> How can the state "guarantee no-cost universal child?"

How can any state “guarantee no-cost schooling for all children”? Well, they do, so it’s clearly possible. Why would early childhood be any different?

> everything comes at the cost of something we could have had instead

Of course. That’s the nature of spending money. Your talking points here don’t really amount to much beyond “better things aren’t possible”.

It's amazing how much of the opposition isn't a specific conceptual problem with the rightness or wrongness of the ideal behind the policy but re-litigating assumptions that are already accepted and baked into routine investments we already make to service and infrastructure.

The way that the Gell-Man Amnesia effect is the term for instantly forgetting what you know about the gulf between popular narrative and expert familiarity, there should be a name for the phenomenon of newly re-discovering and re-litigating the social compact that undergirds basic services as if it was being proposed for the first time.