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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

#411

Post by stickfigure »

mothballed wrote: post #379
stickfigure wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're reading waaaay too much into this. Nobody is getting penalized, this is a crab bucket mentality.

Yes they are. If you stay at home you now pay an additional tax on top of everything else.

Nobody's being targeted for additional tax. But correct, benefits aren't being spread evenly across the population. That's how pretty much all social benefits work.

Hell, think about how childless people must feel about this. Or the child tax credit. Nothing is "perfectly fair", but sometimes public policy is good enough.

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

#412

Post by notahacker »

SilverElfin wrote: post #389
notahacker wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, stay at home mums often like to sometimes be able to use child care facilities. I doubt they feel cheated that they don't use it on the majority of days they prefer to spend with their kids...

But why not let them go to child care on those days, get those reimbursed, but also use the funds for other things (like supplies for raising kids at home, or to pay for other activities you take them to that aren’t just daycare)?

Because the point of subsidising care is to remove cost barriers to parents getting back into work or dealing with other stuff or socialising kids in a day care environment, not to turn parenting into a profit centre

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

#413

Post by aeternum »

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…

Good government policies generally avoid step functions otherwise you get perverse incentives.

For example, if you lose too many benefits when you get a job, it can easily make getting a job yield negative expected value, this is bad because often it stunts future career potential.

There may be families that cannot quite afford to be a stay-at-home mom even though they want to. Providing the waiver also increases the overall fairness. In rural areas there are generally far fewer childcare options, so this becomes a benefit that accrues to those that live in cities. Not very fair.

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

#414

Post by ecshafer »

KetoManx64 wrote: post #323
nemomarx wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say all of this about public schooling, but that one worked out.

It has not at all. 20% of high school graduates are reading at a 5th grade level, which when you consider the billions of dollars poured into public schools every year is just asinine https://www.abtaba.com/blog/us-literacy-statistics

US school outcomes vary drastically. It really works out well in nice neighborhoods, and doesn't work out in some bad neighborhoods. Its down to cultural and familial expectations. Why does the same curriculum in say Scarsdale not have the same success in the Bronx? They are only like 15 miles apart in the same state.

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

#415

Post by jimt1234 »

LightBug1 wrote: post #349

Excellent, it's a start ... anyone else predicting this will be get cancelled by the dumpling for being too Communist. It's on my bingo card.

New Mexico is too small for Orange Julius to care about. If it was California, the story would be completely different.

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

#416

Post by mothballed »

stickfigure wrote: post #411
mothballed wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they are. If you stay at home you now pay an additional tax on top of everything else.

Nobody's being targeted for additional tax. But correct, benefits aren't being spread evenly across the population. That's how pretty much all social benefits work. Hell, think about how childless people must feel about this. Or the child tax credit. Nothing is "perfectly fair", but sometimes public policy is good enough.

Childless people are getting the best deal of anyone. They get new social security payers with a better invested upbringing, all for paying out a pittance and offloading most of the cost onto parents -- all the meanwhile having their social security payout almost completely untied to making the investments needed to get their payment.

Childless people basically get their cake and eat it too under the social welfare scheme of most western countries, getting the benefits of children without having to deal with much of the drawbacks.

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

#417

Post by seanmcdirmid »

trentnix wrote: post #223

Despite being 31st in educational funding, New Mexico has ranked 50th in juvenile education for 8 years in a row per the Annie E. Casey foundation: https://www.aecf.org/interactive/databook?l=35 You can research for yourself and see other evidence that the educational outcomes for children in New Mexico is generally very, very poor. Expect similar results with New Mexico's "universal" child care.

New Mexico is filled with poor people, news at 11. But seriously, a lot of things go into your state's education outcomes: state of the kids coming into the system is actually very important, as is parent participation, before we even get to funding by the state. As the only poor blue state, New Mexico has a lot to make up for, and it can't just magic its problems away.

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

#418

Post by Loudergood »

MisterTea wrote: post #139
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 entire structure is set up to keep the boss happy while a stranger raises your child during their most formative and vulnerable years. I can agree. I had grandparents to take are of me. During a family emergency I stayed with a friends family for a few weeks. We had a lot of people in our family and friends to step up who were all located in the same city. Now everyone moves a thousand miles away from their ex…

Student loans can really force this.

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

#419

Post by giantg2 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #383
giantg2 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You imply an overall net netral to net positive. I find it hard to believe that would total $12k per year. If there are complicated n-order effects, then perhaps you should call them out instead of saying it's not complicated.

> I find it hard to believe that would total $12k per year. Again I didn't claim that. The tradeoff is generating some percentage of X benefit in economic activity vs some much lower percentage of X while X is also much larger.

I fail to understand what value your initial comment holds. The grandparents of that comment was talking about financial feasibility of the program in the context of a proposed waiver. This necessarily implies that on-topic responses to that should be weighing financial feasibility of the program with and without the waiver. Your most recent comment seems to just be clarifying that your initial comment is just the same generalized explanation for the current expansion - expanding the benefit to the currently working higher earning parents where the return is unclear and logically dubious, thus providing some much lower percentage of X while X is much larger. The only way to claim what your comment is trying to is to also display some evidence that this current expansion will provide economic activity benefit beyond the previous program that had 4x poverty level means testing. Otherwise, it's simply "some much lower percentage of X while X is also much larger" vs the same thing with X being even larger.

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

#420

Post by SilverElfin »

jajuuka wrote: post #399
SilverElfin wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The kids absolutely loved daycare. It was a great place with excellent caretakers. Most of all, it was socialization with their friends. People who stay at home and take care of their own kids aren’t skipping socialization. They still participate in various activities where there are other kids. But, the kids do get a lot higher quality care from stay at home parents than a daycare can afford. If you stay at the da…

This is buying into the idea of rugged individualism when it comes to parenting. That all a child needs is their parents and that time away from children is a failure of parents. This couldn't be further from the truth. Many studies show that children raised in a cooperative environment where they are exposed to various people and practices from extended family, professionals, teachers, etc help reinforce social conn…

This feels like a strawman. I didn’t say that “all a child needs is their parents”. I am saying however, that parents in most cases will provide higher quality care and more attention to their child than what a daycare can provide. Have you tried watching 3 kids simultaneously? It’s just not possible even in the controlled environment of a daycare room. Kids that are raised by parents aren’t in a bubble - they’re still going out and meeting with other families and kids and doing things. The notion that children raised by parents are not exposed is itself a common myth used to diminish the value of parents.
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