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

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

#421

Post by frumplestlatz » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 11:34 PM UTC

venturecruelty wrote: post #362

frumplestlatz wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not cruel because I think society operates best — in terms of human outcomes — if incentives and disincentives are tied to decisions in ways that maximize the likelihood and benefit of personal responsibility. Parents need to be responsible for their children. The state should only step in if they fail in their responsibility. How is it folks like yourself can understand these concepts across a myriad of domains,…

>I’m not cruel because I think society operates best — in terms of human outcomes — if incentives and disincentives are tied to decisions in ways that maximize the likelihood and benefit of personal responsibility. And how did personal responsibility make housing unaffordable? >Parents need to be responsible for their children. The state should only step in if they fail in their responsibility. How neat and tidy. >Ho…

> I will never stop fighting against people who wield the power of the state to punch down and then point the finger at those same people and blame them. It's disgusting, it's abhorrent, and it must stop.

I can see that. Your ideology creates the problems you think we just need more of your ideology to solve.

You’re not some warrior for freedom or the oppressed, you’re just another person that mistakes enabling for actual care, and thinks serving the interests of the powerful is revolutionary.

So sure, let’s build a system that forces everyone into the workforce, benefits employers who pay too little, and produces worse outcomes for children.

How revolutionary.

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

#422

Post by frumplestlatz » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 11:36 PM UTC

venturecruelty wrote: post #376

frumplestlatz wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give the state your kids and get to work, comrade? https://www.nytimes.com/1974/12/17/archives/in-soviet-union-... > The vast majority of Soviet families require the salary of a working wife to make ends meet. Repeatedly, Soviet citizens express astonishment when they learn that an American father can support a family of two, three or four children without his wife's working. Many are also surprised that American wom…

Man, even the Soviet Union was able to provide free childcare. Really makes you think, doesn't it.

We had it better. We threw that away.

Instead of figuring out why and fixing that, you’d apparently prefer that we take a page from the soviets and further embed our social and economic regression into law.

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

#423

Post by frumplestlatz » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 11:37 PM UTC

russdill wrote: post #341

frumplestlatz wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outside the home childcare is not 24/7. No, but it is during our most productive, aware, and valuable daylight hours. > Also, it's really weird to be making this argument for mothers and not fathers. In the context of human history, it’s not weird at all. > Having childcare available gives the opportunity for both parents to spend more quality time with their children. How? It reduces the time children spend with a…

I suppose in the context of human history, you might argue to enslave a population based on racial characteristics in order to provide childcare. For many families, both parents have to work. Most time spent not working or sleeping is spent doing a task simultaneously with childcare. Cleaning, preparing meals, repairing things, laundry, etc. Even for families where one individual shoulders the bulk of the burden this…

Equating racism with the inherent biological sexual dimorphism of childbirth and infant care is certainly a take.

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

#424

Post by hammock » Sat, Nov 22, 2025, 11:50 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #242

hammock wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. If we could fund universal child care so that the ratio of caregiver to child was more like 1 to 2 or 1 to 5 or even 1 to 8 in extreme cases, then the lack of attentiveness would not be a problem. Wait a minute… that sounds like…

Okay but you do understand that what you're suggesting costs the full salary a woman (because of course it would never be men asked give up their careers) could earn for the family and the economic gains that come with it. Back of the napkin calculation is three trillion dollars of value lost annually . And that's before the knock-on effects of such a massive recession. Household income will drop by 30-40% across the…

Since women’s lib, men’s wages have been flat while women’s has climbed. See the first chart here: https://www.businessinsider.com/gender-wage-pay-gap-charts-2...

The conclusion is that adding women to the workforce competed with men’s wages at least as much as it did add to the economy. Taking women out of the workforce to do family and domestic tasks will be supportive of male wages, counteracting the effect you mention.

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

#425

Post by Aloisius » Sun, Nov 23, 2025, 12:03 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #206

macintux wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget the "1% of the recipients are fraudulent, therefore the other 99% must spend 10 hours on paperwork and 6 months waiting for the benefits to start, with a 30% chance of rejection" approach.

