistic and focused on their own pleasures, instead of being a part of their grandchildren’s lives. They simply don’t want to be involved. There are exceptions to this rule but I’d say it’s very common in the US and more so than the rest of the world.

Re: San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

#124

Post by ajay-b »

San Francisco’s measure will make childcare free for a family of four making less than $230,000 a year, or 150% of the area median income, and offer a 50% subsidy to families earning less than $310,000 a year, or 200% of the area median income. Previously, free childcare was available to families earning less than 110% of the area median income.

But.. why not flip that on its head. Make it free for people UNDER $50,000, and a sliding scale up from there. I get that it's San Francisco, one of the most expensiv4e places in the country to live, but $230k is much, much too high. I get it: You make $200k a year and have four kids and you have expenses, and daycare is expensive, etc. but this should be for the MASSIVELY OUTNUMBERED of parents who don't make, nor can ever hope to make, anywhere near $230k.

I'm all for free child care but the parameters and numbers of this are insulting.

Re: San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

#125

Post by ajay-b »

zingar wrote: post #37

We have 30 hours of free childcare in the UK (for nursery, schooling in older years is free) if both parents are working and neither earn more than £100k. It has the interesting impact that a salary of £99.9k is worth more to me than £130k, give or take some extra contributions to pension. It’s interesting to me that the threshold is so much higher in San Francisco given that SF is only 8.7% more expensive than Londo…

I am pessimistic that the reason it is so high is because someone making $220k per year said "yea but what about me, I have to pay for childcare too..." The number should be significantly lower. Anyone making a combined $200k a year has other options and opportunities, the immigrant family making $60k combined does not. This feels like a policy designed to "help" the poor but also benefit the rich..

Re: San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

#126

Post by [deleted] »

UncleMeat wrote: post #113
kalleboo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be that in developed countries, people are having kids older and older, so the grandparents are accordingly also older and more tired. That combined with multi-generational households being all but gone so now you're picking up and leaving off and all the kind of cooking and general housekeeping is also doubled.

If your parents had you at 25 and you have kids at 25 then your parents are 50 when you have a kid. Nowhere close to retirement age. People who are still working can't watch the kids five days a week.

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

#127

Post by bsimpson »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #33
bsimpson wrote: post #6

That sounds like a good way to keep moms out of the workforce. I know a lot of couples who feel like the wife's job is a hobby, because after taxes it barely covers childcare (especially if you also value spending time with your kids). Free childcare could free those households up to decide which parent(s) work when. Instead, by capping it below a common dual income, it incentivizes the least earning parent to contin…

That's some convoluted logic. The data shows the opposite. Free/cheap childcare significantly increases the number of parents who work. https://childcarecanada.org/documents/child-care-news/11/06/...

I was specifically referring to the cap. It's doing the opposite of what the policy is presumably intended to if both parents are capable of earning 6 figures.

Re: San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

#128

Post by bsimpson »

transcriptase wrote: post #20
bsimpson wrote: post #6

That sounds like a good way to keep moms out of the workforce. I know a lot of couples who feel like the wife's job is a hobby, because after taxes it barely covers childcare (especially if you also value spending time with your kids). Free childcare could free those households up to decide which parent(s) work when. Instead, by capping it below a common dual income, it incentivizes the least earning parent to contin…

So basically a return to what was the norm from ~300,000 years ago until 1975? Sound the alarms.

The people who wrote the policy presumably want both parents to be able to work. It's the main reason to make childcare free.

Re: San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

#129

Post by [deleted] »

UncleMeat wrote: post #113
kalleboo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be that in developed countries, people are having kids older and older, so the grandparents are accordingly also older and more tired. That combined with multi-generational households being all but gone so now you're picking up and leaving off and all the kind of cooking and general housekeeping is also doubled.

If your parents had you at 25 and you have kids at 25 then your parents are 50 when you have a kid. Nowhere close to retirement age. People who are still working can't watch the kids five days a week.

[deleted]

Re: San Francisco to offer free childcare to people making up to $230k

#130

Post by nunez »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #84

Does anyone else feel like we are moving in the wrong direction? Like every discussion I’ve seen about childcare takes the 1950s as the baseline for some reason. Like being a housewife in the 1950s sucked and it was unfair that the women had to do it and the men didn’t have to. Like people don’t explicitly say this, but this is what it boils down to. And being a housewife in the 1950s (or 1970s or whatever) did suck.…

It sucked because society back then (and currently in some cultures) was structured in such a way that women were de facto forced into marriage and motherhood, even if they didn't want to do these things. Women couldn't open bank accounts or buy cars easily without their husbands present; consequently, leaving bad marriages was considered very risky, to say nothing of the social ostricization that would ensure.

I thought that AskHistorians would have a more eloquent answer to your question. As expected, they do: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16xsyoi/in_m...

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