The NYT reports.
Of course, "the children of the wealthy" and "the well-connected" won't be in the government-funded care centers, but you get the rhetoric. The money is supposed to come from the rich — and only the rich — so in the abstract, it sounds logical.
Mark Zandi and Sophia Koropeckyj, economists at Moody’s Analytics, estimated that the plan would cost the federal government $70 billion per year more than it currently spends on child care programs, but would be fully covered by revenue from Ms. Warren’s wealth tax. Their cost estimate was based on the assumption that the plan would produce economic growth by giving lower- and middle-class families more spending money, allowing parents to work longer hours, and creating more and higher-paying jobs for child care workers....A "law school instructor" can't afford to pay for childcare? I'm a tad wary of oft-told "personal stories" from Elizabeth Warren. And much as I do think finding and affording childcare is serious problem, I don't trust the federal government to take over the whole thing, and I don't believe that federal wealth tax is ever going to happen. (Doesn't it violate the Constitution?) And yet, I'm open to the argument that Head Start has been a good program, and it sounds like the expansion of Head Start to bring in more and more people. Warren has reason to make it sound innovative, but maybe it's just more money for the same old program.
Ms. Warren framed the issue... as a means to promote economic growth and address gender inequality in the work force..... In a post on Medium on Tuesday, Ms. Warren repeated a personal story she has often told before: that if it hadn’t been for her Aunt Bee, who helped care for her children, she would have had to quit her job as a law school instructor.
Katie Hamm, vice president for early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal think tank, said that framing was significant. “It reflects the fact that the issue has clearly grown into the public policy sphere and the economic policy sphere, where before it had been relegated to a family policy issue or an education issue,” she said.So... more money for the same old program, but let's talk about it in a new way. Let's do framing.
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164 comments:
I’m surprised. Traditional problem for families to work out? Left solution? Increase taxes, government spending, and government control.
This is the Democrats schtick .. who wants free stuff? There will be plenty of takers.
Over the long term, Head Start doesn't help children academically.
Is there any evidence that Head Start ever produced any long-term results? I think the answer's "no".
Something to consider before we start taxing wealth to pay for an extended government program.
Head Start does not raise student performance in the class room. As childcare? Govt conceptualized and implemented child care? Nope not buying that scam.
NYC can just use the money they saved from the Amazon cancellation to pay for this.
"Not just the children of the wealthy, not just the children of the well-connected, but every one of our children is entitled to good child care."
Uh huh. And of course "good child care" is handing your kids over to paid bureaucrats to look after while you get marched into wage slavery. Among the progressive intelligentsia, there is recognition that a lot of anti-poverty and educational programs have failed, and the excuse is that the interventions need to be early. Jeffrey Sachs once, during a debate with Niall Ferguson, said, "The big difference of social mobility in this country is the lack of public financing for early childhood development, for daycare, for preschool, for early cognitive development, for decent schools, unlike all the rest of the high income world, we do not help the poor."
Essentially the government has written off the two-parent family, particularly the role of fathers, and has the incredibly naive role that the nurturing role that two-parent households provide can be substituted by government-run or government-funded healthcare. Unfortunately, whatever benefit these programs have in the immediate term, invariably fade quickly as children age. Like charter schools, early child care is being peddled as a panacea. Whatever role nurture (over nature) has, it is not likely to be found in a government daycare with the workers will probably end up spending as much time on paperwork and federal government requirement compliance as they do on actually nurturing children.
End rant. Good morning Ms. Althouse and to you all. Hope you have a lovely day!
Okay, sorry, not quite the end. Progressives love to compare the US to northern Europe on any number of social metrics and then use the difference to explain why we need to have more robust welfare state and social intervention policies. Believing that if we just copy Denmark's government policies, we will get Denmark's results is fanciful. Plus, the dirty little secret that progressives are not allowed to admit is that a large part of the difference between the US and Europe is driven by a racial component. White kids in America perform comparable to other kids in Europe. But because blacks and Hispanics lag, they pull our overall numbers down.
Our DIL is staying home with the family. She has a masters, and track record of accomplishments. Gets a call every six months from a hand full of bosses (not HR) checking to see if she will come back to the mines. They have made the decision that they wanted to raise a family. So they are doing that, rather than pay someone minimum wage to do it.
The solution is self evident, if you are in fact looking for a solution.
"Framing" is what you do to cover up the blemishes, faults, in your proposal or argument. I've spent the last 35 years selling big ticket high technology to businesses. Framing is what I do when my offering has some gaps as compared to the customer's functional requirements. To be fair to Ms. Warren, framing is not done in an attempt to sell something that absolutely will not work. In those cases you just move on to the next opportunity rather than waste your time.
I would attach a "For the Children!" tag to this proposal from Liz. That's all the framing she needs.
The reason why families can't afford anything is because they are TAXED too much. And the Government (WARREN as an example) WANTS more. Of course they CLAIM the rich will pay more, but when the rich leave....YOU pay more. Look at the Northeast....Ct, NY, NJ....people are leaving in droves to get away from the unbearable taxes. They will NEVER have enough of YOUR money.
