zlacker

>>toomuc+(OP)
This 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 businesses ran by women) and prosper. If you pose your child’s safety vs another dollar, most parents would vote for their children. But if the children are taken care of, parents can give the economy their best and the taxes paid and GDP gained will pay back for the expense manyfold.

>>dzink+Y6
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.

>>mothba+w7
I just don't understand this mentality.

My wife is a stay-at-home mom. We are lucky that we can afford to do this. Most of our kid's friends have both parents working and they pay for child care. If suddenly they were able to have that childcare paid for, that would be wonderful! It doesn't affect our situation at all. Why would we oppose it? I don't need to have my own "waiver" payment in order for me to be in favor of my neighbor's burden being lifted.

It's like free school lunch. We pack our kid a lunch every day, but some families rely on the school-provided free lunch. It's never even occurred to me that we should get a $3/day payment because we don't take advantage of free lunch. Having free lunch available is unequivocally a good thing, regardless of whether we personally partake.

>>ryandr+cy
I dislike the perversity of taxing people than only giving the money back to them if they arrange their life in a way that policy-makers prefer (two income family). I especially dislike it when the subsidized choice of institutional childcare is more inefficient (paying for a lot of overhead), worse for the environment (extra people commuting), and worse for the kids (kids in groups that are classes that are too large for their age, taken care of by a rotating cast of minimum wage workers instead of by their own parent). And yes, I think parents who successfully home-school their children should be given the money that government schools would have cost them.

>>chlodw+TT
This strikes me as part of the disease of thinking like a tax payer and not a citizen. It's about the service/resource availability, not the money. And your system seems to create more perversion than what you're reacting to - a bunch of people keeping score to make sure they get theirs.

>>librar+Vm1
In AZ we offer ESA to homeschoolers, vouchers to charter or private school kids, and then normal tuition free public schools.

That way the service/resource is available to all children regardless of who the parent picks to provide it, according to what the family sees as their best option. It's not about who gets the money, just that the resources are available.

I think very rarely does the state or society have a better view in aggregate of what is best for each family, particularly when you consider the asymmetry of millions of families having time and information to contemplate their circumstance vs voters or bureaucrats having complete inability to put any real thought on the child on a per-child basis.