A parent could decide to use the money for daycare. Or maybe stay home with the baby for a while instead of immediately returning to a low paying job. I am aware there are some who would maybe blow that cash on Dave and Busters merch but ya know, I can see the good outweighing the “waste & fraud” - ThreadSky

swin24.bsky.social • 359 days ago

A parent could decide to use the money for daycare. Or maybe stay home with the baby for a while instead of immediately returning to a low paying job. I am aware there are some who would maybe blow that cash on Dave and Busters merch but ya know, I can see the good outweighing the “waste & fraud”

Reposted from Asawin Suebsaeng

I get the reasons behind & politics powering the Biden admin/campaign push for subsidized daycare but if we are ever in a position where we get to spend a gigantic sum of federal $ on a new program meant to help working / poor people with kids/babies, it’d be nice if we just… gave them the fucking 💰

Comments

alexandraerin.com•359 days ago

The politicians who would yell the most about money spent at Dave and Busters would be fine with transferring it directly so there's really no downside

chelseagsummers.bsky.social•359 days ago

I'm all for a UBI, and I'm in favor of giving people money. However, now that I live in Sweden with a partner who has a kid, with friends who have kids, I see the difference that universal daycare makes for a society at large. The difference in gendered labor alone is huge.

philbertz.bsky.social•359 days ago

Everybody is fine with community paid primary education and this is only a few years difference. In the Netherlands we don't have this either and it causes a world of problems

ajfarrelly.bsky.social•359 days ago

This, 💯

alexanderthemeh.bsky.social•359 days ago

I think what subsidizing the daycare gets to that cash outlays wouldn't is creating a depressing force on the cost of daycare while not fucking over workers. Same as a single payer Healthcare system. Right now, workers are getting less than livable wages while corporations are banking profits.

toobigtofail.bsky.social•359 days ago

I mean, "why not both" is definitely an option. But I think the bigger problem there is that daycare is prohibitively expensive - if you have two kids under two it can run like $3k a month - and government-run programs can do it more cheaply.

cassmoney.bsky.social•359 days ago

In Canada the federal government started a program to reduce daycare costs to $10/day at most and it has saved parents literally thousands of dollars per child

dhaise.bsky.social•359 days ago

I'd rather see D&B get the cash than our Government spending it on private defense contractors

eean.dev•359 days ago

Isn't this an argument against public schools as well?

zoopaul.bsky.social•359 days ago

I'm sure there are people who would blow the money on crap but most people would spend it in their own communities which would help the local economy multiple times over.

repton.bsky.social•359 days ago

If you give every poor person $100 per week, how do you stop landlords from just raising their rents by $100 per week?

phrly.bsky.social•359 days ago

A big part of why you might not want to do this is that it would massively increase the cost because more people would use it. It could easily be the difference between ~40% uptake and ~80% uptake.

phrly.bsky.social•359 days ago

So if you're dealing with a fixed amount of budget, you end up either with the grant being far too small to cover daycare, or adding hoops and eligibility til you attrition people out of the program.

elifels.bsky.social•359 days ago

More people using a benefit = it then becomes politically impossible to remove that benefit

Same for Social Security and Medicare

nightpups.bsky.social•359 days ago

Wait they changed the idea from just money to help kids out to only for daycare? Great it'll probably also all be eaten in a sudden increase in daycare 'admin' costs as well.

ronthinkmedia.bsky.social•359 days ago

It can/should be part of a comprehensive program that is fully invested in by lawmakers AND every constituency impacted. "Top down" legislation is doomed to fail as is a piecemeal approach that doesn't look beyond the cost of child care.
https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2023-12-18/child-care-bill-backers-see-massachusetts-poised-for-transformational-change

fredthewonderdog.bsky.social•359 days ago

Unfortunately, all it takes is one person spending 1% on something deemed unworthy by fox to kill such a program.

elifels.bsky.social•359 days ago

I truly believe subsidized daycare won't get enough political support to pass without this

About 15% of families use daycare

People who choose to stay home when their kids are young are probably not supporting a big tax increase for a program they don't use. Just give all parents & let them decide

tlbklaus.bsky.social•359 days ago

...and even the D&B trip still stimulates the economy.

bjbloom.bsky.social•359 days ago

It’s not just the administrative burden problem (which is always a problem). It’s that every new potential social program inevitably leads to some awful means-testing compromise that deprives it of the initial broad good it could do.

hakirsch.bsky.social•359 days ago

I do sometimes wonder a little if ubi is an excuse not to implement service benefits like health care. “We can keep our capitalism! We’ll just give everyone money to spend in it!”

Or is it a step in a direction and not an excuse?

elizabethedwards.bsky.social•359 days ago

But that’s because you’re a human being with an intrinsic sense of empathy for those less well-off than you, as opposed to a governing officer who salivates at the mouth when offered the chance to cut someone’s benefits

izzos.us•359 days ago

Pretty much every single study ever done shows that just giving people MONEY is the best way to do this sort of stuff.
But because a small handful of people end up using the money for dumbass stuff we have to develop an entire damn bureaucracy to make sure that doesn't happen...

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