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New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

governor.state.nm.us

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Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#341

Post by anothermathbozo »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #269

Sounds great. >average annual family savings of $12,000 per child. How is NM paying for this? They currently have a 'D' grade from Truth in Accounting[1] with a $9.8 billion debt burden driven by unfunded obligations of pension and retiree health care [1] https://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/NM-2020-2pa...

child care policy frees labor capacity for work that is more likely to earn a slice of the national income. It’s almost certainly going to result in greater economic activity for the state. In the immediate it is funded from two existing funds.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#342

Post by KetoManx64 »

s46dxc5r7tv8 wrote: post #273
KetoManx64 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand how economics work if you think this is actually going to be helpful. By providing "universal" child care, you just moved the cost of childcare from the individual to the tax base so now everyone has to pay an ineffifient system that often eats up 30-50% of the incoming money in bureaucratic inneficiencies before it will even reach the child care system. On top of that the increased taxes are goi…

Please post the math then, instead of wild conjecture and speculation about cause and effect.

That's the thing. Nobody ever does the math on what these kind of programs cost society. The long term economic impacts that this will put on other families due to increased taxes, the businesses that might go under because they had to raise prices to cope with increased taxes, the business that never get created due to increased taxes, the other families that are now going to be struggling because they're a 1 income family and they now have to pay for everyone else's kids in addition to the care of their own children that they provide for and don't want to offloat to be taken care of by strangers, etc. etc.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#343

Post by mothballed »

ryandrake wrote: post #336
mothballed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred.

I just don't understand this mentality. My wife is a stay-at-home mom. We are lucky that we can afford to do this. Most of our kid's friends have both parents working and they pay for child care. If suddenly they were able to have that childcare paid for, that would be wonderful! It doesn't affect our situation at all. Why would we oppose it? I don't need to have my own "waiver" payment in order for me to be in favor…

Why wouldn't you want your friends to better be able to afford what you have, by getting an equal value stipend to stay at home if you're for universal childcare? There are many families that might be only one or two tuitions away from being able to stay at home with their child like they had wished, and assigning the waiver/voucher to the child instead of to the daycare can make that happen.

And no it's not a free lunch. If stay-at-home in a family isn't reimbursed, they are actually worse off, because now they have an additional tax they are paying that they did not have before. So now even more people like you who wanted a parent to stay at home are driven out of it because their family budget comes upon this tax.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#344

Post by hedora »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #321
hedora wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but can you find any that work well when the branch of the government that’s running it refuses to process paperwork from daycare providers or issue checks to pay those providers, and where its leader has prioritized getting the system shut down on the grounds that it’s “broken”? (Not strawmanning; just summarizing the situation in Oregon, according to that linked article.)

Governance is hard. People are hard. I can show you examples across the world where policy works, and where it doesn't. Success is not assured, but if we're not willing to try, why even get up in the morning? If it sucks in Oregon, my apologies; states are where experiments can take place, and there are 49 other states we can give it a go in.

No, clearly, if it doesn’t work when 100% of the people administering it are intentionally sabotaging it from within, it must be a bad idea. /s

(I didn’t link the Oregon article, and don’t know much about it other than what the article says. Just pointing out it might not be the best case study to generalize from.)

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#345

Post by SilverElfin »

xp84 wrote: post #178

Apparently until now they've been providing this only to families below 400% of the Federal Poverty Level. FPL is $32,150 for a 4-person family, so $128,600 combined family income (2 people working for $64,300 each -- and that's before fed and state taxes are deducted). Since that is far from being wealthy enough to "just" spring for expensive care, I'm glad to see this. My only question is who the heck is going to b…

Providing such benefits to those below poverty level doesn’t make sense to me. People are that level of economic value need to improve their situation before taking on the burden of children. Taxpayers should not be subsidizing the poorest to have large families they can’t take care of. The opposite should be happening - we should subsidize households with demonstrated capability to be successful (which in our society does mean economically) to have more children.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#346

Post by jordanpg »

declan_roberts wrote: post #122

I'm going to take the reverse position. I don't like this policy. I think it would be much better to provide a one year paid stipend so that a parent can be home with the children during their tender years. This entire structure is set up to keep the boss happy while a stranger raises your child during their most formative and vulnerable years.

This sounds like something I would have written before I was a parent.

And please remember: not everyone's family situation is the same. There are single parents, all kinds of employment scenarios, chronic illnesses or disabilities, sick parents, income differentials, and on and on and on.

Your single data point about what worked for your situation does not necessarily apply to everyone else's situation.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#347

Post by evantbyrne »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #190
evantbyrne wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who grew up homesteading and seeing the benefits of it, I find it wild that people want to not only send their kids away to school full-time but also institutionalize them afterwards just so they can spend seemingly excessive amounts of time at work. The economic machine demands sacrifices apparently.

Sixty percent of Americans cannot afford a basic quality of life on their income in the US [1] [2]. Half of American renters are cost burdened [3]. I find it wild someone thinks "Why don't you just stay home with your kids?" looking at the macro. Can't all just live on a farm and homestead to raise kids in an unfavorable, punishing macro. Parents work because they have to work. To work, they need childcare and flexib…

Nobody said homesteading is the solution. Allowing a parent of young children to care for them is not a radical idea though. It should not be hard to imagine a society that is more flexible to childcare being performed by parents, because that was the norm for all of human history prior to industrialization. People should seriously consider the ways in which their imaginations on this subject (and others!) are constrained by their post industrial upbringing, and importantly, why the current norms exist and who they benefit.

Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

#350

Post by KetoManx64 »

sensanaty wrote: post #325
KetoManx64 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand how economics work if you think this is actually going to be helpful. By providing "universal" child care, you just moved the cost of childcare from the individual to the tax base so now everyone has to pay an ineffifient system that often eats up 30-50% of the incoming money in bureaucratic inneficiencies before it will even reach the child care system. On top of that the increased taxes are goi…

Yes, surely the hyper efficient free market is much better here, not like we have decades of proof of the perverse incentives there. We should instead ensure every mother is crippled with life-long medical debt if their kid needs any help! Also if we care so much about these inefficiencies, why is it that I still have to subsidize drivers? Why aren't we investing in better public transport infrastructure, rather than…

I don't see any mention of free markets in your post. The healthcare industry is not a free market, they are handicapped by regulatiom and by law are required to provide health insurance to anyone that wants it and cannot reject anyone. Of course prices are going to be stiffling when they have to give you insurance no matter your pre-existing conditions and no matter the choices you make
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