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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

#571

Post by ndriscoll »

papyrus9244 wrote: post #527
ambicapter wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe babies aren't meant to be cared for a dozen at a time? But no, we have to "scale" child-rearing, just like we have to scale everything for greater growth numbers. \s

Babies, just like adults, are extremely social animals. And they absolutely need to interact with a bunch of other people their age, even more than us. Daily, and for a long period of time. An hour at the park doesn't cut it, and being all day with a sibling doesn't either. So beyond everyone going back to a Neolithic way of life and living in a bunch of straw teepees all bundled close together, daycare is the best s…

As a counter-example, neither of my kids really acknowledged other kids in any way at that age (and other infants ignored them right back). A quick Internet search suggests it's normal for them to not interact with other kids until after 12+ months. This was a point of contention with my wife and MIL because my MIL would complain we weren't "socializing" our oldest enough when she was an infant despite clearly never having looked up anything about childhood development.

That and we did take her out all the time. She just wasn't in daycare. The thing about stay-at-home parents is they don't literally stay at home all day.

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

#572

Post by notahacker »

SilverElfin wrote: post #485
notahacker wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would providing vouchers turn parenting into a profit center? That’s a cynical way to portray one side of this when you probably don’t take the same harsh view of the other side. The point of subsidizing care isn’t to get parents “back into work”. It’s to help people raise children. That’s it. You’re gatekeeping what this is for as a way to justify unnecessary centralization and a lack of choice where choice is p…

Providing vouchers to pay for daycare doesn't turn parenting into a profit centre. Providing parents with $12k per child per annum which they can either spend on daycare or anything else they want if they don't need daycare does (and has the opposite effect of the current policy: it keeps the opportunity cost of daycare the same and lowers the relative value of going back to work)

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

#573

Post by mothballed »

libraryatnight wrote: post #565
chlodwig wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike the perversity of taxing people than only giving the money back to them if they arrange their life in a way that policy-makers prefer (two income family). I especially dislike it when the subsidized choice of institutional childcare is more inefficient (paying for a lot of overhead), worse for the environment (extra people commuting), and worse for the kids (kids in groups that are classes that are too larg…

This strikes me as part of the disease of thinking like a tax payer and not a citizen. It's about the service/resource availability, not the money. And your system seems to create more perversion than what you're reacting to - a bunch of people keeping score to make sure they get theirs.

In AZ we offer ESA to homeschoolers, vouchers to charter or private school kids, and then normal tuition free public schools.

That way the service/resource is available to all children regardless of who the parent picks to provide it, according to what the family sees as their best option. It's not about who gets the money, just that the resources are available.

I think very rarely does the state or society have a better view in aggregate of what is best for each family, particularly when you consider the asymmetry of millions of families having time and information to contemplate their circumstance vs voters or bureaucrats having complete inability to put any real thought on the child on a per-child basis.

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

#574

Post by EvanAnderson »

ericfr11 wrote: post #307
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…

I just use my bike: why should I pay taxes for roads maintenance. Unfortunately, a society is not just about economics

> I just use my bike: why should I pay taxes for roads maintenance.

Most US states pay for a significant fraction of road maintenance from motor fuel taxes ("road tax"). You probably aren't paying those taxes if you're in the US and you don't buy motor fuel.

Increased EV adoption is likely going to change that regime.

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

#575

Post by SilverElfin »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #541
SilverElfin wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not an allergy to vouchers. It's an allergy to diverting tax payer dollars away from public schools and into subsidizing religious indoctrination centers. There are good religious schools: I've been largely impressed by the Jesuit-run schools I've seen. But most religious private primary and high schools in the US are run by weird little cults that fundamentally fail to meet muster in the whole "not being thinly…

> It's an allergy to diverting tax payer dollars away from public schools and into subsidizing religious indoctrination centers.

All schools are indoctrination centers. Some very progressive cities push a lot of political programming into their curriculums. Why does it matter if someone wants their child’s education to have THEIR flavor of religious indoctrination? The money follows the child. The money for kids staying in public schools stays with them. So it doesn’t divert anything away.

