Am I mistaken? Thoughts?
I don't think government at any level should get to discriminate based on protected classes and I hope most people alive today will agree
I like taxes, with them I buy civilization (which I also am fond of).
(The evidence also shows economic benefits of enabling parents to work when they want to by providing childcare)
https://illumine.app/blog/how-much-childcare-costs-by-state-...
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/24/quebec-unive...
> We test the symmetry of this finding by studying the persistence of a sizeable negative shock to noncognitive outcomes arising with the introduction of universal child care in Quebec
They aren't just theoretical concerns.
It looks like it's 1:6 until kids are 27 months, at which point the ratio becomes 1:10. When kids are 3-4 the ratio is 1:12, and when they're 5 and up, the ratio is 1:15. These are numbers from 2011, so not sure how that's changed over time.
But this is true in the other direction, too. Means testing costs money, time, and ensures some needy folks fall off the program.
For example, Florida did drug testing as a condition for welfare benefits... and it cost more than they saved. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/us/no-savings-found-in-fl...
https://www.nmhealth.org/news/vaccine/2025/8/
The states are stepping up.
> "The economic machine demands sacrifices apparently."
Indeed. Is the solution to sacrifice for it? Or tax it to care for the human? [4] We can make better choices, as New Mexico shows. I'm tired of hearing its impossible. It isn't, it's just a lack of will and collective effort in that direction, based on all available evidence.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-living-income-quality-o...
[3] >>43119657
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paaen3b44XY
(I am once again asking to think in systems)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/08/supreme-court-ice-r...
https://www.aecf.org/interactive/databook?l=35
You can research for yourself and see other evidence that the educational outcomes for children in New Mexico is generally very, very poor.
Expect similar results with New Mexico's "universal" child care.
>average annual family savings of $12,000 per child.
How is NM paying for this? They currently have a 'D' grade from Truth in Accounting[1] with a $9.8 billion debt burden driven by unfunded obligations of pension and retiree health care
[1]https://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/NM-2020-2pa...
From what I’ve seen, the research leans the other way. For example:
Children from more advantaged families were actually more likely to view unfair distribution as unfair, while poorer children were more likely to accept it. [0]
Mother’s work hours show no link to childhood behavioral problems, it’s schedule flexibility that matters. [1]
For working-class families, more father work hours correlated with fewer behavioral problems.[2]
The idea that “well-off kids” end up with morality deficits because their parents work a lot doesn’t seem to hold up.
[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.13230
"So I can provide for my family"
"Why do you want to provide for your family?"
"So my children can have happy and fulfilling lives"
"What makes your young children feel happy?"
"Spending time with me"
A strong parent-child relationship is the biggest determination of life-long child happiness even into old age.
If jobs are tenuous or insecure, long term financial obligations will not be made (the cost to raise a child in 2023 dollars is $330k, not including childcare or college). If jobs do not pay enough, people will need to put their kids in childcare (which will have to be subsidized) or they will forgo having children [1] [2].
[1] https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/07/29/fewer-adults-ha...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2024/07/25/reasons...
0. https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredi-mens-employment-growth-...
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/che/swi...
Any sustainable policy would obviously result in a TFR of at least the replacement rate.
End result is that Canada's child poverty rate was cut in half over the aughts.
https://x.com/trevortombe/status/1100416615202533377
And yes, it hit the same political hurdles you'd expect. A Liberal-party aide helped lose the 2006 selection by saying parents would burn it on "beer and popcorn". He's still around as a consultant and professional trash-talking commentator. This is ironic considering how the party championed it's success after they (rightly) expanded the program.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/liberal-apologizes-for-saying...
Quartz ranked New Mexico 5th: https://qz.com/early-childhood-education-by-state-ranking-20...
If I look hard enough, I can find a study that ranks New Mexico at every single ranking from 50th to 1st.
In particular, the study you linked ranks on a lot of factors outside the control of the school - which is largely affected by the huge number of poor people in New Mexico (#1 in the country... Which is why they got the rating they did).
https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/
Unfortunately late capitalism made sure we went in the opposite direction.
You're romanticizing it, that's why. Staying at home and not working makes you incredibly vulnerable. You're entirely reliant on the goodwill of someone else, and you can end up trapped, unable to leave a bad situation because you have no access to money. Or your husband just leaves you with kids to feed and no money to do it with.
