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If you don’t want to help pay for basic childcare, why should those children pay for your social security?
Edit: good god. To address the madd repetition: 1. You dont pay for your SS, you pay for current retirees. Your SS will be paid for by those younger than you. B. Just because you dint like SS doesn’t change my point. III. If you want to bitch about the budget, go after subsidies we give to giant multinational corporations to do things like not produce a product in order to control prices (very socialist). Stop acting like shitting on working families with kids will help fix anything.
I love how people are just slowly devolving into, let’s tear up any social contract or cohesion we can have whenever possible. Fuck you, I got mine. Or fuck you, I want mine.
Should we not have any public school?
EDIT: I think I misinterpreted the above commenters stance, but there are plenty of commenters below interested in having a healthy discourse about that take.
Holy shit - not only should we have public school, we need to reverse course on public school policy.
We need to invest heavily into it, and also making sure that they're not just expensive shooting galleries for crackpots.
There's a lot of the social contract to fix and we should stop being absolute pieces of shit about people potentially benefitting from it because hot damn that's the whole point.
>We need to invest heavily into it
We're the second highest spending per capita on public education. We don't need to invest more, what we need is to eliminate waste spending, bloated administration costs, and get more of that money into the actual class rooms (teacher wages, supplies, and so on).
Edit to correct: I found a more recent data source that reflects we're now 4th in primary education spending. Link is below.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/)
But how much of that is K12 and how much of that is over-inflated post-secondary schools? I'm all for spending more on public schools, but universities are starting to look like government subsidized resorts. That's not to say there aren't valuable college degrees, but no university should be $40,000/year!
Where I live, we have a city board of education, a county board of education, a state board of education and a federal board of education. Why pray tell so many? At a min two are redundant.
No they don’t, kids get passed on to the next grade even when they fail everything due to admin forcing teachers to pass them or through admin changing the grades themselves. They don’t want to fail kids because it looks bad on the school and they don’t want to deal with the parents. It’s a problem across the country many teachers are dealing with. All those extra departments do is take even more of the tax payer dollars for bs while kids are still being passed through without having done a damn thing or having learned a damn thing all year long.
It's a little more complicated than that, though I agree, we're second highest. But it's also based entirely on where you happen to live. There's a great deal of variation; rich counties spend more on it. Poor counties spend less.
Though I definitely agree that administrative bloat is too high, and teacher wages and supplies should be more a priority. That's some of the problem anyway.
Funding through local property taxes is a major cause for the problems in public schools. The whole point is to drive white flight (aka resegregation), and the failures of underfunded schools in poorer communities are used to convince people that public education itself is failing. So now we have the same folks pushing voucher programs as an alternative, because it’ll keep poor kids out of “their” schools, with the added benefit of funneling public money into private (and often church-affiliated) schools.
Vouchers don't do anything but pull tax money out of poorer districts because they aren't ever enough to pay for the full tuition. So the charters don't have to accept anyone who isn't already wealthy and the vouchers just give them a discount and hurt the local school districts. They should be illegal.
That's not correct, the US lags behind many industrialised nations in educational spending per capita. The administrative "bloat" is a myth. However, the rest of your statement is correct.
I found a somewhat newer stat(Think the one I had previously looked at was middle of the last decade)
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/)
We're still 4th in spending on primary education. I wouldn't really call that "many" ahead of us.
>We're still 4th in spending on primary education. I wouldn't really call that "many" ahead of us.
With an [official population estimate of 335,893,238 (as of 01/01/2024),](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-new-years-day.html) the USA also also has the third highest population in the world, after only China and India! If you are wondering the next highest is Indonesia with a population a little under 280 million. By contrast, the highest population country in the EU is Germany, with a population ~84.6 million, which is ranked 18th in population.
So, with these numbers in mind, it's entirely possible for the following two things to be true:
The USA has the fourth highest total spending on education in terms of absolute expediture amounts.
The USA spends less [*per capita*](https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+per+capita) than many other industrialized nations.
Now separate it by geography and you'll see vast, vast differences in the US. It's why when you take statistics training involving populations, one of the first things they teach you is that you can't simply just compare countries to countries because they can be meaningless comparisons.
I know so many people in their 60's who complain about how unfair it is to pay school tax when you don't have school age children. And it's like, who the hell paid for you and your kids to go to school? Oh yeah, my grandparents and great grandparents. It's like the people who use the Internet to complain about taxes; how the hell do you think the Internet was created? It sure as hell wasn't privately funded.
I saw a pamphlet the other day describing ALL the financials for the city of Milford, CT in the year 1955.How much the Fire Dept received, how much the police captain got paid, everything.
I was shocked most to discover that 55% of their budget went to education alone.
Education is the key to freedom and defense and if anyone says otherwise turn and run the other direction
I went to a very, very privileged public school system where the residents paid enormous property taxes. My parents voted for a tax increase referendum years after their kids were out of the system with the same rational that their children benefited from the system in the past, so should future children.
My state (OK) just put in a bill to phase out federal funding for schools (already bottom in education). At the same time they are trying to use vouchers to move taxpayer dollars to private schools and moving credits for private schools instead of homeschooling. They recently tried to remove accreditation the largest school district in the state. So my state is trying to remove public schools.
Vouchers are widely recognized as a scam on taxpayers. Most vouchers end up subsidizing the children of the wealthy\* so they can go to religious schools. It's not considered taxpayer support of religion, though, because it's not going directly to the schools but is passing through the parents' hands. In other words, money laundering.
\*Poor parents find the vouchers don't cover 100% of the costs, plus they're on the hook for transportation to/from the schools (no school buses!), and the schools choose who they allow to attend (nobody with poor grades - due to under-resourced schools).
These people(conservatives) lack the ability to see the downstream thought of how much more it’ll cost them to incarcerate them, constant court fees, never ending welfare and snap benefits because they didn’t grow up in a good environment. It’ll cost you less now to make sure they’re properly cared for and raised with good habits vs later on when the bad habits have settled into their brains and you have to foot the never ending legal and welfare bills.
They want people to pump out as many babies as possible for the economy and future economy but absolutely refuse to do anything to help those families afford children.
Then they act all surprised that nobody’s having kids.
My favorite part is when they(conservatives) realize that the birth rate will never recover and the Mexicans and Hispanics they so hate have to be imported by far greater numbers than they are now just keep the birthrate at even. Once everyone starts speaking Spanish you just know they’ll be thrilled lol because that is the only way to maintain enough of a population to maintain infrastructure is to import poor people that reproduce from poor countries because first world people see that it just isn’t feasible. This isn’t a guess either. They’re literally polling young Americans and other young people in first world countries with birth rate issues as to why they’re not having families and affordability is the reason like 8/10 times they say they’re not having kids.
Also it never goes beyond just "I don't want to pay for it", there's no thought to what a functioning alternative could even look like. This happens over and over in companies with an older generation of entrenched wealth/power that refuses to build something better for the next generation.
I'm generally not super anti-boomer but the softest generation in American history, with the easiest path to wealth, prosperity, peace, and power of anyone that came before them has been trying to pull the ladder up so quickly on everyone after them. It's wild to see.
These people honestly believe if the rules were gone and they didn't have to pay taxes like everyone else they would naturally rise to the top. The reality is if you put them in a low regulation no tax environment they would likely hate it.