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

#576

Post by ch4s3 »

giantg2 wrote: post #419
ch4s3 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sa…

The idea of extending the program to pay people who aren't using the benefit directly sounds nice in theory but would cost way more and incentivizes people to not work. This necessarily makes the broader version of the program even more expensive than it appears at first. A working parent using a daycare voucher necessarily pays taxes back into the system and so does the day care. This offsets the cost a little. Giving essentially cash payments to people who stay at home has no such offset. So it is much more expensive and disincentivizes people working which might slightly offset the cost.

> Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare

There is no way this is affordable to New Mexico. They're estimating the cost at $600 million a year, of about 6% of their total budget next year.

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

#577

Post by mothballed »

notahacker wrote: post #572
SilverElfin wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would providing vouchers turn parenting into a profit center? That’s a cynical way to portray one side of this when you probably don’t take the same harsh view of the other side. The point of subsidizing care isn’t to get parents “back into work”. It’s to help people raise children. That’s it. You’re gatekeeping what this is for as a way to justify unnecessary centralization and a lack of choice where choice is p…

Providing vouchers to pay for daycare doesn't turn parenting into a profit centre. Providing parents with $12k per child per annum which they can either spend on daycare or anything else they want if they don't need daycare does (and has the opposite effect of the current policy: it keeps the opportunity cost of daycare the same and lowers the relative value of going back to work)

I'm still lost as to why it's OK for daycares to be taxpayer subsidized profit centers but it's bad for a parent to receive the subsidies instead because some other parent may hypothetically be turning a profit on the kid if they just feed them pork and beans and stuff them into a closet.

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

#578

Post by gopher_space »

ndriscoll wrote: post #453
ryandrake wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I addressed your second point in another comment. If voters thought there was a societal advantage to financially encourage stay-at-home parenthood with a subsidy, I'd be open to listen to the pros and cons of that, too, but that's kind of a separate issue. This one is about easing the burden for those who already pay for professional childcare, including those on the margin. The first point is just unfortunate human…

It's not a crab bucket mentality. Subsidizing one group that competes in the same markets (e.g. only dual income families, who compete with single income families for housing in desirable areas to raise kids) actually increases costs for the unsubsidized group. It doesn't just make them relatively worse off, but absolutely worse off. It shifts the margin of who can afford a single family lifestyle, all else equal. Si…

The number of people in this thread workshopping their libertarian edge cases on an item of immediate importance strongly suggests the crab bucket. The comments don't reflect an understanding of the situation people are in or a grasp of the dynamics that led to it.

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

#579

Post by showerst »

I think DC has the start of a really good system here. There's universal Pre-K 3 and 4. Most elementary schools offer it, but you can also get a large subsidy to go towards a private daycare. I'd love to see that expanded to all ages. Day cares here are super heavily regulated (and thus expensive) and apparently the paperwork is a nightmare for the day care, but in practice it's super easy for parents.

I see all these comments in the vein of 'why should you force people to work in the mines and not get to love their child' and I wonder if any of these people have ever had toddlers. I love my kid, and love spending time with her. But she really likes daycare (and now school). Not only does she get better socialization than me taking her to the park for 2 hours, but she learns skills that I wouldn't be consistent about teaching. It turns out, being taught by people who have years of practice and degrees in childcare is a pretty good idea!

We did Prek-4 at our public school and you could immediately tell the difference between the daycare kids, the nanny kids, and the home-parent kids. The daycare kids were much more prepared and able to cope, and this is at a school where parental involvement was quite high. I don't think the different approaches are universally better or worse, but it's clear to me that the quality of the daycare and the parent matters a lot more than which one you choose.

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

#580

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

SilverElfin wrote: post #483
harikb wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 This whole mentality of voucher system is selfish. Even if we consider it as an "efficiency" problem, it is far cheaper for a person to be paid to take care of N children (where N is not too large), rather than have the have the mom, who is probably qualified in some other field, take care of just their children.

It’s not any more selfish than wanting subsidy for childcare. A voucher system is about choice. Parents get to have some financial assistance to make it possible for them to stay at home and be with their kids, or to provide their children with experiences that aren’t just sitting in the daycare center’s room. If they want to do things differently, why shouldn’t they be able to? Why does providing assistance have to…

Vouchers are just a bribe to get people to actually vote for higher taxes that fund social services that they themselves aren't going to use or benefit from.

"Why should I pay for taxes that don't benefit me?" is an aggressively American view toward the social contract.

People who make money pay taxes, those pay for things, and citizens (not taxpayers) get to use those things if and when they need them.

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