Posted on 09/15/2016 8:36:20 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
WHY subsidise childcare? The most commonly-heard justification is that doing so will encourage work. Child care is hugely expensive, to the point where it is often better for parents—overwhelmingly, mothers—to look after a child themselves rather than work. “Gender is no longer the factor creating the greatest wage discrepancy in this country, motherhood is”, said Ivanka Trump at the Republican convention, announcing that her father, like Hillary Clinton, would propose a child care-subsidy plan. That plan emerged on September 13th.
At first pass, the economic argument for subsidising child care is a bit iffy. If a mothers’ potential wages reflect her productivity, and if the price of child care reflects the costs of providing it, then there is no economic loss when a mother chooses to stay at home. Take a simplified example: suppose a low-skilled worker can either take a minimum-wage job in Walmart while paying another minimum-wage worker to look after her child, or she can stay at home and care for the child herself. If she stays at home, the second minimum-wage worker takes the Walmart job. Whatever she decides, someone looks after the child, and someone works at Walmart. There is no economic gain from switching the workers around. Even if the woman is high-skilled, making work more lucrative than saving on child care costs, the gap between her wages and the price of child care reflects the benefit to the economy of her choosing to work. She is sufficiently incentivized without any government intervention.
Of course, economic reality is more complicated. Mothers may not fully account for the effect a break from work might have on their future wages. And there are other benefits to reducing the costs of having children, not least that kids grow up to work and pay taxes themselves (see article).
You are truly an eccentric example of a "conservative." You complain of creeping socialism. You complain bitterly about the birth of children because of some penny ante subsidy which might cost you personally less than a daily morning cup of coffee or a daily newspaper. Your precious freedom to be a miserly cheapskate is being infringed!!! just so that these kids may live. It's JUST NOT FAIR!!!! Puhleeze!
Those children you so resent will someday be paying your social security and your medicare. THEN you won't be whining about getting the government out of your life.
It is your job, my job and everyone else's job in a free society to participate in that society and to do one's part to see to the care of those who cannot care for themselves.
Yet, not a peep out of you about an egregiously wasteful and hideously expensive system of "public schools" which seem to be little more than babysitting agencies with entertainment like sports and marching bands and alleged "drama" programs and "arts" programs to keep the kiddies distracted and under control while the parents work to support the government with their taxes and the kiddies learn very little of an academic nature. What the kiddies DO learn at the hands of their Marxist unionized "teachers" is Heinz 57 varieties of "alternative sexuality" aka perversion and why the Founders were slave-holding capitalist pigs and why Marx and Lenin were true visionaries.
Soon enough, as a result, we will be suffering galloping socialism, runaway freight train socialism, blitzkrieg socialism. Yet not a peep out of you, the supposedly $$$$$ conscious "conservative." Strange that!
Abolish public schools and set up a series of PRIVATE academies to provide actual education for half the amount saved and devote the other half to this Trump proposed program.
Criminalize the performance of abortion. Strip each ad every abortionist of any and all professional licenses PERMANENTLY and jail them or preferably execute them.
Save additional $$$$$ by abolishing the following and many more: Federal Departments of "Education," Labor, Commerce, Energy, "Civil Rights" Division of Justice and many other unnecessary divisions of Justice, foreign aid, Peace Corps, Vista, Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (reserving the name for a new chain of convenience stores), college scholarships for illegal aliens, multimillion dollar salaries for state college and state university big shots and even athletic coaches, programs to "re-educate" anyone to be more sensitive to Islam, sexual perversion, abortion, or other trendy tragedies, massive ammunition purchases by such agencies as IRS, Department of Education and many others. This is where FReepers are encouraged to add to this hit list by naming other governmental outrages that cry out to heaven for abolition.
Snuggle up to your cash register, Horace.