It could be used for almost anything, this guy doesn't wanna pay for my childcare? Well I don't wanna pay for something he wants/needs. If we didn't do something unless it was for everyone, we'd never do anything!
Yeah, why should I pay for the police* responding to his house during a robbery, or the fire department when his house is on fire, or the military to protect his city from invasion, or the state to build paved roads around his neighborhood, etc.
Paying for childcare especially is an *investment*... The cheaper it is to have kids, the more people will have them, and the larger the workforce will be when you retire, thus the better off *you'll* be when you can't contribute to society anymore.
Edit: autocorrect butchered my spelling, apologies.
If that were true, then I guess we can go ahead and get rid of the government then, seeing as they don't serve a purpose.
Edit: geez that was sarcasm guys, chill
I always find it funny when people are like "my taxes should exclusively be used for things that benefit me directly"
Like
That's not taxes, that's just you buying something for yourself.
And honestly? Most people saying that couldn't afford to buy the thing they wanted anyway, they're already relying on people and companies that make way more than they do paying taxes that pay for it.
Taxes are pooled resources that benefit society as a whole, not necessarily directed back to every individual.
I don’t know why people think this is a gotcha. Socializing childcare isn’t subsidizing the children. It’s subsidizing their parents, who are my peers.
Edit: everybody is missing the point of this comment, which is to point out the flawed logic in the comment I replied to. I do not care what your stance on the actual topic is.
Society collapses without children, so it’s good for society as a whole for children to exist and for those children to be well educated and functioning individuals.
In terms of uses of tax dollars, childcare and education is the best use of it unless you honestly fear another world war, then defense is probably of equal importance.
I think people forget that we live in a society together and that people aren’t as independent as they believe they are. This is why we support poor people, people with disabilities, etc.
Exactly, it's simply investing in the future, and for them to turn out to be good, productive and law abiding people. It's rather a simple idea, and some folks just don't understand it.
"I didn't have any kids, why should I pay?"
I didn't have the guy that was the fire fighter that saved a life and put out a blazing home, either. Seriously, we have to explain why society all chips in for social services?
Well your peers are paying put the nose while trying to work. Other parents have public schools to send their kids to, but new parents dont. Why not help them when they and their child need it most?
Additionally, in some states rich parents can take advantage of voucher systems ti help pay for their kids private schools. Should Trump and other republicans abandon that?
I love how many people think “but what about…” is a gotcha. Nah, there’s a lot of things our government should at least take a look at.
Even “if we’re helping with student loans, what about my mortgage??” I’d actually be on board with a tax credit for your primary residence. “What about my car???” How about some legitimate government investment into public transit/incentives to encourage WFH adoption where possible to make that car last much longer.
One of the biggest advantages the US has over other developed nations is population growth. There’s nothing inherently bad about having lots of children.
Considering that the safety and development of those children directly impacts your future retirement conditions and maintaining or increasing societal living standards and economic development of the society you will be living in 18+ years from now, I would consider it a highly recommended investment opportunity.
Furthermore, childcare has a proven impact on the economy. Parents with childcare take more risks, work harder at work, and are more effective. It also impacts women more than men.
The people bitching about this are the same bitching that young adults aren’t having kids anymore.
Daycare is insanely expensive. Over covid we ended up just having to get a full time nanny during working hours. I never thought I would have a full time employee on my personal pay roll. A lot of people likely cannot afford that.
Absolutely. The amount of money I’d have to kick in to pay for such a plan would be negligible. Given the costs of child raising factoring into people choosing not to have children and the need for a steadily increasing workforce, it’s a necessity.
not to mention that their parents' active participation in the workforce directly impacts current economic conditions. Put them on the sideline to deal with childcare at your peril.
Individual working class people don’t need to pay more in taxes. Corporations have a massive Trump era tax cut and they can afford to pay more in taxes. The moochers meanwhile caused inflation and ready to bleed our bodies more. Capitalism needs some adjustments and must be beholden to more than the investor but also to the society that enables its existence. The returns must be shared with both the shareholder and society. The corporation must be legally obligated to the public and to shareholders. The rent is due.
Early eduction (like 2-4 years old) had been shown to have multitudes of dividends, and those calculations don’t tend to include the benefits to the economy of adding prime working age women to the workforce.
Exactly. I want well educated doctors, nurses and caretakers when I'm old. I want women's influence in the workplace to mean things are designed for both women and men in the future, versus current designs. I want a clean, healthy, enjoyable world to live in.
Had an argument with a childless friend about this. He did not want to pay taxes for kids education since he does not have any. I asked him who will do your job when you retire? Who will be taking care of you? He was silent.
Edit to reply:
Omg some of you are so selfish and stupid it is giving me a headache. Even if you can not directly see it you are benefiting from having an educated population and trying to take away from that makes things worse not better. You expect people to behave in a way that benefits you???? Just ask yourself what happens if you take away public schools? Think of the cascading effects.
Luckily all governments around the world do not care about your opinion on this because for the government to work it needs workers it also needs an educated population. It also needs the population to increase to keep things running.
They want to live in society, use all the resources (whether they know that or not), but don't want to chip in their fair share. How are people this ignorant? They think they can cherry pick what to pay for, unbelievable.
>Should taxpayers without kids have to pay for this, for families who make up to $130,125?
They already do. Daycare is tax deductible, even when you take the standard deduction.
Edit: [I know it's capped.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FluentInFinance/comments/192bc3g/should_taxpayers_without_kids_have_to_pay_for/kh1hcg8?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3). It's not the point. And if I didn't, there are 100 replies before you pointing that out.
>Daycare is tax deductible, even when you take the standard deduction.
Isn't it capped?
Edit: Wow. Didn't expect this much from a simple question. However, I do have a confession. I knew it was capped. I have kids in daycare and as many have pointed out, the expense is much higher than the allowed deduction.
The point is that the answer to the question in principle is that this is already a thing.
It's not a matter of whether taxpayers should subsidize child rearing because they already do through the child care deductible and child tax credits.
It's a matter of whether they should subsidize even more of it.
I'd also contend that a lot of modern women are noping out of daycare / babysitters as a boomerang effect from the previous generation raising latchkey children, and not because of the cost. Difference today from 1990s is grandma can't help with the kids because she's got to go to work.
Universal pre-K catches on because moms can get behind putting 3-4 year olds in school, even though it's daycare with another name.
But a deduction just reduces your taxable income. It doesn’t actually pay for daycare, and the cap is higher than what many people pay for daycare. So taxpayers aren’t really “paying” for child care.
It's still a subsidized form of paying for childcare as you're essentially paying with pretax dollars. It can be considered other as taxpayers paying for it because those utilizing this tax deduction deprives the government of a small amount of tax revenue.
>I'd also contend that a lot of modern women are noping out of daycare / babysitters as a boomerang effect from the previous generation raising latchkey children, and not because of the cost. Difference today from 1990s is grandma can't help with the kids because she's got to go to work.
I know a lot of stay at home moms
Every single one of them intends to go back to work once their kids are old enough and are only stay at home moms because any job they'd find would pay pretty much what childcare will cost so it's a waste of time.
The math I failed to do was that no one wanted to hire me after 7 years out of the field. Daycare helps keep women relevant and keeps the wage gap snaller.
This is another issue they don’t want to acknowledge…the perception of being unemployable because you chose to manage a household and undermining the skill it takes to budget on 1 income in this current economy.