$70 billion a year.
Like all of these rainbow chasing programs. Where is the equality? Does the family that forgoes the Govt daycare get to keep the cash? If not why not?
@wendybar:
The reason why families can't afford anything is because they are TAXED too much.
I get what you are saying, but remember that this will be a program primarily for low-income people, who are already paying no federal taxes and likely aren't paying much in state or local taxes, either. For most of these people, their financial problems don't come from too high a tax burden, they come from the fact that they have had a child out-of-wedlock and the father is not in the home and is providing little to no support. Single-parenthood is a huge driver of poverty in this country. Warren't energy would be better suited hammering into women's heads not to have children with men they are not married to.
Whenever someone supports such ideas, I usually ask, whether that person would be happy with (in this case) their children being supervised by this current government, now, run by this regime? Somehow they always think it’ll be different. They would have been happy under Obama, then I remind them that Trump - there will always be a Trump - took those reigns (sic).
"the excuse is that the interventions need to be early."
If we could just take away underachieving minority children from their parents and give them to nice white ladies to raise, think what we could accomplish!
I guess the unconstitutional funding is the secret sauce that makes Warren's already-failed ideas new and ready to fail again.
You could run it free by having DMV employees supervise the kids while they work.
Also let the older kids look after the younger kids.
Childcare is very easy to find. We've overproduced childcare workers by the thousands. The guaranteed student loan program encouraged far more young women to seek teacher's degrees than can be employed by the schools, so a huge number of those women take low paying jobs at daycare and preschool.
Warren is attacking a nonexistent problem. And, she's pandering to women with yet another offer of subsidized jobs.
I like Althouse's suggestion that we simply pay women a minimum wage to stay home and take care of their own kids. It's not a good solution, but it's practical.
We've put in place of welter of incentives for women to take care of other women's kids. Almost every Protestant church in my area provides daycare in its basement. The grants those churches receive is about all that is keeping them alive.
I think Althouse is right. Get rid of the incentives for women to dump their kids in daycare and give them an incentive to stay home and take care of their own kids.
Taking care of your own kids is something you should want to do and enjoy doing. I care for my own grandkids 20 hours a week and sometimes more. This is a wonderful, enjoyable part of life.
This framing of taking care of your own children as an onerous, disagreeable task is sick feminist shit. We should be considering how to best encourage women to stay home with their children.
@Paco Wové:
If we could just take away underachieving minority children from their parents and give them to nice white ladies to raise, think what we could accomplish!
Nature will win. Unfortunately there is no great white hope for the great black problem.
Slightly off-topic but too funny to pass up. From NYT Opinion's twitter feed:
@tomfriedman boils down the major factions in our two big political parties as “redivide-the-pie Democrats” and “grow-the-pie Democrats,” and “limited-government-grow-the-pie” Republicans and “hoard-the-pie, pull-up-the-drawbridge” Republicans
Uh huh. Only Walter Russell Meade comes close to Friedman in inventing stupid, meaningless constructions to explain contemporary American politics. Why does Tom Friedman have a job? The guy is a total nitwit. I guess whatever self-respect you lose by being a slobbering lickspittle for the elite, you more than make up for in job security.
This will be unconstitutional until it gets to J. Roberts.
Well, baseball is starting up, and pitch framing is an important skill in baseball, just as in politics. You have to be able to make the borderline pitch look like a strike to the umpire. If a catcher has poor technique, he can have the opposite effect and make a strike look like a ball. I got my latest edition of Baseball Prospectus in the mail yesterday and they have included their pitch framing data in the defensive summary for each catcher.
On a related note, there's way too much SJW baloney in BP. If you look at the text summary for any player who was caught up in a controversy last year, that's ALL they write about: Josh Hader's controversial tweets, a couple of players with domestic violence suspensions, etc. Hader in particular had a noteworthy season, but you wouldn't know it from their writeup. There's also an article about "what if the first woman to play in MLB is already playing, as a trans woman who hasn't come out yet?" a la Bruce Jenner. A complete waste of ink and paper, that.
the government has written off the two-parent family, particularly the role of fathers,
Written off? More like destroyed.
Of course the solution is to reduce regulation on child care to make it easier for more lower cost facilities (both in home and in facility) to open and operate. But that ain't happening.
"the excuse is that the interventions need to be early."
"First we deliver the child, make it comfortable, and then we have a conversation..."
@Ralph L:
Written off? More like destroyed.
Ehh. Johnson's anti-poverty programs in the 60's certainly didn't help by creating perverse incentives. But "destroyed" is a bit much. The birth control pill and the sexual revolution probably had a lot more to do with it than any federal legislation.
Even Macron ditched the wealth taxes in France. But fools rush in...
"Of course, "the children of the wealthy" and "the well-connected" won't be in the government-funded care centers,..."
Don't be so sure about that. Like health care, there will be a desire to make it mandatory. For fairness.
“The Children are watching.”
She’s going for the Hillary vote. Give me Harris, I can watch her with the sound off. Plus I think a Harris/O’Rourke. ticket would be epic, especially for aspiring young gigolos and gold diggers everywhere.
"Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever." -- Lenin
I think it was Megan McArdle who wrote a pretty in depth article on Head Start. As I recall, it just doesn’t scale. The pilot program did OK, but it had the most dedicated and energetic participants on both ends (instructors and students/parents). Unsurprising when you self select for the people who will work the hardest at it. Once it expanded to full blown government program, these gains disappeared.
YoungHegelian said...
Is there any evidence that Head Start ever produced any long-term results? I think the answer's "no".
Something to consider before we start taxing wealth to pay for an extended government program.
You're right that Head Start has no proven long term benefits for the children. What Warren is proposing is a new set of people who owe their jobs to the Democrats. We have to remember that politicians use different metrics to measure the success of a government program. While we look at things like results and costs, they measure how many votes the program bought for them.
Ah Ms. Warren. I've forgotten which old Southern senator first said it. But her mantra is "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax the other fellow behind the tree."
Her goofball ideas won't hurt you or me at all! Or so she says.
f we could just take away underachieving minority children from their parents and give them to nice white ladies to raise, think what we could accomplish!
Bingo. They tried this in OZ an Canada. They made a few good movies about the horrors of it so it wasn’t a total waste of time.
So parents who don’t even work, at least on the books with reportable income, can get totally free child care? (And the government will count that as “new” GDP, what progressive used to call the undervaluation of work in the home?)
How does Warre’s plan compare to Ivanka’s?
As Tucker Carlson did an excellent job pointing out last night, Bernie Sanders is running less as a economic populist progressive this time and more of an identity politics Trump hater.
The reason being Trump has leveled the economic populism playing field?
I'm open to the argument that Head Start has been a good program
It hasn’t. It has given make-work jobs to instructors, but as for the kids, they get no lasting benefits whatsoever. There have been plenty of studies done, and I am unaware of any that reach a different conclusion. Not that Democrats actually care about kids. What they do belies what they say.
You might as well be open to the idea that you can fly to the moon by flapping your arms vigorously enough.
We have to remember that politicians use different metrics to measure the success of a government program
True too. It’s like the people who say that socialism has never worked, when people have used it to successfully take power time and again.
In the end the best Day Care is still Mommy.
Is there a requirement to have a job to use the child care?
Many, many years ago when Mrs. Tank worked for Head Start, home visits were required. She was not pleased to report that almost every Head Start family had a nicer TV and stereo than we did.
As a side benefit to the job, Mrs. Tank greatly improved her Spanish. We also got invited to some great Spanish weddings.
Liz Warren wants mothers to leave their children in the care of strangers so they have more free time to be exploited by the capitalists.
Socialists ain't what they used to be.
Doesn't it violate the Constitution
Only as written, but we all know that the “real” Constitution is the one as Democrats imagine it. So a politician who “respects the Constitution” is one who believes in the Constitution as Democrats imagine it. For example, a poem on the Statue of Liberty is part of that Constitution. Anybody else “hates America.”
This stuff is so simple it’s embarrassing to have to repeat it.
So how does she propose getting the money from only the rich? Hmm? Does she think they will just hand it over willingly? What happens when the rich go away? Then how do you pay for your entitlement?
So the other Democratic candidates will now have to one-up Warren on this.
1) This absolutely needs to be offered to illegal alien children
2) Attendance at an accredited pre-school should be mandatory
3) ?
@Farmer
Nature will win is a great shorthand phrase.
We. All of us have abdicated our responsibilities to govt. Small things, but we willing gave up are liberty and freedom.
Drivers Ed? Who declared you need to pay for instruction to get a drivers license? When our son got his Drivers license (not learners permit) We thought we might need him to pick us up at the Airport an hour away from home, and a flight landing at 10 pm. Restrictions on 1st year licenses forbid driving alone, for a non school event after a defined hour. The school could grant an exception, but we as parents could not. We have sacrificed our freedom willingly
The level of stupid here is scary. Democrats think it’s a great idea to pay 15,000 for a child to receive care that is less loving and less invested so a mother can go work a full time job making 20. The economics make no sense. Their real aim must be to take the raising of children away from families and have government take control.
Meanwhile, over in Minnesota, newly elected Dem Gov Tim Walz wants to raise gas taxes 20 cents per gallon, and 2% (more) tax on health care, for the kids of course. And, that's not all, but you get the idea of a Cold California coming soon to Minnesota.
Free universal daycare would have the added side effect (a benefit, from some perspectives) of putting thousands of small churches out of business. Have you ever noticed how many churches offer daycare? It's not a free service - it's often their main or secondary source of income.
TANF and SNAP are already paying for women to stay home and take care of the children. And the more children they have, the more assistance they get. How's that working out?
exhelodrvr1 said...
Over the long term, Head Start doesn't help children academically.
2/20/19, 5:46 AM
YoungHegelian said...
Is there any evidence that Head Start ever produced any long-term results? I think the answer's "no".
Something to consider before we start taxing wealth to pay for an extended government program.
2/20/19, 5:47 AM
iowan2 said...
