Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 540 posts

Re: In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

#301

Post by __turbobrew__ »

georgeburdell wrote: post #256

Ham-fisted reactionary policy versus attacking the root cause, which is 1) cost of living has now increased to require two working parents 2) The government values housewives at about $2k per year in tax credits. Let women stay at home and raise their children as they know best, and pay them for the cost of the service they provide.

In Canada, you cannot file taxes jointly, so income tax brackets are on an individual basis instead of on a couple basis. It really makes it expensive for a single parent to stay home as one person making 100k pays about 30% more income tax than two people making 50k.

Don’t give me free daycare, just make it so much less punishing to stay at home and take care of my kids.

All of it is kindof dumb, I pay a higher tax because joint filing is not a thing, and my increased tax pays for subsidized daycare…

Re: In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

#302

Post by mothballed »

abustamam wrote: post #272

It takes a village. When I was a kid (youngest of four) growing up in a suburb of a small town, my mom would often drop me off at a neighbor's house to watch me while she ran errands or did stuff for my siblings. No payment, just neighbors being neighborly. Now, I can't fathom something like that being feasible in our increasingly individualistic neighborhood. Regretfully, I don't even know the names of most of my ne…

The main reason I wouldn't enjoy watching my neighbor's kids is that we now have an absolutely paranoid, delusional society that has a mentally ill view of the dangers of children. By signing up to watch kids you incur absolutely massive liability, all it takes is one accusation and your whole life is destroyed and you lose everything, no matter that it was false. You would basically need cameras at every angle at all times before any rational person would want to watch someone else's kids.

Thus you end up with daycares nowadays where you pay a gazillion dollars tuition for your child to be taken care of by a minimum wage worker, with most of the money going to overhead and insurance.

The real advantage of government childcare is the state can just say "go fuck yourself" if you sue them or accuse them of misconduct and thus do it for cheap like in the old days. In fact the only other economical model is to just dump your kid at an illegal's house, they don't give a shit if they get sued, they can just dump everything and move to the next city.

Re: In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

#303

Post by roughly »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #227
roughly wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it turns out that things like free health care, adequate food, good schools, and all that other socialist mumbo jumbo is actually good for productivity and the economy, too.

Why is "the economy" our highest priority here?

It’s not, but we seem to have to keep convincing business people that they’re part of society, so it helps to be able to appeal to their pocketbooks, too.

Re: In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

#304

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #224
tock wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then do it today so mothers can continue to work and help the economy.

Child 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.

> 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.

Re: In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

#305

Post by jjk166 »

WalterBright wrote: post #197
yndoendo wrote: post #6

US actually provided child care to mothers employed during WWII. [0] Richard Nixon vetoed the bill that would have expanded it out to all families. [1] Funny how we keep forgetting the past and reject what benefited us as a whole with a moved to pure individualism built around selfishness. AKA The rich keep getting richer. [0] https://www.wwiimemorialfriends.org/blog/the-lanham-act-and-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.or…

> a moved to pure individualism built around selfishness The US was founded on individual rights and freedoms, not community sacrifice. Meanwhile, during the 1800s, scores of millions of people moved up from poverty into the middle class and beyond. (Immigrants to the US arrived with nothing more than a suitcase.) > Funny how we keep forgetting the past and reject what benefited us as a whole Oh the irony!

> The US was founded on individual rights and freedoms, not community sacrifice.

Approximately 25,000 americans gave their lives in the revolutionary war. Every signer of the declaration of independence was signing their own death warrant should they have lost to the strongest military in the world. This country was 100% founded on community sacrifice.

Re: In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

#307

Post by jameslk »

nkrisc wrote: post #207
jameslk wrote: post #143

It’s good that it’s a state policy, not a federal one. We need more policies to stay at the state level, regardless of the policy. Federalism is how we can test the effects of competing policies under the same house. If the policy is a problem for you, it’s a lot easier to vote with your feet and move to a different state than to move to a different country

For some things, yes. I think this sort of thing is compatible with being legislated at the state level. Other policies are not. See states with strict gun laws being undermined by neighboring states with very loose laws.

To me that seems like a necessary trade off for the benefits gained. The stricter laws wouldn’t have necessarily been achieved nor maintained had they not been enacted at the state level.

What does seem like something the federal government should be doing is mediating issues like this between states, without picking a side (of course, that is easier said than done given polarization in politics currently). Rather than giving us watered down one-size-fits-all policies that nobody likes, or worse yet, deadlocked at no policies or the churn of policies being implemented and then repealed over and over

Re: In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

#308

Post by tbrownaw »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #212
echelon wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'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 th…

I 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.”

Church membership is voluntary.

Re: In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

#309

Post by monero-xmr »

chaostheory wrote: post #205
jameslk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arguments for more humans always sound like a Ponzi scheme to me: we need more people so we can support existing people. There’s plenty of downsides of having more people on the planet. And tech seems to be making it so there will be less and less a need for more people anyway, for better or worse

Every modern economy, socialism included, requires a growing population. You’re right about the main benefit of population decline though. It gives Nature a needed break

It does not, because productivity can increase. You have a very common misunderstanding

Re: In a U.S. First, New Mexico Opens Doors to Free Child Care for All

#310

Post by watwut »

SoftTalker wrote: post #180
parineum wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes a good idea and a willingness to take a risk to start a business. I don't think that risk aversion is what's stopping new businesses, there are a lot of people who do a lot of what I consider too risky. Instead, what I wonder is how many new businesses wouldn't be viable under a tax structure that provides ubi and health care. Not to be dismissive but that's definitely a concern in a world replete with fledg…

Yeah this is sort of the reaction I had. Removing "risk" with UBI and free healthcare and free childcare also removes the filters for a lot of people who would be bad at running a business. If you don't have the stomach to take the risk and do the work to make your idea a success, then maybe you shouldn't try. We don't need millions of more failed businesses as the result of giving everyone UBI.

Why do you need people to make big risks livelihood to do business? People from affluent environment start businesses the most often and they dont really risk all that much. They know they will get help if it fails.

In fact, successful businesses started by people who can return back to good jobs if it fails are completely normal thing.

Post reply on HN