> 1% of the recipients are fraudulent Google sez: "The total amount of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) improper payments for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 was an estimated $10.5 billion, or 11.7% of total benefits paid."

Em. "Improper payments" includes mistaken payments, overpayments and underpayments.

It is a measure of payment (or non-payment) errors, not fraud.

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

#426

Post by Aloisius » Sun, Nov 23, 2025, 12:17 AM UTC

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

Are immigrants privileged then?

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

#427

Post by loeg » Sun, Nov 23, 2025, 12:39 AM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #415

selimthegrim wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

These can simply be different groups of Somali parents, for what it's worth. Presumably some Somali kids are truly autistic and not participating in the fraud scheme.

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

#428

Post by russdill » Sun, Nov 23, 2025, 12:44 AM UTC

frumplestlatz wrote: post #423

russdill wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose in the context of human history, you might argue to enslave a population based on racial characteristics in order to provide childcare. For many families, both parents have to work. Most time spent not working or sleeping is spent doing a task simultaneously with childcare. Cleaning, preparing meals, repairing things, laundry, etc. Even for families where one individual shoulders the bulk of the burden this…

Equating racism with the inherent biological sexual dimorphism of childbirth and infant care is certainly a take.

Look, if you want to justify your position by just pointing out that it's the way things have historically been done, expect to have it pointed out how ridiculous you are being. Anyway, Equating child care with the inherent biological sexual dimorphism of childbirth is certainly a take.

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

#429

Post by xp84 » Sun, Nov 23, 2025, 12:53 AM UTC

Rebelgecko wrote: post #146

tbrownaw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the tax man can't see it, it doesn't exist. . Scenario A: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. Max stays home with them, and Alex has a job with a coworker named Avery. Scenario B: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. They both work, and hire Avery to watch the kids. The same total work gets done by the same group of people in both cases, but the second measures as "better" for "the economy".

The financials of childcare don't really make sense to me. YMMV depending on your situation, but childcare costs are basically equivalent to my wife's teacher salary. And because of our tax bracket, it'd actually be CHEAPER for her to quit her job and take care of 2 kids full time, vs getting paid teach like 20 kids. There's tradeoffs in terms of career progression, but it seems broken that there's a decent financial…

Seriously. There’s a reason all our kids’ preschool teachers never return from maternity leave. The pay isn’t enough to pay someone else to watch your baby while you work. And this school is already an expensive one and is a nonprofit so the money isn’t going to some Mr. Moneybags investor. The economics of childcare are broken.

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

#430

Post by Aloisius » Sun, Nov 23, 2025, 12:56 AM UTC

Retric wrote: post #372

dmitrygr wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because YOU are paying for those benefits and they aren’t. If you truly don’t see how offering something for free would attract all the freeloaders, increasing the load on those who work, there’s no saving you.

What I am describing is you literally saving money. If a government can convert a 1k outlay into 1.1k of tax revenue that same month you aren’t actually paying for those benefits you are getting a little revenue instead of zero revenue. Due to their debts operating across such long timescales people make the same basic argument for things that take longer to see positive returns, but daycare is a very short loop.

Can they convert $1K outlay into $1.1K of tax revenue the same month?

Given New Mexico's tax rates, it seems like it would be difficult to do so.

It looks like the program will cost about $600M next year. In order to generate more tax revenue than it costs, it would need to increase personal income somewhere on the order of $12-15B of personal income, taxable sales, business profit or some combination.

Now, a fraction of that will come from the childcare workers. Some may come from stay-at-home parents or parents working part time going to work, but given they say it'll save on the order of $12K/year/family, a family would need to increase their income by about $260K/year in order to pay $12K in extra state income taxes.

It's rare to see spending programs actually pay for themselves. Mostly when politicians talk about a program paying for itself, they preform verbal slight-of-hand, arguing that $x will come back as $x*y in economic activity. That is, of course, a lie, but no one calls them out the fact that economic activity ≠ taxes.