Head Start does not raise student performance in the class room. As childcare? Govt conceptualized and implemented child care? Nope not buying that scam.
2/20/19, 5:47 AM
Well, with the 2nd through 5th comments being so well-put, I can only add that the empirical evidence, if it does matter to anyone, does not point toward Head Start as a successful model. All studies have showed slightly better performance in K through 2nd grade but by grade 3 any "head start" they got wore off and there are NO measurable long-term results (graduation, higher ed) from federal daycare.
This is a make-work scam for government teachers when the private sector has the babysitting market sorted out pretty well. My fear is that it will pass with the age-old aphorism of "we have to do something" when really "we" don't.
How exactly do you "tax the rich?"
I worked for the wealthiest, most powerful corporate law firm in the U.S. An entire department of their practice is devoted to serving the very rich by way of tax avoidance.
That law firm is a powerhouse in national Democratic Party politics and fund raising.
You can pass all the laws you want. Let's see you get past that phalanx of Harvard and Yale trained lawyers who are experts in the tax code and in structuring the income of the very rich for tax avoidance. Let's see you actually collect the money.
I thought Head Start was a program for youngsters run by Catholic priests.
So they would be paid like school teachers? That's going to cost a lot. And school teachers are paid locally.
I would like the government to find a way to make it easier for a parent to stay at home and be a good parent.
Blogger Chris said...
So how does she propose getting the money from only the rich? Hmm? Does she think they will just hand it over willingly? What happens when the rich go away? Then how do you pay for your entitlement?
In the USSR they killed the rich and took their money. It didn't slow down the socialist project at all. Everyone was poor and starving, and forced to work. This is the desired end game of socialism.
Updates by the Congressional Budget Office since the passing of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act in 2017 have raised the outlook for U.S. nominal gross domestic product growth by $7 trillion over the coming decade, substantially reducing projected deficits and raising tax revenues well above the levels estimated when the law was passed.
...but let’s fuck that up.
Also, the wealthy people are going to hide their money. They aren't going to pay a tax for other people to get day care.
Like charter schools, early child care is being peddled as a panacea.
Who has ever said that "charter schools are a panacea"? Allowing actual choice among standard, charter and private schools would be revolutionary, and competition among them would improve outcomes. "Panacea?" Nope.
@Althouse, BTW I trust you are aware that under Senator Warren’s formulation you and Meade are “rich”?
Their cost estimate was based on the assumption that the plan would produce economic growth by giving lower- and middle-class families more spending money, allowing parents to work longer hours, and creating more and higher-paying jobs for child care workers....
Yes, and there will be no negative effects like capital flight or stuff like that. They must have finally come up with one of those “one-handed economists” that Truman wished for so famously.
Kids are better off in in home care. The working class is good at making these arrangements. When my parents divorced, my aunt watched me. When I went back to work after my first kid, my sister in-law watched my kid for $20 a day back in 2006. I watched a preschool aged girl for $35 a day from 2007 to 2009. Trust me, we were all better off than an institution.
I would like the government to find a way to make it easier for a parent to stay at home and be a good parent.
No you wouldn't. If I suggested that we adopt Germany's policy, where the government covers 75% of a parents salary (either, but only one, parent can use it) for a year, and the employer has to hold that person's job open, you would go apeshit. Oh yeah, and mothers get to take off two months off before the due date and three after birth with full paid (paid for by the State health insurance).
Allowing actual choice among standard, charter and private schools would be revolutionary, and competition among them would improve outcomes.
Just because you say this, doesn't make it true.
Just so I understand the proposal.... Liz 1/1024 Warren wants the government to require certain parents line up and walk their kids into the place picked by the government and reserved especially for them to live for the day (while the parent works in the salt (or solar) mine.
Can’t you just see all the parents sullen faces and all kids crying their eyes out as they are moved from their home to the very special place the government reserved for them?
Hah! A new trail of tears.
"the assumption that the plan would produce economic growth by giving lower- and middle-class families more spending money, allowing parents to work longer hours, and creating more and higher-paying jobs"
They won't be growing the economy. They'll just be moving money around. That isn't always bad, but let's be honest.
You can pass all the laws you want. Let's see you get past that phalanx of Harvard and Yale trained lawyers who are experts in the tax code and in structuring the income of the very rich for tax avoidance. Let's see you actually collect the money.
The way they do this is to insert little noticed fine print into the tax laws to create breaks unavailable to most people. For instance, Bernie Sanders bought his little dacha on Lake Champlain with a real estate trust. Since he’s not forced to mortgage it by, you know, a sinful lack of filthy lucre, he gets to hand it over to his heirs without the petty nuisance of paying a death tax on it.
ust because you say this, doesn't make it true.
Any more than your denying it makes it false.
How would the wealth tax violate the constitution?
I do think the distinction between taxable income and untaxable wealth is problematic. Perhaps a consumption tax is in order.
With a wealth tax wealth will work to avoid the tax by shelters, moving or failing to come into existence. Playing Whack a mole with rules and laws won’t chase it down.
Zandi probably used static scoring. Economies are not static, they are dynamic.
