How do you make child care more affordable?

It’s bias. If Biden had said that they would have roasted him for being old and losing it.

Trump is clearly losing it. You can’t read that and think that his brain is functioning properly because it simply isn’t.

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That’s what they do here in Taiwan, seems to work well. Family takes care of family.

I like the concept of “family takes care of family.” That sounds like a line from Disney’s Lilo & Stitch.

But I don’t think it’s an adequate solution to the economic problem families are facing in America. Everyone but the top % is getting squeezed by the cost of just about everything, and the solution should not be that someone works for free.

Unpaid work as a component in a nation’s economy does not lead to happy people. Would you sign up to start watching someone else’s kids for free on Monday so that the parent can go work 40 hours next week? Giving away 40 hours of your time every week is pretty generous of you.

Trump’s word-salad that go-figure generously interpreted to mean that grandma or grandpa or aunt or uncle would be paid is completely at odds with the MAGA fantasy of rugged individualism. MAGA doesn’t like to give kids free lunch at school, so there’s no way family-sourced childcare would be compensated in America in a Trump plan. That would be “socialism.”

Problem with JD’s comments is that it’s wildly unhelpful. Qualify them with “…and for those who don’t have family who can help” doesn’t obviate the fact that he answered a policy question with a no-shit-sherlock answer. It’s like answering the question of what policy do you propose to prevent drowning by suggesting breathing air and not water. And if that doesn’t work…

On family and women’s issues he thinks and speaks like a teenage boy raised by the internet and Jordan Peterson. No practical wisdom to offer but no shortage of pseudointellectual musings.

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right, and in this fantasy world nobody moves cities or states, or has infirm or deceased elders, or doesn’t have the funds/space to house a relative if they’re willing to take on that second childrearing stint. His mother in law was a luxury.

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The most common method is by having less or no children. Our neighbours just did a yard sale including all their kid stuff. One kid combined income 200K. Kids are too much work.

Another method is have 3-4 and get those kids to raise the other ones.

That is Canadian dollars as well.

That’s the model in most of Asia, and Latin America, and India.

Exactly the places a Trump admin wants more immigrants to come from. Oh wait…

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Unfortunately there are about 65-70 million morons in this country.

You guys are all ignoring the obvious answer. Children should be raised in a 2 parent household where the wife stays home to take care of the children and caters to the husbands needs and wants. Just as god intended.

The world was so much better in the pretend 1950’s. All you hippies ruined it.

Huh?

In Taiwan, citizens receive about $80 per month per birth until the child is five years old, and in Taipei and New Taipei they also receive a lump sum of $625. There are also monthly subsidies of $227 a month for children going to public childcare centers. Lower income families get an even higher subsidy of $356 per month. Taiwan also has 8 weeks paid maternity leave at full pay.

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The part at the end where he said is was a good question reminded me of the part in the song Alice’s Restaurant when Arlo Guthrie says “remember Alice, this is a song about Alice”.

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I do think that may be the root cause, but it is still bias. Republicans have been able to work the refs so well the media, they have this bias in their favor.

Certainly not the entire solution but I thought this is pretty genius

In Canada waiting to the gov’t to fix things is a fools errand. We cannot even run a health care system and people who can afford it are fleeing public school system. Our local private school has double enrollment from about 300 to 600 in the last 5-10 years.

Trump is a bozo. As far as childcare is concerned one wonders what incentive the modern state has to be quite supportive. I looked the other day and I couldn’t find a single advanced nation that had a birthrate that was at replacement level. Well actually Israel does. I guess it might be somewhat of a vote getter but with fewer people having kids it seems like diminishing returns. It doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference some countries with generous parental support have very low birthrates. Next up is worsening conditions for elderly people requiring care. With fewer and fewer workers wage inflation is going to be a thing and only the very wealthy will be able to keep up. We recently moved my mom in with us. Assisted living was costing 5000 dollars a month and she owned the unit she was living in. Another year or two and she would have been bled dry. Those with children might get some help if the children are other directed. Unfortunately our modern sociopolitical models don’t really have much utility at making people other directed aside from through the state.

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I believe is setting an example for being other-directed. Taking care of kids teaches them to take care of others.

I think the failure of adults to prevent gun violence and other forms of violence in schools (sexual harassment, racism, bullying) is a failure to be other-oriented. Fortunately, I think the current crop of kids will grow up to express a political will power for other-directed institutional measures that my generation and your generation failed to express.

Woke inclusiveness is being other-oriented. A lot of the woke programs are disparaged, although they take care of people. Drag show story time? That’s literacy and inclusiveness.

Being woke means being aware of the experiences of others who are not in our shoes and taking care of their needs, which may be different than our own.

I expect to take care of my elders, and I expect my kids to take care of me. I expect my government to work for me and prevent unnecessary hardship and promote efficiency. We do not need to live in poverty. We have a booming economy and enough wealth to take care of families with children.

I think there are a lot of people abstaining from having kids, or more kids, because of the cost. It’s truly insane. My parents raised my brother and I on one blue collar salary. We played sports, did activities and had a fairly average middle class upbringing in the 80s/90s. There is no way a modern family could do that in most of Canada. Not even close.

We had to get a nanny for kid 1 because we couldn’t get a childcare space despite putting our names on multiple wait-lists as soon as our baby was born (my wife has a year of reasonably well paid mat leave, so we were looking for childcare when kid turned 1). The cost of the nanny was close to $4000/month.

Add to that the cost of kids activities, the cost as parents from taking so much sick time when the kids are sick, the time spent not advancing one’s career, cost of education and so on and you pretty much have to be rich to afford kids in Canada. My wife and I bring in over 4x what my dad made, and live in a smaller house, work more hours, and save a much smaller portion of our income despite living frugally.

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I am not sure what living frugally is anymore. I grew up in similar circumstances to you. Dad worked mom stayed home. Our annual vacation was camping for a week. Never went anywhere on a plane. I am sure we both go places on planes. TV was free, we didn’t pay for internet. We grew a fair amount of our food. A restaurant was once a year thing. At some point me and my dad gathered firewood by cruising rural roads and cutting up fallen trees and stuff road crews cut down. Having kids has always been costly I think. Playing house league hockey was not cheap relative to our income. We had hand me down equipment. If you broke you stick it was a significant issue as a new one seemed expensive.

Other directed institutional measures. More gov’t. More rules. It used to only be cranky religious people who told people what to do. No abortions no gay marriage. Now the general population is angry because gov’t keeps telling them what they can do. One commentator I was reading was talking about Britain. He said the Socialists are now mainly occupied with post materialist concerns. In general peoples material circumstances don’t seem to matter much. Housing is too expensive well too bad it is too expensive to build homes quickly. You won’t be allowed to drive an ICE car but if you have little money good luck until electric cars become much cheaper. Maybe you can drive an ICE car but the gas will cost too much anyway. Several generations ago cars were regarded as being good in Britain by the left. “Why should only rich people be able to easily visit their relatives.” When the Conservatives take over in Canada in the next year their voter base, only a small fraction are religious people. They won’t change abortion laws or much of anything regarding gay rights. Their leaders father is gay.

Britain, France, Germany. Far left socialism compared to America. All sorts of other directed institutional measures. In each case their citizens are in revolt. They all have run out of money. In Britain the new gov’t is going to eliminate the subsidy for heating to pensioners. Too expensive. But they are giving unionized train drivers a big raise.

When they swing to the right they will still have early pensions, subsidized daycare, universal healthcare etc. But the citizens will still be unhappy.

We really do need new political models.