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

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

#411

Post by WalterBright »

sdsd wrote: post #214
WalterBright wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

I mildly disagree with your take but it's still mindblowing how I can read some random political flame on HN and it's WALTER FUCKING BRIGHT. Your one of my tech heroes, so cool to spot you on here. If this were real life I'd ask for a selfie to prove that this happened but maybe you could, idk, sign a message with your PGP key so I can prove I interacted with you

LOL, thanks for the kind words! I just happened to like working on compilers, as few programmers will touch them. If you're ever in the Seattle area, we have a monthly D Coffee Haus where we drink and talk about languages, compilers, airplanes, cars, and physics. All are welcome!

(Even C++ people show up! All in good fun.)

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

#412

Post by WalterBright »

jjk166 wrote: post #305
WalterBright wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The price of freedom is always paid in blood.

> This country was 100% founded on community sacrifice.

I recommend reading the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and if you really want to get into it, the Federalist Papers. I don't recall any of that advocating free food for all, UBI, free healthcare, etc.

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

#413

Post by WalterBright »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #344
WalterBright wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ... during the 1800s, scores of millions of people moved up from poverty into the middle class and beyond. Woah! The US was founded on occupation and slavery. How do you think millions of people were able to move up out of poverty? Because the US was abundant in land and natural resources, which during the 1800s we stole from the native Americans and exploited in…

Yes I know about that theory. But it has problems.

When the US was founded, half of the states were slavers, the other half free. Guess which half prospered? The free North! Which stagnated? The slave South.

Did you know that the Slave South was unable to supply their troops? They were largely barefoot. The reason they were in Pennsylvania was to raid a shoe factory (but got smashed at Gettysburg instead). Towns and cities and industry sprouted up all over in the free North, not so much in the South.

The Civil War resulted in burning the South to the ground. Poof!

As for natural resources, why is resource-rich S. America mired in poverty? Why did the Indian nations never industrialize, and remained poor? Why did resource-poor Japan become super rich after being burned to the ground in WW2? Why did resource-rich Russia never become prosperous? Why did zero-resource Taiwan become a wealthy powerhouse? Why is resource rich Africa still stuck in poverty?

There is no connection between resource rich and prosperity.

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

#414

Post by WalterBright »

selimthegrim wrote: post #211
WalterBright wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You clearly didn’t grow up in an immigrant neighborhood in the city

I grew up next to the Hispanic neighborhood in Arizona, and the schools I attended were about 30% Hispanic.

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

#415

Post by coryrc »

selimthegrim wrote: post #366
loeg wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very recent story, but for example: https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/first-defendant-charged-a... The fraudulent provider(s) bribed parents to get their kids diagnosed autistic. As, a result, autism diagnoses of children in this community are ~3x the background rate: https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2024/10/10/research-finds-1-... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/researchers-find-alarming-...

Interesting, my understanding was that the Somali parents were mad that their children’s autism, which wasn’t presenting the same way as the kind of standard Rain Man type of autism wasn’t being characterized correctly.

You were very wrong. Might want to consider where you get your news.

"Often, parents threatened to leave Smart Therapy and take their children to other autism centers if they did not get paid higher kickbacks. Several larger families left Smart Therapy after being offered larger kickbacks by other autism centers."

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

#416

Post by jameslk »

sleight42 wrote: post #407
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

"Vote with your feet" is a privileged assertion

The steel man of your argument sounds like:

If we let states have more power, they may enact good or bad policies that others cannot as easily enjoy or escape because of their financial or family standings prevent them from moving. National policies allow everyone to benefit from good policies.

While this is true, the reality frequently seems to be that no bold policy is made or maintained due to polarization or perceived risk. Isolating policies to places willing to try them out is a better outcome. If the policy seems valuable, more states will adopt it

And if you have bad policies nationally, it’s even harder for those less privileged to escape them due to things like immigration laws, costs, language barrier, xenophobia, etc

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

#417

Post by abustamam »

Braxton1980 wrote: post #339
abustamam wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that that's the wrong goal. Ideally, families can afford to live off of one salary so that mothers could choose to continue to care for their children if they wanted to do so. Currently, very few families are privileged enough to live off of one salary. Both parents need to work in order to make ends meet. I'm not saying it's an easy problem to solve, or that free childcare isn't a good interim solution. Bu…

The government can set up free child care as it has already set up other similar programs. How would the government make it so that a single salary can provide for a family? Wouldn't this require massive interference with the economy?

Yeah, that's why I said it wasn't an easy problem to solve. No need to let the infeasibility of a perfect solution get in the way of a possible, yet however unideal solution.

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

#418

Post by coryrc »

macintux wrote: post #85
terminalshort wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that the reason it's only 1% is because they are strict and have a high rejection rate?

I would rather suffer 5-10% fraud if 100% of the eligible recipients are able to receive the benefits. With the current system, far fewer than 100% of the people intended to benefit will actually make the cut.

Washington state employment department lost $645 million in a matter of weeks in spring 2025 when they reduced fraud detection. Normally they spend $2-3 billion a year. Making some wild projections, that's 77% fraud rate?

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

#419

Post by abustamam »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #321
abustamam wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That either means that childcare is too expensive or teachers don't get paid enough (probably both tbh) I feel like a lot of folks don't actually do this math, and don't realize that they're essentially just working to pay someone else to watch their kid.

Sounds like barter to me. There are some benefits, the kid expands their social life, the parent gets to fulfill career needs, etc. There may be issues, but shouldn't be thought of in completely negative terms.

I don't think daycare is necessarily a net negative. I just don't think many families have thought the calculus through.

There are free ways for kids to expand their social lives (library, park, etc). Career needs can obviously only be met by working, but then the follow-up question is, building a career for what purpose? If the purpose is for self actualization then that's one thing, but if the parent has no desire to actually grow their career and just wants the money, then that's a different math problem.

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

#420

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

Braxton1980 wrote: post #356
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our politicians are unpopular because they do nothing to help us, and when they explicitly help us it's framed as lazy poor people looking for handouts. It makes no sense.

Only one political party rallies against "government handouts" and blames the individual for their problems. Why would you generalize your opinion to all when this is extremely clear? How can things get better if you can't even be bothered to criticize at a granular level? Since we are a Democracy this matters.

A mentor once told me that telling people something is much less effective than leading them to realize it themselves.

Of course you're right, but spelling it out explicitly leads to a partisan flame ware.

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