I thought AOC had first dibs on the wealth tax to fund some of her NGD. Where does a white woman like Elizabeth Warren get the gall to take funding away from a woman of color who has already spent that money?
"The reason why families can't afford anything is because they are TAXED too much."
No. It's because wages are not keeping up with the cost of living.
This is all about forcing the feminist-socialist dream on the unsuspecting and trusting populace. If this were truly needed people would be clamoring for it and there would be no need to "sell" it.
Head Start is government day care. To pretend otherwise is dishonest.
Yesterday my new husband and I met with the family business manager. There were things I needed to sign so he can take care of our taxes for last year.
I knew the family had money, but I had no idea how much. It's in the hundreds of millions category. Now my husband does not actually have that money, and won't until his 85 year old father passes away. Not soon I hope because he is a loving, funny, pistol of a dear man.
What I did learn is that all the money is locked in various trusts. The mortgage trusts, the Dallas Museum of Art trusts, and about fifteen others. The government can't get their hands on any of it. The rich will always have ways.
The Harvard Professor is offering a big middleclass entitlement. That is a smart move. And one that increases all working mothers' ability to raise unaborted children.
"I'm open to the argument that Head Start has been a good program."
It's been a failure.
Early childhood education is for the adults; not the children.
It's a twofer; baby sitting, so that mom can go to work and have a "career," and training the children - not "educate" - in right-think from the ground up.
I know I am spitting into the wind, but it is "who you going to believe; me or your lying eyes?" By my personal experience I am convinced that the system we had in Norway when I grew up was right; on the average children are ready to go to school the year they fill seven, and not before. Even then you take it easy with them the first two years, just gently teaching them the alphabet and basic arithmetic with female teachers, etc.
Then in third grade, on the average, they are ready for more serious teaching, and gradually develop over their public school years and you match the teaching to their development.
Children are not plants, and hothouse development does not work with them.
IOW, the entire U.S. educational establishment is based on fraud.
It is about the Brave New World; not "education."
No. It's because wages are not keeping up with the cost of living.
Yeah, they are, but only if you have good job skills.
If you have no job skills or only middling skills, you're screwed and there's no remedy for that. Market demand is what it is.
Cookie, you have the Marxist college freshman dilemma. You can't accept that people's screw ups are mostly their own fault. It's has to be the fault of an abstract "system" that exists only in your imagination.
I'm 69. I just started a new career. I'm making decent money. I run a surplus every month. How do such things happen, Cookie?
I find the comments about how much better it is for the children of the poor to be cared for by their stay-at-home moms to be quite charming.
My kids' first elementary school was in a working class neighborhood. Unlike the middle class school district practically next door, there was no phalanx of stay-at-home moms to run the PTO and volunteer at all hours of the day. Every parent in our school district had a full time job. In one school district you had parents with flex schedules and moms temporarily working part-time for a few years in their professional expertise. In the other school district you had parents working 8 to 12 hours a day in retail.
As Birches references, some parents relied on extended families, grandmothers and aunts, to take care of a host of toddlers. Other families just found the cheapest options they could.
Why not take everyone's kid (except for the rich people, or the socialist people) when they turn 5 years old, put them in a governmental institution until they're 18 so that they are taught to think right. If you know what I mean.
Shouting Thomas said...
If you have no job skills or only middling skills, you're screwed and there's no remedy for that.
Once people thought universal education might be a remedy.
If fatalistically, there is no remedy, what's the plan then?
I'm imagining a program which allows the mothers can keep their children with them, perhaps by wrapping the child so as to securely carry them in a portable cradle, perhaps attached to a sort of "board" the mothers can wear on their backs.
This would allow the children to be with their mothers all the live-long day while the mothers grind corm, dig for roots and wait for the government employees to show up for the potty-training.
"Perhaps a consumption tax is in order."
Wouldn't it be smarter to tax cancer? You'd get a lot more money out of it.
If only there was some lower division of government, below the federal level, where we could try out different ideas like this, and see what worked and what didn't. Almost like a laboratory of democracy, if you will...
@Mike:
Who has ever said that "charter schools are a panacea"? Allowing actual choice among standard, charter and private schools would be revolutionary, and competition among them would improve outcomes. "Panacea?" Nope.
See Robert Weissberg's book Bad Students, Not Bad Schools. See the effects of Kansas City, Missouri's desegregation experiment. Modern education is mostly about warehousing kids, not pedagogy.
Wouldn't it be smarter to tax cancer? You'd get a lot more money out of it.
How about body fat? Way more money there than cancer.
Two points:
1. Once, just once, I'd like to see some so-called "journalist" to push back on the notion that "everyone is entitled to" the lefty cause of the moment with a simple "Why?" Why is every child "entitled to good child care?"
2. Who is so deluded as to think that government-run child care = "good child care?"
IIB,
"If only there was some lower division of government"
Or a higher level, like the UN. Why don't we just ask the UN if this is a good idea?
Given how completely f*cked public education has been for the last 30 years or more, we should be spending time and effort to find a replacement that involves less government meddling.