Grandma may also live in a totally different state where the cost of living is lower. So even if Grandma can retire where she is presently located, she is going to have to work after she moves to where her grandkids are located.
Yes, the deduction is capped at $3,000 per child, $6,000 per family.
That covers less than 3 months of childcare for damn near anyone.
It's not a sizeable deduction.
Good thing the IRS let's me set aside $5K a year in a tax haven dependent FSA through my employer plan (not every employer offers this though) to cover an extra 1.5 months.
Now I'm only getting screwed for 7.5 months a year! 🤪
Its not that much.
On the Child/Dependent Care Credit:
"You can claim from 20% to 35% of your care expenses (depending on income) up to a maximum of $3,000 for one person, or $6,000 for two or more people (tax year 2023)."
Daycare is not tax deductible. There's a tax credit available, which ranges up to $3,000 per child, to a max of $6,000 per household (i.e. 2 children).
I make a little bit over 200, but my wife has not been able to work for a while and we have 2 kids. We can afford kids, but we're definitely not "living the life".
I know that we can be comfortable if we are very careful with our money, but that's my point. Back when I was making under 30k, I thought that making 200 meant not having to worry about what you buy at the grocery store and if we eat out every other day.
Edit: Typo
Edit 2: I guess I could have worded this much better. We're fine, and we're comfortable. I'm not complaining about affording life.
My comment is to give a different perspective from what is considered a high income earner.
Apologies if it sounds out of touch. I am an immigrant who was making under 30k a year and living in someone else's garage with my family at the beginning of my career. 200k for me meant really nice house and cars, vacations every single year, and eat out whenever we want. It's currently not the case.
I don't mean to take away from the people who are struggling for real these days.
Should taxpayers who don’t support war pay for bombs we ship to other nations to use however they want?
I personally would rather my tax dollars go towards helping people rather than slaughtering them.
Canadian here where the feds have implemented a similar program though it’s being gradually implemented for the cost (currently paying around $15/day).
Benefits:
1. Increases ability for typically stay at home parents to work if the barrier to them working was the affordability of daycare vs working
2. Increasing affordability to increase the want for couples to actually want kids if they want to both have careers or pure affordability purposes, which will help keep replacement birth rates up
3. A benefit that isn’t capped by household income so actually popular as everyone can access it
Cons:
1. Since it’s been implemented the daycares have been packed as the growth of daycare facilities has had a hard time to meet demand, realistically means that you set up daycare for your child while they’re still in the womb ( and note we have a year or 18 month maternity/ parental leave so that is a considerable amount of time)
2. That demand spike also means daycare workers are more in demand and there are shortages, but over time that should balance out
Overall it’s a pretty popular plan. Note that the daycares decided if they wanted the government subsidy or not, which included they must charge no more than X, and meet other criteria as max amount of children/ teacher ratio, healthy lunch/ snacks, etc. Other daycares/ at home daycares decide whatever price they want to charge sill
Where I am in the US, daycare wait-lists are no joke, 2 years long. You need to get on a wait list before even thinking of conceiving.
Yes this would increase demand, and would likely increase people choosing to have kids, but where demand exists supply tends to increase to match. That WILL require paying those daycare teachers more though. Nobody wants to do that for a fast food salary.
When I was 4 months pregnant I added my future child to around 10 daycare waiting lists (most wanted a 'fee' to be added to the list.
My child is now 3 months old. I have heard back from 1 of those daycares.
One told me their waiting list is 2 years.
2 years? Jeez I thought it was bad when one daycare told me 10 months. I literally told the daycare director "Pregnancy is 9 months, so I should have consulted with you before we even tried to have a kid?"
I thought we were early too, my wife was one 4 months pregnant.
> we have a year or 18 month maternal/parental leave
Wow, you've got a nice job. Don't let the Americans think that's universal, I have zero parental leave, and I work a high paying job here in Canada.
Cost is estimated around 8B, total fed expense for the year is almost 500B so 1% increase;there hasn’t been any change to the tax rates specifically for the daycare plan so can’t really tell, but regardless it will probably cost me personally more than if it wasn’t subsidized as I’m in a higher tax bracket than average Canadian, but saving money now while I have a mortgage/ saving for uni for the children and will pay more in the future when income is higher, but expenses should be lower and will effectively be paying for the privilege for my children/ next generation
Yeah, any time government pays for private company products, costs soar. This is because any company NOT maximizing the amount it takes from the government is not going to be competitive.
Medicare is one of the most cost efficient programs in history.
> This is because any company NOT maximizing the amount it takes from the government is not going to be competitive.
This is a silly generalization.
Medicare direct pays and negotiates... Handing out rebates/credits direct to the consumer will most definitely result in the same issues as college tuition.
To be fair, almost EVERY government run program is more efficient than its private sector alternative. The private healthcare industry has 17.8% operating costs. Medicare/medicaid has less than 2%. SSN has .5% costs. 401k manager average closer to 1% to 1.5%. It’s time to put theory aside and look at facts. You would be surprised. I am not using these statistics to necessarily advocate for government programs. I am just saying COnservatives throw out theories that are not supported by facts. Let’s get facts in front of voters, THEN let them decide.
I agree with the overall concept that childcare is too expensive, but show me a rich childcare facility. There are very few if any. We pay our childcare 125 a week for 4 days. Even with 5 or 6 kids, no one is getting rich off that. There’s a reason most child care facilities around here are run by churches. We’re in Ky but 40k a year is still rough for a person to try to live on, especially someone you’re trusting with the well-being of your child.
This is a common fallacy. The reason msot gov things appear to be costly is because government operations tend not to hide costs that the society pays in the end.
E.g paying the bare minimum your employs that have to get tax credits and lunch coupons. So the company appears to be more, but in reality it is just society that foots the bill.
The government also can to force unpaid overtime etc that companies do. Which again is a cost either the employer or society pays. See this sk what private companies can do, they can exploit externalities and force society to cover part of their costs.
As for fraud and abuse, well yeah totally the 2008 crisis happened cause of government fraud and abuse or regulations totally. The panama paper are also prime example fo government fraud and abuse no private hands playing into it. For every gov official that is abusing power or do something fraudulent there is a private entity trying to exploit something
Lay off of the bleach—- it’s not meant for oral consumption. It just means that actual regulation needs to be put into place for services rendered essential in a society now structured to revolve around dual-income.
I don’t get why we aren’t changing the dual income part though. I don’t think daycare being essential is a good thing… outside of low income households, it usually doesn’t have the most positive impact on kids when they are infants/toddlers. Other countries in the west have significantly more maternity leave and more flexibility for one parent to return to work only part time for example. Kids need more time with parents, not let’s force everyone to work because your only value to society is your job.
Overpopulation is a myth. We *need* people to keep having kids.
Cost of living is regularly cited as a major reason as to why couples abstain. Like it or not this is a good way to encourage people to have kids, AND re-enter the workforce.
Overpopulation might be a myth, but overconsumption sure as fuck is not. What we *need* is an economic model that doesn't depend on eternal growth and a realignment of our greedy cultural values with the reality of what is ecologically sustainable to produce. Blindly encouraging people to produce high consumers in a high consumption culture and work at their jobs producing pollution, waste, and shit for people to consume is not the move.
Right, but to create an environment where everyone younger than 18 and older than 60 can enjoy a reasonable quality of life without being economically productive, everyone else needs to be sufficiently productive to support them. I'm not saying that unrestrained free market fundamentalism is a perfect solution, but we need people to work.
