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).
Nope some wish to be bound by the chains of government giving up all liberties so one segment of society feels good. Cause you know it’s all about what I can get for me
I see.
Are we, in your opinion, doomed to perpetual socialism and an incomprehensible tax code full of social-engineering set-asides, until the whole debt-ridden system collapses, society with it?
I ask, because IMO collapse is exactly where we’re headed and a new set of refundable tax credits just hastens the process.
The public "school" sends a bus to pick up and drop off junior. The "school" makes little effort to actually educate junior but its function is really to be a very expensive babysitting agency. Kids are interested in sex at 12 years old? The school will provide condoms which will keep the kids out of people's faces and out of their hair after school. The school will provide courses in "how to do it" in as any different ways and with as many different kinds of "partners" as the mind can imagine. to the young teen student, what is more interesting: Sex or algebra, physics, history, Shakespeare?
The "public school" provides lunch (and increasingly) breakfast) to the kiddies. This lets welfare mommy sleep in until noon and not worry about using HER food stamps to feed the kiddies.
The school provides entertainment: football, baseball, basketball, marching band, hockey, proms, art, music, etc.
Missy is pregnant and just cannot let her parents know? No problem. The school nurse will arrange her abortion and mom and dad will NEVER know! Who imagined that adults could be sooooo cool!
OK, so the kids graduating are often functionally illiterate and innumerate. When they start the four year party that is college, they can get credit for Remedial English, Remedial Math and Remedial Alphabet.
I will match my resume against yours any old day.
And getting heavily taxed to support a massive welfare state and the 47% who pay no taxes at all. Some of those 47% even get "refundable tax credits" in addition to the regular straight-up transfer of wealth programs.
I would increase the per-child tax deduction.
Don’t pay any taxes? Well, perhaps the US would be a better place if you didn’t have a bunch of kids.
Eliminate welfare, and the birth rate of the various members of the underclass will go down. Meanwhile the supply of people willing to take care of middle-class kids will go up.
We ARE going bankrupt! When we default on the national debt, we will BE bankrupt. We will then start over and NO ONE will lend us money. The government will be forced to live within our means. As Margaret Thatcher famously observed: Socialism seems like a great idea until you run out of other people's money.
You and I agree on this. So does that mean we abandon our conservative principles and flush it down the tubes faster!
What kind of reply is that? I don’t recall advancing anything you stated.
By repudiating the debt, we save every nickel of interest paid on same as well as the principal that just never seems to come due since we keep on rolling over the debt. Our creditors don't know it but they are playing a game of musical chairs in which ALL the chairs are going to disappear simultaneously and permanently.
We then have to prioritize our governmental spending to meet the new reality of NO BORROWING. Unnecessary programs are mercilessly stripped away. Ruthlessly eliminate leftist lifestyle maintenance programs like college and university subsidies that allow no show "professors" to pontificate Marxist theory while collecting six figure salaries. Why are some municipal school superintendents collecting $300,000 salaries at our expense and then moving from system to system to get a full pension from each? Why do government employees collect pensions beyond the wildest imaginations of the taxpayers who are raped financially to pay those pensions?
Abolish all the liberal frills and fancy stuff with exceptions noted above.
Back to the original point of this argument. Agreeing to a chump change program of child care in exchange for long-term control of SCOTUS is an exceptionally good deal. Conservatism is about a lot more than mere money and about things like the babies' lives that are far more important than mere money. Beef up the military and border enforcement. Maintain life and death entitlements: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
I profoundly second your key economic point: if we eliminated government school, our society would be awash in funds to spend on, among other things, child-care for at-risk mothers.
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