Georgia has universal prek. They don't allow you to choose a shorter schedule than 5 days a week, all day. Guess who in my upper middle class neighborhood takes advantage of this free option? No one.
In re Cookie:
If you understand simple market forces as they apply to the work force...
Then you must know that the downhill trend in wages is largely attributable to doubling the workforce by encouraging/pushing women out of the house into the workplace. Twice the number of people, but no real increase in the number of essential jobs.
So, there's a dog chasing its tail problem here, isn't there?
Freder-
No you wouldn't. If I suggested that we adopt Germany's policy, where the government covers 75% of a parents salary (either, but only one, parent can use it) for a year, and the employer has to hold that person's job open, you would go apeshit. Oh yeah, and mothers get to take off two months off before the due date and three after birth with full paid (paid for by the State health insurance).
Is that the only way to stay home and be a good parent? For the government to pay fo it?
I don't like Germany's policies because of our experience with German employees. Its almost impossible to get rid of underperforming employees, even high-level ones.
Also, I don't think one year is enough time to raise a child.
The problem lies at much in the terrible curriculum that schools mandate nclb and common core made it worse, the absence of any real disciplinary protocols.
“Mark Zandi and Sophia Koropeckyj, economists at Moody’s Analytics, estimated that the plan would cost the federal government $70 billion per year more than it currently spends on child care programs, but would be fully covered by revenue from Ms. Warren’s wealth tax. “
So when do we kill the goose that laid the golden egg?
Mark Zandi is an idiot, his abacus is broken
Paying mothers to stay home and care for their children sounds all fine and dandy, but isn't that the welfare system we had and Clinton replaced with welfare-to-work?
Weren't we paying mothers to stay home and care for their children and keep having children so they could stay home and not have to go to work?
Ten kids, ten daddies, ten welfare checks. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything old is new again.
And yet, I'm open to the argument that Head Start has been a good program
All evidence shows that any benefit from Head Start vanishes by the Third Grade.
Just more eloi:
http://invisibleserfscollar.com/intrapsychic-when-the-key-to-neural-change-lies-in-manipulating-a-students-purpose/
I've got an idea: dad goes to work and earns money. Mom stays home and takes care of the kids.
It's an idea so crazy that it just might work!
Turn my precious child or grandchild over to the tender mercies of government bureaucrats? No thank you. My kids are grown but if I had known when they were young just how bad of an influence public schools are, I would have quit my job and lived in abject poverty in order to educate them myself. All of the "socialization" they received in school had negative effects.
"Ms. Warren repeated a personal story she has often told before: that if it hadn’t been for her Aunt Bee, who helped care for her children, she would have had to quit her job as a law school instructor."
Did "Aunt Bee" help her care for her precocious young son, "Opie," who she would take to the ole fishin' hole while whistling a jaunty tune after work?
"No. It's because wages are not keeping up with the cost of living."
Cook believes in taxing poor working people.
Justify this, Cook. I'll wait.
Also I thought Warren authored "The Two Income Trap" or something along those lines. Has she completely abandoned the ideal of children being cared for by their parents? You know, the people that care about them more than anyone else would?
"If not for Head Start and its quality preschool education, I would not have been as ready as I was for kindergarten."
I ran away from kindergarten on my first day and hung out at some sort of brick factory. It's one of my favorite childhood anecdotes.
This is a wonderful idea. We should definitely have federal government child care for alll. Way to go Senator Warren! What a salient policy proposal compared to that ditzy Kamala Harris.
Go Senator Warren!
Also I thought Warren authored "The Two Income Trap" or something along those lines.
The authors show why the usual remedies-child-support enforcement, subsidized daycare, and higher salaries for women-won't solve the problem.
Federal Early Childhood Education, Care Doesn’t Benefit Kids. Here Are the Facts.
Of course competition works, Freder. That's why the unions fight so hard, even breaking the laws to prevent charter schools or any choice. Why do we have a multitude of choices for almost everything, but not primary ed? Does all that choice in colleges NOT produce competition among them for students? Boy you have to deny a lot of reality just to be a good progressive!
This is classic, you people will die on the hill to help the mega rich don't have to be taxed more. Useful idiots
The Davos Deep Staters Love Trumpsters
Universal! Take any bad idea, plant the word "universal" in front of it - and it becomes a glorious idea.
The government wants your kids early.
Howard said...
This is classic, you people will die on the hill to help the mega rich don't have to be taxed more. Useful idiots
I really don't care if the mega rich are taxed more. My *main* issue is that I believe creating infrastructure around taking kids out of the home, rather than making it easier to be a parent *at home*, is not a good way for society to spend money.
Practically, we have seen the mega rich use their money, move their money, and hide their money so they don't have to pay any kind of wealth tax. So I believe something like this would get passed, the money wouldn't be there, and middle class people would once again be holding the bag.
@Mike:
Does all that choice in colleges NOT produce competition among them for students? Boy you have to deny a lot of reality just to be a good progressive!
But how do colleges compete for students? By offering rigorous academic programming? No, by offering lavish facilities and luxury amenities, most of which have little or nothing to do with actual pedagogy. If you were to take the entire black student population and put them in the most lavishly funded and equipped schools the world has ever known, it would likely have very little impact on their actual cognitive abilities.