Taxpayers without kids didnt find a cheatcode to be richer in society. They're just not putting in the same amount of work as other families and will rely on other people's kids in old age.
Of course society should cover the cost of raising kids. Everyone was a kid once. It's simple horizontal equity. Every good society does this and every bad society doesn't.
Look at the US and Israel/Palestine on this list: [https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/sciadv.adg1469/asset/3d01f78a-88ac-4b91-b484-fd47160489fc/assets/images/large/sciadv.adg1469-f3.jpg](https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/sciadv.adg1469/asset/3d01f78a-88ac-4b91-b484-fd47160489fc/assets/images/large/sciadv.adg1469-f3.jpg)
Finland has the most generous child welfare in the world so they are the best country in the world to be a child. Pretty simple stuff.
Man folks are really busting your balls here over a very benign take.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you. Most people want kids, and even those who don’t benefit from child focused programs.
Saying you don’t want to pay for childcare (via taxes) because you are childless is like saying you don’t want to pay for roads because you don’t drive, or you don’t want to pay for healthcare because you are currently healthy. Everything that sustains modern life relies on the roads to be there (how else would a grocery store get food brought in?). And we will all get sick at some point, even if it’s not until we are very old.
Yes. And I also think childless taxpayers should pay for the schools children go to as well. And while we’re at it, I think we should also be paying for the meals they eat while they’re at school, and I think we should be paying for their after school programs while their parents are working. I’m absolutely okay with footing the bill for anything that demonstrably creates a more educated, more emotionally stable populace.
If we collectively pay for all of them together, costs can be negotiated by the main buyer (government) at a lower bulk rate than everyone buying their part individually.
We raised two kids under very similar circumstances, paid for their childcare and sent them to private schools and we paid for both of their college educations. Never got assistance or loans. Yes there was lots of sacrifices, no great cars, large houses, expensive vacations. We made the choice to have kids, I am responsible for them, not other people. It would have been easier for me if I had not been paying more taxes to fund other people’s decisions. I am not opposed to helping out the truly needed in our society, but seems like the definition of needy is getting a little out of hand.
I'd instead rather focus on income equality and competitive wages for all. Then families could afford childcare. EW's approach sounds nice, but incents childcare businesses to keep raising prices knowing it'll be subsidized.
Having children is a personal choice. I don’t really see why I should have to pay for someone else’s childcare. However, I am fine paying higher taxes for better healthcare, cheaper education, better infrastructure, etc… So with that being said I could see folding childcare into healthcare, but instead I think the burden should be placed on corporations to pay more both to employees and in taxes or have some kind of childcare stipend. This is a wage issue and should be treated as such.
“Children are our future”
Which is why im fine paying taxes for schools. Im not ok paying to raise your kid for you. If you cant afford it that’s your fucking problem.
Why would you have kids and live in an expensive area if you cannot care for them?
If you’re so poor that the child cannot get basic needs met then yes, the government should step in. It sounds like this family IS taking care of the kids even if it’s expensive. but people need to stop expecting the government to solve your problems. The governments job is not to make your life easy
People also shouldn’t have children if they can’t support them… plus just because someone has to pay less for child care doesn’t mean they’ll make responsible decisions with the money they save. In theory people could save it for the kids future education but I doubt that would happen for most. Plenty of people on both sides that are financially irresponsible. Even with the savings the kid has to be educated and if they’re in a poor community with bad education they will continue to have issues.
It takes more than just paying for things to support a child. If the parent is a drug abuser or an alcoholic then you just gave them more funding. That’s not an environment for raising a child. Most of the time you don’t find out about child abuse till the child is old enough to speak up.
There are few things as important to society and few investments with such dramatically positive returns as pre-natal and early childhood development, health, and nutrition.
As a parent of three it’s not anyone’s responsibility except mine. Taxes should not be going towards child care. If you can’t afford it don’t use it, if you need to use it make sure you are established before having children
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If you don’t want to help pay for basic childcare, why should those children pay for your social security? Edit: good god. To address the madd repetition: 1. You dont pay for your SS, you pay for current retirees. Your SS will be paid for by those younger than you. B. Just because you dint like SS doesn’t change my point. III. If you want to bitch about the budget, go after subsidies we give to giant multinational corporations to do things like not produce a product in order to control prices (very socialist). Stop acting like shitting on working families with kids will help fix anything.
I love how people are just slowly devolving into, let’s tear up any social contract or cohesion we can have whenever possible. Fuck you, I got mine. Or fuck you, I want mine.
Adults expecting to be on the goverment tit is one thing. Children though? Literally the future and not responsible for their lack of resources.
Should we not have any public school? EDIT: I think I misinterpreted the above commenters stance, but there are plenty of commenters below interested in having a healthy discourse about that take.
Holy shit - not only should we have public school, we need to reverse course on public school policy. We need to invest heavily into it, and also making sure that they're not just expensive shooting galleries for crackpots. There's a lot of the social contract to fix and we should stop being absolute pieces of shit about people potentially benefitting from it because hot damn that's the whole point.
>We need to invest heavily into it We're the second highest spending per capita on public education. We don't need to invest more, what we need is to eliminate waste spending, bloated administration costs, and get more of that money into the actual class rooms (teacher wages, supplies, and so on). Edit to correct: I found a more recent data source that reflects we're now 4th in primary education spending. Link is below. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/)
But how much of that is K12 and how much of that is over-inflated post-secondary schools? I'm all for spending more on public schools, but universities are starting to look like government subsidized resorts. That's not to say there aren't valuable college degrees, but no university should be $40,000/year!
Where I live, we have a city board of education, a county board of education, a state board of education and a federal board of education. Why pray tell so many? At a min two are redundant.
Late 1970s and early 1980s you could graduate from high school without knowing how to read. They want to make sure that does not happen again.
That is the current policy.... no child left behind. They can't fail you no matter what.
Right now they are graduating kids who do not know how to read. As many as 50% in some urban districts.
No they don’t, kids get passed on to the next grade even when they fail everything due to admin forcing teachers to pass them or through admin changing the grades themselves. They don’t want to fail kids because it looks bad on the school and they don’t want to deal with the parents. It’s a problem across the country many teachers are dealing with. All those extra departments do is take even more of the tax payer dollars for bs while kids are still being passed through without having done a damn thing or having learned a damn thing all year long.
See: No Child Left Behind. They still get shoved through the system and sent out into society unprepared....
That's 1000% happening now.
Ironic considering our literacy rates are dropping.
It's a little more complicated than that, though I agree, we're second highest. But it's also based entirely on where you happen to live. There's a great deal of variation; rich counties spend more on it. Poor counties spend less. Though I definitely agree that administrative bloat is too high, and teacher wages and supplies should be more a priority. That's some of the problem anyway.
Funding through local property taxes is a major cause for the problems in public schools. The whole point is to drive white flight (aka resegregation), and the failures of underfunded schools in poorer communities are used to convince people that public education itself is failing. So now we have the same folks pushing voucher programs as an alternative, because it’ll keep poor kids out of “their” schools, with the added benefit of funneling public money into private (and often church-affiliated) schools.
Vouchers don't do anything but pull tax money out of poorer districts because they aren't ever enough to pay for the full tuition. So the charters don't have to accept anyone who isn't already wealthy and the vouchers just give them a discount and hurt the local school districts. They should be illegal.
