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

governor.state.nm.us

491–500 of 695 posts

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

#491
post #5

Childcare is a great way to kick this off - it's politically hard to fight against anything "for the children" and it's not a stretch at all to extend coverage gradually, as people see the benefit and want it elsewhere / just one more year / etc. Just gotta hope it stays funded enough to avoid descending into a bureaucratic death spiral with months of delays for everything.

> it's politically hard to fight against anything "for the children" The entire incel and tradwife spectrum hates these policies.

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

#492
post #73
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is paid for by the oil and gas boom in Southern NM. The medical situation is getting worse by the year, though. I don’t think it’s just a matter of shoveling more dollars

I went on a road trip through Southern NM a couple years ago. Highly recommend stopping at Gila National Forest - it's a certified "dark park", remote enough from sources of light to see the Milky Way with the naked eye. One thing that struck me - towns down there had a template. 90% of towns we drove through were just a blood plasma "donation" center, a dollar store, a gas station, and a cemetery. Very bleak existen…

That sounds amazing. It is now on the travel list!

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

#493

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.

Why should we all go off of one ranking?

Quartz ranked New Mexico 5th: https://qz.com/early-childhood-education-by-state-ranking-20...

If I look hard enough, I can find a study that ranks New Mexico at every single ranking from 50th to 1st.

In particular, the study you linked ranks on a lot of factors outside the control of the school - which is largely affected by the huge number of poor people in New Mexico (#1 in the country... Which is why they got the rating they did).

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

#494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no, society will have to bear the cost of the infrastructure to maintain itself rather than reap the benefits of a population without putting back into. How terrible.

It doesn't work that way. The US Welfare programs have created multi generational families that have never worked and do not have any parents or grandparents that have ever worked a real job because if anyone did they would risk losing $100k's worth of free benefits to work a minimum wage job that would only pay them $30k. It has created a permanant underclass of people with no job skills that are wholly dependant on…

Would love to know where you’re getting this figure from. I worked in the welfare field before moving into tech (and my wife still does) and the payout for TANF plus SNAP for a single mother with like 5 kids would be closer to your $30k than the $100k. Of course that begs the question why work for it if you can get it for free but I believe TANF has a lifetime payout of like 5 years meaning that if the kids get it as a child they will not qualify for that TANF for themselves as an adult.

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

#495

That's wild. New Mexico is fairly notorious for having terrible medical and social safety net stuff. I have a friend that had a daughter that lived there, and had serious mental health issues, and I'd hear nightmare stories about how bad the state was for that. I have family with similar issues, in New York, and they get an amazing amount of state support.

I live in rural New Mexico and medical services are very bad here. I took my GF to the emergency room once with chest pains (turned out to be a lung infection). After an hours long wait we got to see the "doctor". The doctor came in in street clothes which were wrinkled jeans and a frumpy polo. He was not smart and from appearance, speech and thinking patterns easily could have been the janitorial mid level manager (…

Meanwhile, my worst experience with US healthcare was in a small town in Texas.

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

#496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Poland, they have a "universal child benefit" that pays a stipend for every child you have. They do pay for it and it is expensive, but apparently it made a large reduction in child poverty, so that's a win. From my understanding, it also reduced women in the workforce and reduced investment in childcare infrastructure since more mothers were then taking care of children at home. So this is possible, it just depen…

The US has a similar thing with the child tax credit. It looks like Poland pays out the equivalent of about 220 a month while the child tax credit pays the equivalent of $180 per month. If you only count the refundable portion it is $140. Relative to the cost of living its worse, but the concept seems similar.

There are also state-level subsidies in virtually all states, depending on things like your income.

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

#497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure and under income taxes, Couple B probably pays much less since US income tax structure is gives massive benefits to couples with single income. It may not be enough to offset joint income. As with most economic changes, there is massive web of things.

> US income tax structure is gives massive benefits to couples with single income It gives massive structural advantages to couples with low income, in the form of a lower marginal tax rate. Does it really discriminate between single and dual income though? I wasn't aware of that.

It does not. Filing jointly just saves some hassle in the case where the partners are in the same tax bracket.

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

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

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The idea is that social security is fundamentally on a path to running out of money and resembles a pyramid scheme. The young are paying into benefits for people older than them. So the childless people are being “taken care of” by others’ kids is the argument, I think.

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

#499
post #12

This is fantastic! I hope they succeed and there is no abuse or other issues, because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential. Families who were previously in poverty because the mom would struggle to pay for childcare to work can now have assurance kids are ok while the mom can pursue jobs, start her own small business (huge chunk of businesses are small busin…

There are more important things women - and other people - can do than simply grow the economy. One of the reasons you must have a two-income household to be economically middle-class in most American metros now is because two-income households became the norm. When I was growing up 25-30 years ago, that made you comfortable. Then people realized that there was "untapped" value in that extra income and raised prices…

If I'm not mistaken, Elizabeth Warren has literally written a book about this problem, so it's not some reactionary desire to keep women in the kitchen.

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

#500

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.

Norway does this. Kindergartens are nearly free ($120/mo), but with a "cash-for-care" benefit for parents who choose to stay at home with the child ($750/mo). https://www.nav.no/kontantstotte/en

I wonder why they don’t have the same allergy to a voucher program that is prevalent in the US on the political left. For some reason, letting people exercise their agency and do things their own way is seen as a threat here.
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