@Howard:
This is classic, you people will die on the hill to help the mega rich don't have to be taxed more. Useful idiots
For what it's worth, my opposition to this program has nothing to do with taxation, and I am not averse to increasing marginal tax rates at the high end. My objection is mostly that it won't be good for kids and is a bag of goods being sold to mothers.
"with employees paid comparably to public-school teachers."
That would make daycare WAY more expensive. And I think Warren is inadvertently exposing the game here: to grow the teachers unions that fund the Democratic Party.
This is classic, you people will die on the hill to help the mega rich don't have to be taxed more. Useful idiots
You have a knack for total misuse of terms. "Useful idiots" is the Leninist term for dupes of socialists.
Like you.
Like I said, you reek of Ritmo. Even the stupid on you reeks of Ritmo.
A new delivery from the Ritmo Bot 2.0 factory.
Preschool children singing songs to Chairman Mao, or being taught to idolize Palestinian suicide bombers, comes to mind.
So just as welfare replaced daddy in the black household, this program would replace mom.
I do not want any more time of my children in a public funded educational environment. They are indoctrinated enough. If they provide vouchers so I can choose a private school of my choice, fine, other than that, not interested.
Headstart's budget should have been zeroed-out decades ago, when it became all too obvious that it wasn't accomplishing what it had been created to accomplish. Yet Headstart appears to be immortal.
"with employees paid comparably to public-school teachers." And this is a key, a huge clue that it's not "for the children," it's a jobs program. Not unlike some public school systems, which seem to exist more to serve their union employees than to support the educational needs of their students.
And finally, it's yet another attempt to support single-mothers-by-choice, as this "choice" has never been economically viable for most without massive subsidies: for most, a "freedom" to choose single motherhood can work only if others can be forced to pay for it.
If improving financial supports to those who choose to be single mothers was not the goal, then presumably this program would provide equally generous support for mothers who have made different choices, and for parents who'd prefer something other than government childcare for their children. Does anyone even question the wisdom of ever-increasing subsidies for single-motherhood-by-choice, even after social research has shown that (in the aggregate, and with exceptions) this tends to produce poor outcomes for children?
Ann Althouse said... And yet, I'm open to the argument that Head Start has been a good program,
Of course you are; what smart nice centrist person wouldn't be?
Is it true, thougH?
Cato: Head Start - A Tragic Waste Of Money
The bad news came in the study released this month: It found that, by the end of the first grade, children who attended Head Start are essentially indistinguishable from a control group of students who didn’t.
What’s so damning is that this study used the best possible method to review the program: It looked at a nationally representative sample of 5,000 children who were randomly assigned to either the Head Start (“treatment”) group or to the non-Head Start (“control”) group.
It's a program that feels like it ought to work--seems like it ought to make a long term difference. The problem is it really doesn't. There are studies and counterstudies, naturally, but it's been around for more than 5 decades and the best that can be said is that children in the program do better while in the program and there is at best a very minor benefit to the program in the long term (by high school)...but most likely no long term benefit at all. That comes, of course, at an very high cost in terms of resources spent, and not spent in a highly-targeted way.
Anyway women love the "Life Of Julia" horseshit so I'd bet something along these lines will be a reality within a decade or so. Oh well!
Nearly everyone has said what I was going to say. So I am repetitive.
This is bad for the kids, and if the point is getting breeding-age women into the "work force" in even higher proportions, it is even worse. And worse yet if it diverts even more intelligent, capable women from devoting themselves to marriage and raising children. You are so starved for this sort of child, the naturally gifted, the well-raised, that it is ridiculous. That is your greatest scarcity and the lack of them is the most pressing emergency. At this point each one is precious, teachers fight for them, schools fight for them, on one level.
And on another level they treat them terribly. It is madness.
It is also worse from a social perspective, of private institutions, mediating institutions, outside of government. Anything like this is yet another encroachment of the state, and a subversion of civil society.
Like high marginal rates, a wealth tax will eventual erode to a small fraction of the original annual revenue. As is always the case, a proposal depends on a revenue stream calculated in a static model. If you institute a wealth tax of 2%, all the wealth is gone in 50 years in a static analysis. It won't happen, but that's my point.
If there is no point to holding wealth beyond a certain threshold, then wealth will gravitate toward that threshold. Al those with wealth between $50-60 million ($50m threshold for wealth tax), will liquidate down to $50m in wealth in the US. Over time, the wealth tax revenue will decrease. Of course this will be solved by lowering the threshold.
Imagine a 90% marginal tax rate. Those closest to the margin will simply choose not to earn above that threshold. Much of that income is derived through business LLC or flow through income. The businesses would just spend more as pre-tax expense to avoid the flow through to personal income.
This is why socialism leads to a death spiral. Oil company make a $1billion. Govt. seizes it. Spend $1billion on social programs. Now run by govt., oil company make $900 million the next year. Still spends $1 billion. Makes $800 million the next year, etc. Needs to generate more cash, so then defers R&D, exploration, and maintenance.