It's fine if you choose to do it with a partner who treats you as an equal, but there's a reason why female suicides instantly dropped by 20%[0] when no-fault divorce was adopted by their state.
If you want another data point, ask your older female relatives what their mothers and grandmothers told them about money. Bet you more than a few will have a story where they were told to save money in a secret place and never, ever tell their husbands about it.
And this is especially significant because that's just speaking aggregately. Obviously not all parents are created equal, but it turns out that even bad parents tend to be better than non-parental care, especially early on. If you isolated it only to active, highly involved, parents - the results would be exponentially better than they already are.
[1] - https://search.brave.com/search?q=long+term+outcomes+of+dayc...
Whaaat?
I have 2 kids and I can assure you healthcare is far from free unless you are low income; cutoff varies by state but it's not high -- around $80K/year household income[0], which is pretty middle-class. We're not at all wealthy, but a few years ago we started making more than threshold for our state's Medicaid/CHIP program, and we now spend >10K a year for our kids' healthcare (granted we have a child with a disability so he's the bulk of that).
In the US the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and an amendment in 1940 established the minimum wage and the 40 hour work week by requiring overtime pay beyond 40 hours for non-exempt employees. [1] Many other countries have many similar things.
What I'm talking about is amending the FLSA down from 40 to 30 hours per week for mandatory overtime and reducing the scope of exemptions so that many more people in professional positions are covered by this or a similar set of requirements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act_of_19...
https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
These are one in the same. Economies of scale work because of specialization.
> Raising a child is not like making a widget. Endless studies [1] demonstrate that more early non-parental care leads to worse outcomes in just about every single way - worse behavior, health, attention span, long term higher likelihood of police encounters, and much more.
You didn't link to any specific study but that's the exact opposite of what the search results say [1]. The results suggesting that daycare has negative effects all seem to be from the Institute or Family Studies [2] which is a conservative think tank promoting traditional gender roles. If you have credible sources that state otherwise, please share them directly.
> Obviously not all parents are created equal, but it turns out that even bad parents tend to be better than non-parental care, especially early on.
Yeah, you're gonna need a specific source for that claim.
[1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/learning-deve...
[2] https://ifstudies.org/blog/measuring-the-long-term-effects-o...
> "Other reported benefits of attendance at high-quality child care include less impulsivity, more advanced expressive vocabulary, and greater reported social competence (Belsky et al. 2007)."
You probably thought they were comparing high quality daycare to parental care, because that's certainly what they're implying. Here [1] is the paper they're referencing, which unsurprisingly they chose to not provide a link to. They are comparing high quality daycare care against poor quality daycare! Both had overall negative effects relative to parental care! In particular all non-parental childcare was directly associated with lower social competence, poorer work habits, conflicted relationships with teachers (and their mother!), and so on.
That paper itself is based on the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development series. You can find a more casual overview of that study's findings here. [2] And an opinion piece, 'daycare - yes or no', based on an overview of the available evidence (including the NICHD study) here. [3]
[1] - https://sci-hub.ru/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007....
[2] - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/going-beyond-intelli...
[3] - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/parenting-matters/20...
I don't entirely understand the fetishism of expertise among a certain segment of society. Don't you realize that most of all teachers and other educational institutions are staffed by those who would be considered nominally experts? And this has even been taken to the next level by widespread adherence to a national curriculum (common core), again composed by even greater ostensible experts. And all of this has been complimented by the 5th highest spending per student in the world. And the result? Educational outcomes are falling off a cliff.
Obviously this isn't to say that anti-expertise is the answer, but rather that motivated people of reasonable intelligence and objectivity, regardless of expertise, are a [measurably] excellent source of value in just about everything. And, by contrast, expertise itself does not guarantee good results nor effective performance, especially in the context of other issues that might otherwise impair performance like large class sizes, minimal motivation, poor work environment, etc.
[1] - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291335232_The_Effec...
Let's say you made 150k and partner made zero. If you were filing as single, high tax bracket you would get is 24% at everything past 100k. Married filing jointly, 22% at 94k. Also, you could borrow your spouse standard deduction as well to help reduce the tax requirements.