"Kicking the father in the butt and getting him to man up" does not scratch the surface of the problem and it is not a practical plan. Spend some time in the courtrooms where child support is established or arrearages dealt with. Men, who have made the mistake of being sperm donors to women who are not their wives are repeatedly hauled into court when tey literally can NOT find employment and are threatened with jail for contempt of court as though they have voluntarily decided to refuse the judge's order to support junior. Many go to jail (costing taxpayers' money at a rate that would shock you) and only get to leave when their friends and actual relatives take up a collection. We let violent criminals loose to vindicate the fiction that we can kick the deadbeat dads in the ass by judicial action. It does not work and it never will.
The women are also existing in Obozo's sorry excuse for an economy. Some may very well feel that they cannot support another child. They made the same mistake as the en to whom they are not married and voluntarily engaged in behavior that resulted in the conception of a child out of wedlock. Who buys a cow when milk is free? This woman may also have no job prospects whatsoever in this economy.
Is "saving this country from the abyss and the very real prospect of becoming a third world cesspool" enough reason for you to give in on a truly trivial expenditure to defeat Her Royal Thighness? I hope so.
You think because I have a disagreement with this particular proposal that it is a deal killer for me? Really?
Nope - my support for Trump is in tact.
But you and others like you need to be able to tell the difference between disagreement on individual issues and withdrawing support. Try not to project so much.
The issue is not trivial, incidentally. I’ve already explained why at length, so I’m not going to rehash it now.
Your particular reasoning is faulty, however.
No, I’m one of those people who thinks that letting “some people” Keep their money and not others violates the equal protection clause.
“Is “saving this country from the abyss and the very real prospect of becoming a third world cesspool” enough reason for you to give in on a truly trivial expenditure to defeat Her Royal Thighness? I hope so.”
I used that line of thinking to ask about the constituents that the Trump camp is pandering to, as you well know, but you try to throw this back at me. Nice try, smart ass, but no dice.
Try again next week.
What the hell business does Fed.gov have subsidizing either one?
Where does the Constitution grant either the Congress or the President to subsidize "child care" or "parenthood"???
It doesn't, of course. This is:
1) Just another blatant seizure of power in utter defiance of constitutional limits on the size, scope, and power of government.
2) Yet another example of spending money we don't have on things we don't need. All "we" are building with this is a mountain of debt.
3) More redistribution of wealth. It's always a little better when you spread the wealth around. So saith Barack 0bama. And Karl Marx.
If you want less taxes, then CUT TAX RATES. Cut spending, too. Eliminate whole programs and agencies. Targeted tax credits are social engineering, something the Fed Gov has zero authority to do.
If that didn’t say “Trump” everywhere, I’d assume it came from the democRAT party. Or maybe some puke of an establishment Republican.
How 'bout we really simplify the tax code? Flat, no deductions, no credits, no exemptions, very low rate that EVERYBODY pays. Progressive tax rats are a communist idea. And cut out the unconstitutional, marxist welfare state.
Bypass this whole idiotic debate.
And Make America Great Again while we're at it.
Thank you for reminding me. Government Schools are yet another piece of garbage that we must eliminate. Educating our children is far too important a task to continue letting government make a hash of it.
Am I the only one who thinks young humans need to be with their loving parent to achieve their potential as good human beings? Why does every other mammal care for their OWN* young? Who loves a child more than their parents? Don’t we understand the child knows this?
We had the same world once, and enough women didn’t work that men earned enough to pay for the whole family. Why can’t there be understanding NOW that lets all women work who wish to, but where stay with children parenting is even slightly VALUED?
I think this is all a big mistake. I think companies should be exhorted to hire ex-mommies just like they do veterans. Amazing multitaskers who defer gratification and aren’t getting high in the parking lot. We need to let women stay home with the kids, and give them credit later for all those hard years of unpaid labor. Moms are not heroes like vets, but they too should be hired, because they too have had lots of life training that shouldn’t lock them out of the workforce forever.
*one small example: bats. They will give birth in groups of even 100 bats, in a cave, barn, wherever. The moms will leave the little baby bats at home and go forage for food, come back and feed the babies their milk. In that group of 100 pink baby mewling bats, each mother knows her bat’s cry and smell. What are we doing, pushing other care for our children without the sense bats have? Of course when you need to work, you need child care, but these policies are greater than that: they are insisting all women ARE SUPPOSED TO abandon their kids all day. And that is turning away from both nature and love.
