> You went straight to what people "need" but then ignored the whole schtick we're discussing was NM going from means-tested to universal childcare even for people that don't "need" it.

Nope, I'm the one explicitly not ignoring the major rationale behind providing universal free childcare, which is that it removes a massive disincentive to using childcare (it's expensive), with the result that parents are less likely to work or take on other responsibilities some of the time and less likely to take their kids to nurseries to help socialise them.

People who mostly look after their own kids still benefit from the free care when they do need it, and those who would prefer to look after their children 24/7 regardless are essentially unaffected[1], unless of course they are the sort who upon seeing others enjoying a free lunch, become preoccupied by the thought the food supplier should probably pay them for having a full stomach.

[1]I mean, someone's paying a little more tax at the margin, but that's spread over a lot more people and the stay at home mums barely feature...

> I don't see at all how a mom taking care of a child "needs" the money less than a daycare worker/company taking care of the child.

You don't understand why daycare centre employees would like to earn a living? Or you don't understand that paying some trained professionals to look after your kids in a big building might cost a bit more than staying at home with them and maybe buying an extra meal or two?

I mean, if there is some stay at home parent that finds looking after their own children during the daytime such a burden they "need" an extra $1k per child per month to do it... they should probably just use the free childcare.

> What you're proposing is just yanking the money away from them in a tax, then lording it over them that they have to take the latter if they want the cash back

Nope. Actually, when it comes to yanking money and telling people they can get the cash back if they do something (have an infant kid and quit their job to look after it) that sounds rather more like your proposition of giving indiscriminate cash handouts to parents. I am pointing out that subsidising the amount of third party childcare parents actually want to consume requires considerably less tax money to be yanked away and has a different set of incentives.

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kortilla 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I mean, if there is some stay at home parent that finds looking after their own children during the daytime such a burden they "need" an extra $1k per child per month to do it... they should probably just use the free childcare.

The fact that you argue for daycare workers to be paid but not parents is honestly astonishing.

“No, we will not give you $100/day for your kid but we will happily give $100/day to BabyCorp to watch your kid” is a really fucked up policy stance unless you explicitly want to break children apart from their families. If that’s the goal, just explicitly say it.

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2 days ago | parent | next [-]

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notahacker 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> The fact that you argue for daycare workers to be paid but not parents is honestly astonishing.

I think it's even more astonishing that you are arguing that it's normal for parents to have so little love for their own child they should bill the government for time spent with them.

If my stay-at-home mum was like that, I'd definitely have preferred the full time daycare. It was even possible for her to send me to daycare some of the time without breaking the family up!

	▲	mothballed 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		They are arguing the exact opposite, that parents love their kids enough they might move mountains to take care of the kids themselves if only they get get a bit of the taxes the state is sucking dry from their family back, enabling it to economically happen.

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mothballed 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Nope, I'm the one explicitly not ignoring the major rationale behind providing universal free childcare, which is that it removes a massive disincentive to using childcare (it's expensive), with the result that parents are less likely to work or take on other responsibilities some of the time and less likely to take their kids to nurseries to help socialise them.

The major incentive for providing childcare subsidies to everyone but stay at home parents (who now have net negative in this whole scenario post-tax) is to disincentive stay at home parents. If the idea was just to aid with childcare the aid with go with the child. You're purposefully excluding stay-at-homes from the definition of childcare, which is false and disingenuous.

>You don't understand why daycare centre employees would like to earn a living? Or you don't understand that paying some trained professionals to look after your kids in a big building might cost a bit more than staying at home with them and maybe buying an extra meal or two?

No I don't understand why daycare employees would want to "earn a living" any more or less than anyone else. I also don't understand why the fact their expenses are higher means a larger value was provided. If I dig for gold for 10 hours with an expensive machine and you dig for 1 with your bare hands, and we both end up with the same amount of gold I haven't created more value than you.

>I mean, if there is some stay at home parent that finds looking after their own children during the daytime such a burden they "need" an extra $1k per child per month to do it... they should probably just use the free childcare.

All well and good until you have men with guns showing up to tax the cash and force that incentive, the same men magically saying it is childcare when anyone that the parent does it. Goal here is clear, destroy the family unit as equal playing field in consideration of what is considered childcare, and put childcare corporation on a pedestal instead.

>Nope. Actually, when it comes to yanking money and telling people they can get the cash back if they do something (have an infant kid and quit their job to look after it) that sounds rather more like your proposition of giving indiscriminate cash handouts to parents. I am pointing out that subsidising the amount of third party childcare parents actually want to consume requires considerably less tax money to be yanked away and has a different set of incentives.

This is essentially the argument against taxation -- I actually 100% agree with you here and it's part of why I'm an ancap who is staunchly against this yanking. It is the argument for eliminating all child subsidies / welfare / public schooling which I think would be the absolute best thing for children we could possibly do. However if we have them, I'd like to see them apply equally rather than just payments to places like your proposed "profit-centers" of childcare corps. I will say you've handily played into the hands of the intertwining of the rich business owners with government to enrich themselves at the expense (via threat of violence of armed revenue collection agents) of stay at home moms.

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notahacker 2 days ago | parent [-]

> The major incentive for providing childcare subsidies to everyone but stay at home parents (who now have net negative in this whole scenario post-tax) is to disincentive stay at home parents. If the idea was just to aid with childcare the aid with go with the child. You're purposefully excluding stay-at-homes from the definition of childcare, which is false and disingenuous.

