Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're reading waaaay too much into this. Nobody is getting penalized, this is a crab bucket mentality.
Yes they are. If you stay at home you now pay an additional tax on top of everything else.
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New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
601–610 of 695 posts
Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fire protection is generally widely supported because almost everyone shares in the benefit, the protection is a benefit whether or not you need service. The reason we have worse government services is because there's no attempt to make them fair, the benefits are almost always highly skewed along partisan lines and thus usually not passed.
>Fire protection is generally widely supported because almost everyone shares in the benefit, the protection is a benefit whether or not you need service. The same is true for things like childcare and education. Improving outcomes for the next generation doesn't only benefit them and their parents, it improves the entire society. >The reason we have worse government services is because there's no attempt to make the…
Need is ill-defined. People have all kinds of different ideas for what they need.
I think it's worth considering what has significant majority support. For example I believe it's something like 80%+ support some kind of childcare subsidy or tax credit. Some childless probably make up the 20% just as some would prefer not to have a fire brigade.
At that level of support just pass the subsidy / tax credit and let the families figure out how to apply it (paid daycare or homecare).
Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Ok, now be genuine about the other benefits they're most likely receiving as well:
- Medicaid
- Section8
- WIC
- LIHEAP
- LIFELINE
Just to name a few.
I also worked for a non profit that helped people get government assistance and got an inside look at what these families are like and what they prioritize.
Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
#604Imagine if we saw mostly headlines like this rather than things like "Trump threatens war on Chicago" or "Supreme Court approves racial profiling", or "Columbia students deported for protesting" or "Trump delays tariffs for 90 more days".
Chances are you'll soon see something like "Trump threatens nuclear war against communist New Mexico".
It's off topic to mention this, but I've become convinced that the richest among us really don't care about improving the systems and institutions that would really elevate humanity and unlock tremendous human capital.
Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You realize a lot of people actually prefer to give their child their best instead of outsourcing it My wife and I staggered our work schedules to minimize the time spent at daycare. The one thing we didn’t expect: The kids absolutely loved daycare. It was a great place with excellent caretakers. Most of all, it was socialization with their friends. From reading sneering interment comments (like the one above) I wa…
> The kids absolutely loved daycare. It was a great place with excellent caretakers. Most of all, it was socialization with their friends. People who stay at home and take care of their own kids aren’t skipping socialization. They still participate in various activities where there are other kids. But, the kids do get a lot higher quality care from stay at home parents than a daycare can afford. If you stay at the da…
> the kids do get a lot higher quality care from stay at home parents than a daycare can afford
Maybe, but definitely not always. There's a lot of variables with this logic. My wife and I aren't trained early childhood educators. We didn't spend years studying such things, we haven't been doing this for many years, and we aren't always as equipped with things like lesson plans and educational development attainment goals.
Without a doubt, every child is different, different kids grow in their own spurts and what not. But when we took our kids out of daycare for my wife to stay at home and tend to the kids after our youngest was born, we had our oldest remain in twice a week daycare so my wife could spend more time focusing on our infant at the time. His growth trajectory definitely fell. He wasn't able to keep up with a lot of his classmates, even though it had just been a single semester. He wasn't as happy, and his connections with his close friends he had known since he was barely able to walk were clearly fraying despite attempts to schedule as many play dates. Our youngest wasn't progressing as fast as others we knew from the daycare. In the end we put both kids back in full-time once my wife managed to find similar employment again. Once both kids were back in full time, it was almost night and day difference. Our oldest child was noticeably much happier. He quickly caught back up with the class and had those friendships restored. Similar story with our youngest.
We also tend to hang out with a lot of at-home families as well. Most of the kids I know from our school seem significantly ahead in logic and socialization skills compared to most of the kids I know who stay at-home. Not all, for sure, I know a few families who are exceptionally great at being educators for their kids. But I also know many families who try very hard but ultimately aren't that great in comparison. Not everyone is a good teacher, and that's OK.
In the end, we're not as effective of educators for our kids, it's just not what we're necessarily great at doing. So, they spend time with people who are. And we continue to try and do our best with them at home as well with things they aren't taught in school.
Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
#606Earlier quoted context omitted.
You wouldn't have to if the government didn't own the roads. Plenty of examples of this, private companies creating their own roads and charging people a small fee to use them so they can maintain them. Wouldn't be that hard give people a little device that tracks the roads they use and charges them $0.05 per mile that they drive and then have the company be a co-op that's owned by the people living in that town.
Perfect way to introduce new national road middlemen: the tracking device manufacturer, the road geolabeling software company, and each road owner. A local co-op would never last. If it could, we'd see far more local co-ops.
It's hard to compete against multinational conglomerates that get tax cuts and tax breaks left and right, but they do exist, eh: REI, Ace Hardware, Land O' Lakes.
Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
#607This 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…
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.
I see benefits for stay at home Moms, universal childcare means she has somewhere safe to drop her kid off while she goes to her own doctor appointments, or when she needs a break, or if there’s a family emergency she needs to attend to or even if she’s going into labor to bring kid number 2 or 3 into the world. There are a lot of stay at home parents that don’t have family near by or a reliable sitter and this can help plug some gaps.
Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
It may not be means tested, but it will be utilized primarily by families on welfare, and lower income families and in the long term by middle class families who become lower income due to government subsidized programs like these forcing them to pay more for their daily necessities through an increased tax burden.
You have clearly not shopped for childcare on the open market. Highly paid professionals still struggle to get childcare. Putting more resources into the system will be a net positive for all parents who need childcare.
No it won't. Just like putting billions of dollars into the Public School System has not led to any real increase in test scores. And just like Universal healthcare has made healthcare plans just about unaffordable for anyone not working a corporate job and just like government student loans have made the price of college asinine and I could go on and on.
Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
This might be a difference between the US and UK? Preschools in the UK have curriculums they have to follow. That includes maths, reading and writing too. I’m not going to comment on preschools in your country, but in the UK the kids who attended preschool are IN GENERAL the stronger students, socially, emotionally, and academically, when it comes to starting infants/ elementary school. Particularly in the less afflu…
In the less affluent areas, I'd expect children not attending daycare to just not be getting anything at home. Presumably their parents are both working and cannot afford daycare. In the more affluent areas, I'd expect children only don't attend daycare if their parents prioritize their children over their jobs, and so they'd be getting much more positive attention than in a daycare. But, of course, we'd have to see…
We prioritized our kids. In the end, what worked better for our kids was for us to earn enough income to send them to really nice daycare/preschool for several hours a day.
Re: New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care
#610Earlier 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. This is a great way to kill a policy. It would technically be most fair if every parent was given the same amount of money per child, period. Then they could do what they needed or wanted with it. But doing so would not only increase the costs dramatically (by a multiple) it would give money…
The real reason this is “bad” is because the policy actually being implemented is, as the GP comment demonstrates, to get women into the workforce. This requires the goal to be getting them out of the home away from their children. Thus, you must relatively penalize mothers who stay home and care for their children, which is what this policy does. Of course, it is worse for children, worse for families, worse for mot…
s/women/men/g and do you still think your argument holds?