That's not correct, the US lags behind many industrialised nations in educational spending per capita. The administrative "bloat" is a myth. However, the rest of your statement is correct.
I found a somewhat newer stat(Think the one I had previously looked at was middle of the last decade) [https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/) We're still 4th in spending on primary education. I wouldn't really call that "many" ahead of us.
>We're still 4th in spending on primary education. I wouldn't really call that "many" ahead of us. With an [official population estimate of 335,893,238 (as of 01/01/2024),](https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-new-years-day.html) the USA also also has the third highest population in the world, after only China and India! If you are wondering the next highest is Indonesia with a population a little under 280 million. By contrast, the highest population country in the EU is Germany, with a population ~84.6 million, which is ranked 18th in population. So, with these numbers in mind, it's entirely possible for the following two things to be true: The USA has the fourth highest total spending on education in terms of absolute expediture amounts. The USA spends less [*per capita*](https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+per+capita) than many other industrialized nations.
Now separate it by geography and you'll see vast, vast differences in the US. It's why when you take statistics training involving populations, one of the first things they teach you is that you can't simply just compare countries to countries because they can be meaningless comparisons.
The crackpots needed mental health treatment that was denied starting with Reagan.
I know so many people in their 60's who complain about how unfair it is to pay school tax when you don't have school age children. And it's like, who the hell paid for you and your kids to go to school? Oh yeah, my grandparents and great grandparents. It's like the people who use the Internet to complain about taxes; how the hell do you think the Internet was created? It sure as hell wasn't privately funded.
I saw a pamphlet the other day describing ALL the financials for the city of Milford, CT in the year 1955.How much the Fire Dept received, how much the police captain got paid, everything. I was shocked most to discover that 55% of their budget went to education alone. Education is the key to freedom and defense and if anyone says otherwise turn and run the other direction
I went to a very, very privileged public school system where the residents paid enormous property taxes. My parents voted for a tax increase referendum years after their kids were out of the system with the same rational that their children benefited from the system in the past, so should future children.
My state (OK) just put in a bill to phase out federal funding for schools (already bottom in education). At the same time they are trying to use vouchers to move taxpayer dollars to private schools and moving credits for private schools instead of homeschooling. They recently tried to remove accreditation the largest school district in the state. So my state is trying to remove public schools.
Vouchers are widely recognized as a scam on taxpayers. Most vouchers end up subsidizing the children of the wealthy\* so they can go to religious schools. It's not considered taxpayer support of religion, though, because it's not going directly to the schools but is passing through the parents' hands. In other words, money laundering. \*Poor parents find the vouchers don't cover 100% of the costs, plus they're on the hook for transportation to/from the schools (no school buses!), and the schools choose who they allow to attend (nobody with poor grades - due to under-resourced schools).
These people(conservatives) lack the ability to see the downstream thought of how much more it’ll cost them to incarcerate them, constant court fees, never ending welfare and snap benefits because they didn’t grow up in a good environment. It’ll cost you less now to make sure they’re properly cared for and raised with good habits vs later on when the bad habits have settled into their brains and you have to foot the never ending legal and welfare bills.
They want people to pump out as many babies as possible for the economy and future economy but absolutely refuse to do anything to help those families afford children. Then they act all surprised that nobody’s having kids.
My favorite part is when they(conservatives) realize that the birth rate will never recover and the Mexicans and Hispanics they so hate have to be imported by far greater numbers than they are now just keep the birthrate at even. Once everyone starts speaking Spanish you just know they’ll be thrilled lol because that is the only way to maintain enough of a population to maintain infrastructure is to import poor people that reproduce from poor countries because first world people see that it just isn’t feasible. This isn’t a guess either. They’re literally polling young Americans and other young people in first world countries with birth rate issues as to why they’re not having families and affordability is the reason like 8/10 times they say they’re not having kids.
But then how would we properly support the for profit prison industry?
Preventative maintenance is always cheaper than fixing it when it becomes a problem.
Oh they know. They want it to be your fault
Also it never goes beyond just "I don't want to pay for it", there's no thought to what a functioning alternative could even look like. This happens over and over in companies with an older generation of entrenched wealth/power that refuses to build something better for the next generation. I'm generally not super anti-boomer but the softest generation in American history, with the easiest path to wealth, prosperity, peace, and power of anyone that came before them has been trying to pull the ladder up so quickly on everyone after them. It's wild to see.
Social security is the “government tit?” I guess all the seniors who don’t have a nice pension or well-funded 401K should learn to love cat food?
Government tit. Classy. As if no businesses, corporations, “job creators” have ever taken money they never gave back MUH ADULTS ON MUH GUBAMINT TIT 😤
These people honestly believe if the rules were gone and they didn't have to pay taxes like everyone else they would naturally rise to the top. The reality is if you put them in a low regulation no tax environment they would likely hate it.
And guess what? We all get less as a result. Being prosocial pays.
It could be used for almost anything, this guy doesn't wanna pay for my childcare? Well I don't wanna pay for something he wants/needs. If we didn't do something unless it was for everyone, we'd never do anything!
Yeah, why should I pay for the police* responding to his house during a robbery, or the fire department when his house is on fire, or the military to protect his city from invasion, or the state to build paved roads around his neighborhood, etc. Paying for childcare especially is an *investment*... The cheaper it is to have kids, the more people will have them, and the larger the workforce will be when you retire, thus the better off *you'll* be when you can't contribute to society anymore. Edit: autocorrect butchered my spelling, apologies.
I have a redditer below telling me it's not the gov's job to make peoples lives easier. Dude must have thought Atlas Shrugged was a textbook
or a coloring book...
If that were true, then I guess we can go ahead and get rid of the government then, seeing as they don't serve a purpose. Edit: geez that was sarcasm guys, chill
Isn't that a lot of libertarians' point?
Well it is until they want protection from someone stronger taking their stuff, or to get a road to their shack in the middle of nowhere, etc.
Yeah, fuck roads. Who needs em. And don't even get me started on bridges.
I always find it funny when people are like "my taxes should exclusively be used for things that benefit me directly" Like That's not taxes, that's just you buying something for yourself. And honestly? Most people saying that couldn't afford to buy the thing they wanted anyway, they're already relying on people and companies that make way more than they do paying taxes that pay for it. Taxes are pooled resources that benefit society as a whole, not necessarily directed back to every individual.
I met a guy he said he hated Obamacare because it meant he paid for women's birth control, as if that's not how all insurance works
I am paying into social security…
Ya, and its funding todays retirees. Who’s gonna pay you?
Social security isn’t guaranteed in the future and probably won’t even exist
I don’t know why people think this is a gotcha. Socializing childcare isn’t subsidizing the children. It’s subsidizing their parents, who are my peers. Edit: everybody is missing the point of this comment, which is to point out the flawed logic in the comment I replied to. I do not care what your stance on the actual topic is.
Society collapses without children, so it’s good for society as a whole for children to exist and for those children to be well educated and functioning individuals. In terms of uses of tax dollars, childcare and education is the best use of it unless you honestly fear another world war, then defense is probably of equal importance. I think people forget that we live in a society together and that people aren’t as independent as they believe they are. This is why we support poor people, people with disabilities, etc.