I’m all for that.
If the Trump administration did that, plus truly (no smoke and mirrors) eliminated onerous regulations and did something meaningful about the hostile legal environment, we would have an economic boom for years, if not decades, to come.
Getting rid of some of these communist alphabet agencies wouldn’t hurt either.
But, yes, your flat tax proposal alone would do wonders for both economically and socially.
I have two of my own and don’t need a handout from the Government to raise them.
So where does this money come from to supplement “families” since it’s “all about the children?”
“If that didn’t say “Trump” everywhere, I’d assume it came from the democRAT party. Or maybe some puke of an establishment Republican.”
YOU are 100% absolutely correct!!! This cult of personality thing is becoming quite dangerous. I’m adamantly against his position and strategy to woo in liberal supporters by exposing liberal ideals! This is utter garbage. I can post at least a dozen articles shared right here on FR where Obama and others have pitched this same rehashed program and the bolt of lightning here in FR struck it down!
We are amidst a dangerous movement that has now created faux conservatives within the guise of “its about the children”
Unbelievable
AND, if you are voting for Trump, you are voting for his package of issues. In 2012, I refused to vote for Moral Monster Mitt Romney and refused to vote for Obozo because I would not support either of their issues packages.
You haven't got an argument to rehash.
As previously stated: Abolishing the utterly incompetent :public education" system will save more than enough $$$$$ to pay for Trump's proposal AND to establish a privately run and privately administered (by the parents themselves) which will cost half or less what the public ignorance factories cost and actually educate the kids. Of course, such a system will not drill them in political correctness, sexual perversion, graduate level Marxism, etc., but will teach languages, mathematics, English, American and World Literature, sciences and manage to avoid global "climate change" fantasies.
As previously stated, give me a red pencil over the federal budget and I will save about half of it without working up a sweat.
If you don't want the benefit, no one is making you take it. Don't. If you want off the hook for this subsidy, I want off the hook for "public education," BATF, EPA, Labor Department, Commerce Department, Energy Department, and literally thousands of other programs squandering taxpayer $$$$$ to further enslave us all.
THAT is where the money comes from. Fora about the third time.
Tis tax system did not invent itself. Politicians love to spend oceans of cash on their pet projects and HATE to raise taxes on their constituents. That is why "flat tax" and "fair tax" are and always will be total non-starters.
As the USA becomes the new Venezuela, you will have the satisfaction of never supporting child care. And Her Royal Thighness will have the satisfaction of making you pay for everyone else's "childcare" in which the "village" begins training the kiddies in Marxism from infancy. Nice job!
Apparently you’re not smart enough to understand the arguments against this policy, or alternative ways to accomplish the same thing.
You’re problem, other than a deficiency of reasoning ability, is you don’t love liberty; you don’t cherish freedom.
May your chains set lightly upon you.
And how exactly does that happen? Presidential fiat? So trade off one money hungry expenditure for another, net result another program which grows over time, expands, and never goes away. See he has called for in his “program” the money come from unemployment fund. Did you know in most states it’s already bankrupt? While your idea may be fine and well for some it isn’t what Trump proposed.
Trump has pulled left and that obviously doesn’t bother some here in FR and it should. Pandering, transferring wealth from one segment of society to another, and creating yet another beauracracy we might as well keep GOP-e or Democrats in power because his proposals aren’t any different than the same program you are speaking of olre-wrapped and pitched by lefties now for decades. Trump should be speaking slashing and less regulations not creating this government program and that government program. Swapping costs from one governemtbspending venture to the next is still the same net result....we are going bankrupt!
And since we are all about the children it seems what do you say to your grandchildren and their grandchildren when they are paying back these super nirvana Government programs? Because you know this is the sort of spending that s be then over the cliff right and under the fist of an oppressive government?
The pretzel tying to justify a clearly liberal program pitched by Trump is what this election is coming to. I’m voting for the guy but as the days pass holding my nose while I do it. He has and is pulling left
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