How can we improve the childcare crisis?
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Anonymous
Okay, so only the rich will have children. Who do you think will do almost every working and middle class job in America then? |
Anonymous
This. Last thing we need is government intervention in the childcare market. It will only make it more expensive. Just like what happened to college tuition. |
Anonymous
DP - for some reason FTPs seem to just completely blank. I know someone who decided to switch jobs last month and now she's pregnant. Well guess what...no leave whatsoever. Now she's planning to beg for donated leave like...why didn't you plan for this? |
Anonymous
I remember in the BBB discussions this came up and economist said the price of childcare would be astronomical. There were parents who flat out said they didn't care because guess what? Their expenses would be limited to 7% no matter how high the fees rose. Meanwhile the government, meaning the taxpayer, would be paying the other 93% even if childcare centers decided $5,000/month was the acceptable per child rate. You already see it happening with in federally-subsidzed daycares in D.C. I shudder to think of the national costs. |
Anonymous
Immigrants? I mean Americans too good for a hard day's work already refuse to work in fields and factories. Unless you're raising your MC child to make machinery parts? |
Anonymous
That's why many of us SAH - you know, the mom's who get slammed on here. We cannot afford a nanny, day care costs are high except if you can get a voucher, etc. |
Anonymous
Real middle class and lower income can get day care vouchers in this area. Its those of us who make too much to qualify but day care costs are the same as our take home pay that it makes it impossible to work. For the poster who says a grandparent can step in. Mine live 10 minutes away, healthy and have never babysat even once in an emergency in 13 years. Can and will are two different things. I could be dying and my mom would still make up an excuse not to help. |
Anonymous
Here's my thoughts - I know 'MC' people who bought $800K - $900K homes - which in this area you know is not some palatial estate but still acceptable - that were whining after they were stripped of a $1,200/month CTC. Why should you get a daycare subsidy when you can afford and willingly bought a $1 million property? Why shouldn't you be expected to use your HHI, usually $150K - $400K, again seems high enough to me - to provide for your own children? |
Anonymous
So now people who can't or won't leave the workforce, and pay for childcare in the first year, can't afford kids either? |
Anonymous
This thread is over. You can't argue with people like this. We're not fully human to them. |
Anonymous
| subsidize women who want to care for their own children. There are a lot of women who work full time just to end up bringing home a few hundred bucks a month to get them by. If just paid them to care for their kids it would be better for everyone. |
Anonymous
There aren't enough providers. Same with mental health. These people aren't going to come out of the ether. |
Anonymous
No, it would not. As someone who watched the dumpster fire of a government who paid people just because they had kids. We're at 8.5% inflation now. Would you like to see 10%? You want more than 'a few hundred bucks a month' post-childcare payments? Get a better job. |
Anonymous
Stop making having children so expensive. We've structured our entire economy around the idea that childcare will be provided for free. Every other developed country in the world has overhauled their childcare system to deal with the facts that (1) slavery, indentured servitude, and exploitation of cheap immigrant labor are, correctly, no longer seen as acceptable ways to raise children, and (2) women are allowed to work and have rights now. The US is the only country that was like "ok, ok, we won't just force WOC to care for children for free/close to free anymore, and fine, women can have jobs and be people, but you're just going to have to figure out for yourselves whose going to take care of children then, we give up." Like all the other countries were able to recognize that without the free labor of women, you were going to have to subsidize childcare in some way or the whole economic system falls apart. We are so, so dumb. This is not even considered a left-right issue in most countries. Europe, Asia, Australia/New Zealand, many of the more developed countries in Africa -- they have plenty of political debates, but the question of whether a free country can survive without subsidizing childcare in some capacity is viewed as non-controversial. They have arguments about whether immigrants should have access to subsidized childcare, but not whether it should exist. Of course it should, because otherwise how would children be cared for? |
Anonymous
The Child Tax Credit did not cause inflation. It might have had some upward influence, but no, you cannot lay inflation at the feet of that program. Most of the money people got was simply shifted into a monthly payment instead of paid out via a refund. And the additional funds only helped families under a relatively low income cap. The idea that this program, and not the war in Ukraine, Covid, multiple stimulus packages, extended and expanded unemployment programs, and long term supply chain issues, is to blame is so naive as to be impossible to take seriously. We are a family with an HHI under 150 and we received 10x as much money from Trump stimulus packages as from the Child Tax Credit program. Granted, 90% of what we received went to pay for childcare we needed because of school closures, but that's another conversation. |