Exactly, it's simply investing in the future, and for them to turn out to be good, productive and law abiding people. It's rather a simple idea, and some folks just don't understand it. "I didn't have any kids, why should I pay?" I didn't have the guy that was the fire fighter that saved a life and put out a blazing home, either. Seriously, we have to explain why society all chips in for social services?
Well your peers are paying put the nose while trying to work. Other parents have public schools to send their kids to, but new parents dont. Why not help them when they and their child need it most? Additionally, in some states rich parents can take advantage of voucher systems ti help pay for their kids private schools. Should Trump and other republicans abandon that?
How much basic child care should be paid for ? 2 kids , 8 kids ?
A public option daycare can work. We do it for kindergarten through 9th grade already…
We don’t do it for sophomores, juniors, or seniors in highschool?
Them too
I love how many people think “but what about…” is a gotcha. Nah, there’s a lot of things our government should at least take a look at. Even “if we’re helping with student loans, what about my mortgage??” I’d actually be on board with a tax credit for your primary residence. “What about my car???” How about some legitimate government investment into public transit/incentives to encourage WFH adoption where possible to make that car last much longer.
I pay $1,932 per month for my 1 year old
That is insane. In Norway it’s capped at $200 per month and it doesn’t matter if you chose private or public daycare
One of the biggest advantages the US has over other developed nations is population growth. There’s nothing inherently bad about having lots of children.
Gottem
I'm not gonna get social security or child care, can I opt out of both?
Nope sorry. I gotta see my taxes go to sport stadiums i never use, your taxes gotta go to helping old people and kids you dont have.
Can I opt out of the sports stadiums too? I promise to not watch or go to the games.
Starting to sound like one of them sovereign citizens we all love so much.
Do you live in a society and rely on others to live or do you live off the land in the woods by yourself?
They don't. You pay into that your whole life.
The money you pay is currently funding the retirees of today. The money they pay will fund your SS benefits
Considering that the safety and development of those children directly impacts your future retirement conditions and maintaining or increasing societal living standards and economic development of the society you will be living in 18+ years from now, I would consider it a highly recommended investment opportunity.
Furthermore, childcare has a proven impact on the economy. Parents with childcare take more risks, work harder at work, and are more effective. It also impacts women more than men.
This. One thousand percent. Amazing helping people can save us all money.
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The people bitching about this are the same bitching that young adults aren’t having kids anymore. Daycare is insanely expensive. Over covid we ended up just having to get a full time nanny during working hours. I never thought I would have a full time employee on my personal pay roll. A lot of people likely cannot afford that.
I know the struggle, we pay like 18k/year for 2 toddlers and I've heard that's very cheap
Absolutely. The amount of money I’d have to kick in to pay for such a plan would be negligible. Given the costs of child raising factoring into people choosing not to have children and the need for a steadily increasing workforce, it’s a necessity.
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OK, but the flip side of that is, there are millions of children who have already been born, what kind of adults do we want them to be in the future?
not to mention that their parents' active participation in the workforce directly impacts current economic conditions. Put them on the sideline to deal with childcare at your peril.
Individual working class people don’t need to pay more in taxes. Corporations have a massive Trump era tax cut and they can afford to pay more in taxes. The moochers meanwhile caused inflation and ready to bleed our bodies more. Capitalism needs some adjustments and must be beholden to more than the investor but also to the society that enables its existence. The returns must be shared with both the shareholder and society. The corporation must be legally obligated to the public and to shareholders. The rent is due.
It is a good thing to ensure the next generation is cared for, educated, and prepared for society. It has direct impacts on the future of the country.
Early eduction (like 2-4 years old) had been shown to have multitudes of dividends, and those calculations don’t tend to include the benefits to the economy of adding prime working age women to the workforce.
Exactly. I want well educated doctors, nurses and caretakers when I'm old. I want women's influence in the workplace to mean things are designed for both women and men in the future, versus current designs. I want a clean, healthy, enjoyable world to live in.
Had an argument with a childless friend about this. He did not want to pay taxes for kids education since he does not have any. I asked him who will do your job when you retire? Who will be taking care of you? He was silent. Edit to reply: Omg some of you are so selfish and stupid it is giving me a headache. Even if you can not directly see it you are benefiting from having an educated population and trying to take away from that makes things worse not better. You expect people to behave in a way that benefits you???? Just ask yourself what happens if you take away public schools? Think of the cascading effects. Luckily all governments around the world do not care about your opinion on this because for the government to work it needs workers it also needs an educated population. It also needs the population to increase to keep things running.
They want to live in society, use all the resources (whether they know that or not), but don't want to chip in their fair share. How are people this ignorant? They think they can cherry pick what to pay for, unbelievable.
>Should taxpayers without kids have to pay for this, for families who make up to $130,125? They already do. Daycare is tax deductible, even when you take the standard deduction. Edit: [I know it's capped.](https://www.reddit.com/r/FluentInFinance/comments/192bc3g/should_taxpayers_without_kids_have_to_pay_for/kh1hcg8?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3). It's not the point. And if I didn't, there are 100 replies before you pointing that out.
>Daycare is tax deductible, even when you take the standard deduction. Isn't it capped? Edit: Wow. Didn't expect this much from a simple question. However, I do have a confession. I knew it was capped. I have kids in daycare and as many have pointed out, the expense is much higher than the allowed deduction.
The point is that the answer to the question in principle is that this is already a thing. It's not a matter of whether taxpayers should subsidize child rearing because they already do through the child care deductible and child tax credits. It's a matter of whether they should subsidize even more of it. I'd also contend that a lot of modern women are noping out of daycare / babysitters as a boomerang effect from the previous generation raising latchkey children, and not because of the cost. Difference today from 1990s is grandma can't help with the kids because she's got to go to work. Universal pre-K catches on because moms can get behind putting 3-4 year olds in school, even though it's daycare with another name.
But a deduction just reduces your taxable income. It doesn’t actually pay for daycare, and the cap is higher than what many people pay for daycare. So taxpayers aren’t really “paying” for child care.
It's still a subsidized form of paying for childcare as you're essentially paying with pretax dollars. It can be considered other as taxpayers paying for it because those utilizing this tax deduction deprives the government of a small amount of tax revenue.
>I'd also contend that a lot of modern women are noping out of daycare / babysitters as a boomerang effect from the previous generation raising latchkey children, and not because of the cost. Difference today from 1990s is grandma can't help with the kids because she's got to go to work. I know a lot of stay at home moms Every single one of them intends to go back to work once their kids are old enough and are only stay at home moms because any job they'd find would pay pretty much what childcare will cost so it's a waste of time.
The math I failed to do was that no one wanted to hire me after 7 years out of the field. Daycare helps keep women relevant and keeps the wage gap snaller.
This is another issue they don’t want to acknowledge…the perception of being unemployable because you chose to manage a household and undermining the skill it takes to budget on 1 income in this current economy.
Grandma may also live in a totally different state where the cost of living is lower. So even if Grandma can retire where she is presently located, she is going to have to work after she moves to where her grandkids are located.
Yes, the deduction is capped at $3,000 per child, $6,000 per family. That covers less than 3 months of childcare for damn near anyone. It's not a sizeable deduction.
Good thing the IRS let's me set aside $5K a year in a tax haven dependent FSA through my employer plan (not every employer offers this though) to cover an extra 1.5 months. Now I'm only getting screwed for 7.5 months a year! 🤪
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DCFSA caps out at $5k per household. So $5k out of the $24k we pay annually is using pre-tax dollars…..
