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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

#591

Post by mothballed »

ndriscoll wrote: post #586
gopher_space wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is advocating for a larger unconditional child credit libertarian? As someone else in the thread pointed out, it's effectively UBI for children. It's literally advocating for more people to receive government subsidies. It's not even a crazy proposal since we already have a refundable child tax credit , so it's a matter of making it bigger.

Anything that might lead more towards decentralizing societal structure away from the state and quasi-state subsidized institutions back towards family units is considered "libertarian" on HN. Truly universal childcare "UBI" puts the power back into the hands of parents, rather than society taxing then lording over the head of parents as to which people are allowed to care for their children with it, just not funded in a libertarian manner. This is seen as a reduction in the power of the state which is a libertarian aim.

So we've come to a crossroads where something profoundly un-libertarian is viewed by the anti-libertarians as libertarian because it incidentally achieves some of its aims.

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

#592

Post by mothballed »

giantg2 wrote: post #589
ch4s3 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Givi…

"A working parent using a daycare voucher necessarily pays taxes back into the system and so does the day care." This assumes the value of the parent working is greater than the value generated by the alternative consumer spending. "and incentivizes people to not work" This would only incentivize low income individuals to not work, which could actually be beneficial as it could drive a living wage increase in that la…

>This assumes the value of the parent working is greater than the value generated by the alternative consumer spending.

I don't think the benefit is even contingent on the parent working, and it definitely isn't contingent on the value of their current and discounted future earnings appreciation being greater than the cost of sending the kids to daycare. From what I can tell you can put the kid in daycare then lay on a beach if there is anything of that sort in the New Mexican desert.

I'm open to the argument that by certain measures "free" childcare leads to increased economic output, but they've certainly not crafted the program in a way I would expect someone with that aim to do it.

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

#593

Post by chlodwig »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #590
chlodwig wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because you have to count all the employment going into running and supplying the daycare, which includes facilities, equipment, administration, extra staff, etc. You have to look at the all-in cost.

I've never seen a daycare with more than 5% of staff doing admin. Either it's a small daycare with a handful of workers and everybody doing care, or it's a large one with one person doing admin.

It all adds up. On average, daycare in USA costs $18k a year per child ( https://www.care.com/c/how-much-does-child-care-cost/ ), which is the best measure of the total resources that it takes up, all-in. Median income for a 30yo man is $55k and for a woman $45k. So even with just two kids, the lower earning parent with the non-greedy job is not clearing much if anything over the cost of the daycare.

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

#594

Post by notahacker »

mothballed wrote: post #577
notahacker wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm still lost as to why you think taxpayers need to pay people who don't need free stuff for not using the free stuff? I mean, if parenting during the daytime is so unpleasant or expensive parents need a $12k subsidy to stay at home, they can just use the daycare... right?

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

#595

Post by pcthrowaway »

slg wrote: post #448
aeternum wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My house has never been on fire, should I get a tax rebate for never needing service from the fire department? Government services exist to help people who need them. The idea that government services need to have the same net effect on every citizen is unusually popular in the US and is part of the reason we have worse government services than our peer nations.

> My house has never been on fire, should I get a tax rebate for never needing service from the fire department?

If you live in a city, there's a good chance your house hasn't been on fire because of the work of the fire department.

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

#596

Post by mothballed »

notahacker wrote: post #594
mothballed wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm still lost as to why you think taxpayers need to pay people who don't need free stuff for not using the free stuff? I mean, if parenting during the daytime is so unpleasant or expensive parents need a $12k subsidy to stay at home, they can just use the daycare... right?

So your position is what, the people who currently weren't getting free daycare don't need it because they were already getting by? You went straight to what people "need" but then ignored the whole schtick we're discussing was NM going from means-tested to universal childcare even for people that don't "need" it.

I'm willing to accept that position, I'm not necessarily for free childcare, only believe that if childcare is to be free it should follow the child. I don't see at all how a mom taking care of a child "needs" the money less than a daycare worker/company taking care of the child. What you're proposing is just yanking the money away from them in a tax, then lording it over them that they have to take the latter if they want the cash back -- trying to track to which caregiver the money goes instead of just providing the resources for the child and let the parents decide what works best for their family.

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

#598

Post by anothermathbozo »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #560
anothermathbozo wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

child care policy frees labor capacity for work that is more likely to earn a slice of the national income. It’s almost certainly going to result in greater economic activity for the state. In the immediate it is funded from two existing funds.

State + local tax burden in NM is 10.2%[1]. Revenue neutral would mean those taking the child care would instead take a job with average salary $120,000. But as another comment points out this policy attracts new jobs to the state, which complicates the math [1] https://taxfoundation.org/location/new-mexico/

Income tax is not the only revenue that the state and local governments capture when production increases.

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

#599

Post by [deleted] »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #595
slg wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My house has never been on fire, should I get a tax rebate for never needing service from the fire department? Government services exist to help people who need them. The idea that government services need to have the same net effect on every citizen is unusually popular in the US and is part of the reason we have worse government services than our peer nations.

> My house has never been on fire, should I get a tax rebate for never needing service from the fire department? If you live in a city, there's a good chance your house hasn't been on fire because of the work of the fire department.

[deleted]

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

#600

Post by ch4s3 »

bombcar wrote: post #456
ch4s3 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You read a lot of books about economics, history, and political science and suddenly everything starts to look like it's complicated. The recent trend of commentators shouting "it's actually not complicated" is troubling. I try to present commentary with some nuance and humility. I have a perspective, but I endeavor to leave room for the possibility that I don't have a full understanding or that my model of the world…

The key I realized is that there is always complexity, but the "simple" understanding is still "mostly" right. No complexity can make a $1 billion expense able to be paid with $1m of revenue.

> but the "simple" understanding is still "mostly" right.

I rarely find this to be the case for anything big or important.

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