The objective of providing free childcare to anyone that wants it is to enable people to avail themselves of free childcare. Just like free firefighting and police services; it's not "false and disingenuous" that I don't get to define myself as emergency services and invoice the government for my services if I manage to keep my home crime and fire-free without their assistance. Nor is my tax bill and other people getting their fires put out at taxpayer expense a disincentive towards using a fire extinguisher if I think I can handle it myself.

> No I don't understand why daycare employees would want to "earn a living" any more or less than anyone else. I also don't understand why the fact their expenses are higher means a larger value was provided. If I dig for gold for 10 hours with an expensive machine and you dig for 1 with your bare hands, and we both end up with the same amount of gold I haven't created more value than you.

Value is also determined by the fact that stay-at-home mums are willing to look after their own kids for free, and childcare professionals are not. I'm not sure why a self-professed ancap is having such a great difficulty understanding that markets enable people and companies to charge to look after others' kids (with or without government intervention), but do not enable people to charge for looking after their own.

As for parents who want to earn a living as much as childcare staff, now they can go and earn that living without having to pay most of their salary to someone else to look after their kids...

> All well and good until you have men with guns showing up to tax the cash and force that incentive, the same men magically saying it is childcare when anyone that the parent does it. Goal here is clear, destroy the family unit as equal playing field in consideration of what is considered childcare, and put childcare corporation on a pedestal instead.

In between the tedious cliches, you seem to be ignoring the fact that childcare that costs $1k per month isn't on a "level playing field" with childcare that doesn't. It's not putting something on a pedestal to remove the bill.

Makes it easier for parents to decide to work if they want to, but I thought ancaps liked that sort of thing...

> It is the argument for eliminating all child subsidies / welfare / public schooling which I think would be the absolute best thing for children we could possibly do

The absolute best thing we could do for children is to ensure that those of them who have low-earning parents stay at home on their own with no daycare and no education?! Sorry you managed to complete nearly two whole posts of pointless nitpicking in the guise of being pro-family and then you hit me with this!?

I mean, I get the people that think it's so important to incentivise stay-at-home parenting or to avoid any child being even slightly poor that the government should pay every infant's parent at least as much as daycare centres currently cost... that just happens to be very expensive. Don't get self professed ancaps who freely admit they don't care how/if the kids get looked after arguing the system that costs the taxpayer significantly less and doesn't disincentivise participating in labour markets is a worse one than the alternative of handing out max_childcare_costs to every parent...

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mothballed 2 days ago | parent [-]

>The objective of providing free childcare to anyone that wants it is to enable people to avail themselves of free childcare.

The objective of excluding the parent from that has been made pretty clear at this point, which is a deliberate choice to destroy the family unit.

>Value is also determined by the fact that stay-at-home mums are willing to look after their own kids for free, and childcare professionals are not.

The free market value of taking care of 1 child under some arbitrary standard of care is not meaningfully impacted by the fact an arbitrary person might do it for free, anymore than the fact I might be willing to search for gold for free reduces the value of gold. It will have some effect in aggregate, but that effect would impact the whole market so is meaningless in the context of differentiating a universal payment.

>Makes it easier for parents to decide to work if they want to, but I thought ancaps liked that sort of thing...

It indeed does make it easier to decide to work if you're now getting taxed to cover $12K per child of every child in the whole state going to daycare, and you get none of that for your own kid unless you put them into daycare yourself because magically your own childcare doesn't count.

>The absolute best thing we could do for children is to ensure that those of them who have low-earning parents stay at home on their own with no daycare and no education?

I said from the beginning I wanted a waiver. i.e. reduction of taxes. I would put taxes at 0% and free up lots of jobs and returned tax money to low-earning families so they could afford more for their children, which I think is the best thing possible for them. With the added effect they can spend that money freely rather than having a state lord over them what one public school they can spend it on or lording over them with their own stolen money what childcare provider they can use.

The reason why I would argue for equal subsidies if they're provided is I believe either no tax, or equal subsidies is the most liberty minded solution. The solution where the state forcibly taxes and then lords the money over you depending on whom provides the childcare is the lowest-liberty solution of all of them. That is why I'm a temporary ally of the policy alternative I reference.

	▲	notahacker 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Got it, family units are destroyed by kids spending some time at nurseries. Free market values aren't determined by what the free market actually pays for services (absolutely nothing for parenting your own kid, potentially a lot more for looking after someone else's) but by weird analogies to gold (children of course also being a commodity). Parents are of course, famously transactional in their relationships with children, with the key priority being maximising how much the government spends on their care. If daycare is subsidised absolutely everyone will claim the maximum amount (just like the alternative you propose!) because otherwise all the burden of paying for it will fall upon stay-at-home mums (I dunno, maybe the income tax on their massive parenting salaries?) and not spread across the wider taxpaying base, the highest paying segments of which generally aren't parents of infants. Putting up taxes is bad, but putting up everyone's taxes much more to subsidise -checks notes- people who enjoy looking after children so much they'd prefer it to free daycare is better. But the best possible thing for low-earning families is for them to have to lose all benefits and pay for care, schooling, medical bills etc, because if there's anyone that pays more into the system than they get out of it, it's low income families... Not gonna lie, if it requires this much compounded nonsense to construct an argument against childcare vouchers, the case for it is much better than I thought :)