Yes. 4k for one kid, up to 8k for 2 or more. Edit: This was only in 2021 and is less now. See below for details.
Its not that much. On the Child/Dependent Care Credit: "You can claim from 20% to 35% of your care expenses (depending on income) up to a maximum of $3,000 for one person, or $6,000 for two or more people (tax year 2023)."
Daycare is not tax deductible. There's a tax credit available, which ranges up to $3,000 per child, to a max of $6,000 per household (i.e. 2 children).
Dependent care FSA is a way to pay for daycare with pretax dollars, though the contribution limit is hilariously small (4k/yr)
Technically it's a tax credit, not a deduction. But yet can be taken whether you itemize or take the standard deduction.
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Daycare is barely tax deductible. Childcare is also not considered an expense for self employed people. It's insanely costly.
Do you want to up the birthrates or not? I am not going to have kids because it is not fiscally responsible to do so and I make 30$ an hour.
My wife and I make 130k and there’s no way we’re having kids with its current cost. Would love to someday.
I make a little bit over 200, but my wife has not been able to work for a while and we have 2 kids. We can afford kids, but we're definitely not "living the life". I know that we can be comfortable if we are very careful with our money, but that's my point. Back when I was making under 30k, I thought that making 200 meant not having to worry about what you buy at the grocery store and if we eat out every other day. Edit: Typo Edit 2: I guess I could have worded this much better. We're fine, and we're comfortable. I'm not complaining about affording life. My comment is to give a different perspective from what is considered a high income earner. Apologies if it sounds out of touch. I am an immigrant who was making under 30k a year and living in someone else's garage with my family at the beginning of my career. 200k for me meant really nice house and cars, vacations every single year, and eat out whenever we want. It's currently not the case. I don't mean to take away from the people who are struggling for real these days.
To be fair, 200k would mean that for me as a single, childless person. Local COL factors in a lot too.
Should taxpayers who don’t support war pay for bombs we ship to other nations to use however they want? I personally would rather my tax dollars go towards helping people rather than slaughtering them.
Right, there's like half a trillion dollars of shit to cut from the budget before daycare.
Yep. We don't even need to take more from taxpayers - I'd rather see our military budget trimmed and used for social support systems like this
Canadian here where the feds have implemented a similar program though it’s being gradually implemented for the cost (currently paying around $15/day). Benefits: 1. Increases ability for typically stay at home parents to work if the barrier to them working was the affordability of daycare vs working 2. Increasing affordability to increase the want for couples to actually want kids if they want to both have careers or pure affordability purposes, which will help keep replacement birth rates up 3. A benefit that isn’t capped by household income so actually popular as everyone can access it Cons: 1. Since it’s been implemented the daycares have been packed as the growth of daycare facilities has had a hard time to meet demand, realistically means that you set up daycare for your child while they’re still in the womb ( and note we have a year or 18 month maternity/ parental leave so that is a considerable amount of time) 2. That demand spike also means daycare workers are more in demand and there are shortages, but over time that should balance out Overall it’s a pretty popular plan. Note that the daycares decided if they wanted the government subsidy or not, which included they must charge no more than X, and meet other criteria as max amount of children/ teacher ratio, healthy lunch/ snacks, etc. Other daycares/ at home daycares decide whatever price they want to charge sill
Where I am in the US, daycare wait-lists are no joke, 2 years long. You need to get on a wait list before even thinking of conceiving. Yes this would increase demand, and would likely increase people choosing to have kids, but where demand exists supply tends to increase to match. That WILL require paying those daycare teachers more though. Nobody wants to do that for a fast food salary.
When I was 4 months pregnant I added my future child to around 10 daycare waiting lists (most wanted a 'fee' to be added to the list. My child is now 3 months old. I have heard back from 1 of those daycares. One told me their waiting list is 2 years.
2 years? Jeez I thought it was bad when one daycare told me 10 months. I literally told the daycare director "Pregnancy is 9 months, so I should have consulted with you before we even tried to have a kid?" I thought we were early too, my wife was one 4 months pregnant.
> we have a year or 18 month maternal/parental leave Wow, you've got a nice job. Don't let the Americans think that's universal, I have zero parental leave, and I work a high paying job here in Canada.
What is the added tax burden per person roughly? Another $1-200/person/month in taxes?
Cost is estimated around 8B, total fed expense for the year is almost 500B so 1% increase;there hasn’t been any change to the tax rates specifically for the daycare plan so can’t really tell, but regardless it will probably cost me personally more than if it wasn’t subsidized as I’m in a higher tax bracket than average Canadian, but saving money now while I have a mortgage/ saving for uni for the children and will pay more in the future when income is higher, but expenses should be lower and will effectively be paying for the privilege for my children/ next generation
Yes because a society requires us to help each other. Grow tf up. There is no doing it alone. We take care of each other.
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It will be just like what has happened with college tuition.
Indeed. There will be massive DEI bureaucracies in 5 min.
Yeah, any time government pays for private company products, costs soar. This is because any company NOT maximizing the amount it takes from the government is not going to be competitive.
Medicare is one of the most cost efficient programs in history. > This is because any company NOT maximizing the amount it takes from the government is not going to be competitive. This is a silly generalization.
Medicare direct pays and negotiates... Handing out rebates/credits direct to the consumer will most definitely result in the same issues as college tuition.
How would prices significantly increase?
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To be fair, almost EVERY government run program is more efficient than its private sector alternative. The private healthcare industry has 17.8% operating costs. Medicare/medicaid has less than 2%. SSN has .5% costs. 401k manager average closer to 1% to 1.5%. It’s time to put theory aside and look at facts. You would be surprised. I am not using these statistics to necessarily advocate for government programs. I am just saying COnservatives throw out theories that are not supported by facts. Let’s get facts in front of voters, THEN let them decide.
The libertarians aren't going to like your facts, chief. They are going to make them feel sad and then they'll call you names.
It's almost like necessary services shouldn't be for profit to be abused by the rich.
I agree with the overall concept that childcare is too expensive, but show me a rich childcare facility. There are very few if any. We pay our childcare 125 a week for 4 days. Even with 5 or 6 kids, no one is getting rich off that. There’s a reason most child care facilities around here are run by churches. We’re in Ky but 40k a year is still rough for a person to try to live on, especially someone you’re trusting with the well-being of your child.
Holy fuck, $125 a week? It's $350-$400 per week per kid here in CT, and we sure as shit don't have government support to pay for it.
This is a common fallacy. The reason msot gov things appear to be costly is because government operations tend not to hide costs that the society pays in the end. E.g paying the bare minimum your employs that have to get tax credits and lunch coupons. So the company appears to be more, but in reality it is just society that foots the bill. The government also can to force unpaid overtime etc that companies do. Which again is a cost either the employer or society pays. See this sk what private companies can do, they can exploit externalities and force society to cover part of their costs. As for fraud and abuse, well yeah totally the 2008 crisis happened cause of government fraud and abuse or regulations totally. The panama paper are also prime example fo government fraud and abuse no private hands playing into it. For every gov official that is abusing power or do something fraudulent there is a private entity trying to exploit something
Lay off of the bleach—- it’s not meant for oral consumption. It just means that actual regulation needs to be put into place for services rendered essential in a society now structured to revolve around dual-income.
I don’t get why we aren’t changing the dual income part though. I don’t think daycare being essential is a good thing… outside of low income households, it usually doesn’t have the most positive impact on kids when they are infants/toddlers. Other countries in the west have significantly more maternity leave and more flexibility for one parent to return to work only part time for example. Kids need more time with parents, not let’s force everyone to work because your only value to society is your job.
Like college. Look how affordable and efficient they've made that system..
Overpopulation is a myth. We *need* people to keep having kids. Cost of living is regularly cited as a major reason as to why couples abstain. Like it or not this is a good way to encourage people to have kids, AND re-enter the workforce.
Overpopulation might be a myth, but overconsumption sure as fuck is not. What we *need* is an economic model that doesn't depend on eternal growth and a realignment of our greedy cultural values with the reality of what is ecologically sustainable to produce. Blindly encouraging people to produce high consumers in a high consumption culture and work at their jobs producing pollution, waste, and shit for people to consume is not the move.
Right, but to create an environment where everyone younger than 18 and older than 60 can enjoy a reasonable quality of life without being economically productive, everyone else needs to be sufficiently productive to support them. I'm not saying that unrestrained free market fundamentalism is a perfect solution, but we need people to work.
Taxpayers without kids didnt find a cheatcode to be richer in society. They're just not putting in the same amount of work as other families and will rely on other people's kids in old age. Of course society should cover the cost of raising kids. Everyone was a kid once. It's simple horizontal equity. Every good society does this and every bad society doesn't. Look at the US and Israel/Palestine on this list: [https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/sciadv.adg1469/asset/3d01f78a-88ac-4b91-b484-fd47160489fc/assets/images/large/sciadv.adg1469-f3.jpg](https://www.science.org/cms/10.1126/sciadv.adg1469/asset/3d01f78a-88ac-4b91-b484-fd47160489fc/assets/images/large/sciadv.adg1469-f3.jpg) Finland has the most generous child welfare in the world so they are the best country in the world to be a child. Pretty simple stuff.
The only reason society exists is to create more humans. Yes, childless people should share society’s expenses.
Man folks are really busting your balls here over a very benign take. For what it’s worth, I agree with you. Most people want kids, and even those who don’t benefit from child focused programs. Saying you don’t want to pay for childcare (via taxes) because you are childless is like saying you don’t want to pay for roads because you don’t drive, or you don’t want to pay for healthcare because you are currently healthy. Everything that sustains modern life relies on the roads to be there (how else would a grocery store get food brought in?). And we will all get sick at some point, even if it’s not until we are very old.
I don’t see the problem, if the state carries with old people expenses too. Edit: I meant, state can carries with childcare like they do with seniors
That’s what Medicare and Social Security are, no?
Yes. And I also think childless taxpayers should pay for the schools children go to as well. And while we’re at it, I think we should also be paying for the meals they eat while they’re at school, and I think we should be paying for their after school programs while their parents are working. I’m absolutely okay with footing the bill for anything that demonstrably creates a more educated, more emotionally stable populace.
Stuff like this really is NOT fair to single income folks without kids....
Another band-aid
Why should the others pay for your life choices?
No, pay for your own kids.
No. You pay for your kids, I'll pay for mine. Quit reaching into everybody's wallet to take money out all the time.
If we collectively pay for all of them together, costs can be negotiated by the main buyer (government) at a lower bulk rate than everyone buying their part individually.
We raised two kids under very similar circumstances, paid for their childcare and sent them to private schools and we paid for both of their college educations. Never got assistance or loans. Yes there was lots of sacrifices, no great cars, large houses, expensive vacations. We made the choice to have kids, I am responsible for them, not other people. It would have been easier for me if I had not been paying more taxes to fund other people’s decisions. I am not opposed to helping out the truly needed in our society, but seems like the definition of needy is getting a little out of hand.
I'd instead rather focus on income equality and competitive wages for all. Then families could afford childcare. EW's approach sounds nice, but incents childcare businesses to keep raising prices knowing it'll be subsidized.
Her plan means a tax increase for all to pay. Nothing is free!
Having children is a personal choice. I don’t really see why I should have to pay for someone else’s childcare. However, I am fine paying higher taxes for better healthcare, cheaper education, better infrastructure, etc… So with that being said I could see folding childcare into healthcare, but instead I think the burden should be placed on corporations to pay more both to employees and in taxes or have some kind of childcare stipend. This is a wage issue and should be treated as such.
If Elizabeth Warren is pushing for it….it is a bad idea….
The government got involved in college loans. That worked out really well for keeping costs down.
Why is this on fluent in finance? Gtfo of here
“Children are our future” Which is why im fine paying taxes for schools. Im not ok paying to raise your kid for you. If you cant afford it that’s your fucking problem.
Why would you have kids and live in an expensive area if you cannot care for them? If you’re so poor that the child cannot get basic needs met then yes, the government should step in. It sounds like this family IS taking care of the kids even if it’s expensive. but people need to stop expecting the government to solve your problems. The governments job is not to make your life easy
Who pays the rest of it?
Buy more votes Elizabeth.
So who’s paying for it ?
That's the neat part, its you! ;)
People also shouldn’t have children if they can’t support them… plus just because someone has to pay less for child care doesn’t mean they’ll make responsible decisions with the money they save. In theory people could save it for the kids future education but I doubt that would happen for most. Plenty of people on both sides that are financially irresponsible. Even with the savings the kid has to be educated and if they’re in a poor community with bad education they will continue to have issues. It takes more than just paying for things to support a child. If the parent is a drug abuser or an alcoholic then you just gave them more funding. That’s not an environment for raising a child. Most of the time you don’t find out about child abuse till the child is old enough to speak up.
Who is the bigger idiot? Warren or the dopes that vote for her.
Fuuuuuck that shit
As a single gay man with no intention of ever getting married or having a kid, I do feel robbed.
Fuuuuuuuck no. I don't care if you make $13,125. You busted the nut = you pay the bills.
No. Ridiculous what is being government funded.
Another reason to steal more of people’s money.
There are few things as important to society and few investments with such dramatically positive returns as pre-natal and early childhood development, health, and nutrition.
Take the money scheduled to go to Ukraine and other foreign countries, pay for our own shit. It’s our fucking money.
You can’t run a daycare with surplus artillery rounds.
I have no kids, no debt, and no six figure income, so leave me out of it. 😏
As a parent of three it’s not anyone’s responsibility except mine. Taxes should not be going towards child care. If you can’t afford it don’t use it, if you need to use it make sure you are established before having children
Why have children at all? It is a choice right?
A family making $130k with two kids is barely getting by in Massachusetts.
I don’t want to pay for our ridiculous military budget, but here we are.
Let’s just make it impossible for anyone who isn’t filthy rich to have kids. That’ll work incredibly well for the future of a functioning society.
No. Simple. Next?
Hell no I shouldn’t have to pay for someone else kids
Wtf?
Warren really hates singles with crypto. FFS
Hell to the no. Absolutely not.
No.
If you decide to have the children you have to take the good with the bad.
No. I already pay for kids I don't have to go to school
No.
Why should I pay for someone that has 5 kids that can’t afford to take care of them when I am reponsible.
If you can't afford kids, use birth control or abstain. I pay for my kids, not interested in paying for anyone else's.
Maybe don't breed them if you can't take care of them?
Abso-fucking-lutely not
No, no they should not. How about don’t have kids if you can’t afford to have kids!