I'm hoping I'm long gone before we hit the tipping point. I thought I was good to go for my lifetime, but we are only a few more large scale programs away from required wealth confiscation, constitution or not.
I was never a fan of a balanced budget amendment, but I think it is necessary. As long as we can deficit spend to pay for stuff, we will always push the bill to the next generation. If we tax the hell out of everybody right now to get rid of our deficit, we could really nip Democratic Socialism in the bud.
"But how do colleges compete for students? By offering rigorous academic programming?"
Well, they used to. But now, they're fucking that up as well to produce more worthless dolts.
So Head Start fails because the kids are only ahead for the first couple of years? Whadaiknow,
but I can imagine the program carries a stigma even among low income folks so that a discrete
number of participants have problems, even controlling for this that and the other, that aren't discernable. Perhaps the kids in the program perform better than they otherwise would have?
OTOH, they do better the first couple of years. I imagine there are more than a few first grade teachers thankful for that. The problem for me is Fed involvement and cost benefit whatever. Reminds me of the studies of high school public educated versus private at college
where the privates are much better at writing the first year or so but the publics catch up
by the third year or so. Private school is a waste.
Unknown said, "If they provide vouchers so I can choose a private school of my choice, fine."
Better if taxes were lowered or "vouchers" provided so that the mom could stay home.
Head Start is one of those programs the Gubmint can really be proud of.
Head Start doesn't work, never worked, and never will work.
So, perfect model for a new government program.
Free stuff is the opiate of the people.
If you don't understand that the issuance of benefits, and withholding of same, is as much a means of governmental control as taxation, you haven't been paying attention
No analysis of Head Start shows any advantages that last beyond second grade.
It is amazing that a person like our dear hostess would admit that she might be convinced of the value of Head Start when there is none.
Their cost estimate was based on the assumption that the plan would produce economic growth by giving lower- and middle-class families more spending money, allowing parents to work longer hours, and creating more and higher-paying jobs for child care workers....
This is so utterly stupid that I wonder if Zandi is really a pro-Trump mole.
It's premised on the foolish notion that spending drives economic growth. Intermediate-run growth is driven by capital accumulation, and long-run growth is driven by innovation. How does a wealth tax result in more of either of those?
I will defer to our hostess regarding the constitutionality (or lack thereof) of a wealth tax, though I would be interested in seeing the reasoning there. I don't dispute the characterization, mind you, but I would find an explanation from an expert enlightening.
With that said, even if such funding proved unworkable, I don't see any reason it would stop Spouting Bull and her plans. After all, it is simple enough to get the program started, and when the funding sources were revealed to be (shockingly!) unavailable, then they would just have to come from general revenues. I mean really now, what is a few 10s of billions (or really 100s of billions, you don't really believe that this is only going to cost $70 billion, do you?) when we are talking about THE CHILDREN?
The bill enacting the wealth tax could be titled the Cayman Island Bankers' Full Employment Act.
Climate change will end the world in 12 years anyway, so WTF.... knock yourself out Lizzie
200% of poverty level.
What is Obamacare’s break point?
$110-$120k/yr before no subsidies.
There’s your “wealthy.”
Head Start is a failure. It has been for years. So she wants to pile on more money to a failed program.
There’s so much to be learned from European countries, but that would make you people scream about socialism. For Warren to even suggest free child care for working parents makes you people hysterical.
You better hope that Democrats don’t win the Presidency, the House and the Senate this time around.
You better hope that Democrats don’t win the Presidency, the House and the Senate this time around.
And because of Trump, it’s likely to happen.
Kansas had or has a personal property tax.
They are most definitely coming after our IRAs.
If you think it’s expensive now wait until it’s free.
Killing the golden goose.
No one’s stopping you from offering your childcare services for free, Inga.
You first. But you don’t care.
Things learned from European countries.
Small houses, small cars, high energy and gas prices and a greater caste system than we had.
We surpassed European living standards around 1900.
They’re still playing catch up because they get antsy every 50 years.
They’re subjects, Inga, they’re used to being dictated to and provided for.
I’m a citizen.
J.Farmer,
Seeing you put Mead & Friedman in the same bucket makes me question your reading comprehension.
"[Warren] would have had to quit her job as a law school instructor."
The world would be a better place today if she had.
@Kirk Parker:
Seeing you put Mead & Friedman in the same bucket makes me question your reading comprehension.
I was only comparing one narrow aspect of Mead's writing, not his entire oeuvre. But I'll concede that even then, saying "close second" was probably not fair on my part. Friedman is much worse than Mead.
That said, I am no fan of Walter Russell Mead. He has an establishment mouthpiece down to his fingertips. He is a decent writer, but on foreign policy his books are mostly useless. They are airplane reading for the Davos set and mostly just reinforce their presumptions about America's role in "global leadership." I don't find his metaphors about sticky, sweet, and sharp power to be particularly useful, and his Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and Wilsonian formulations for foreign policy traditions is basically just a gimmick that I don't think does much to help increase one's understanding of US foreign policy. Mead's CV has a lot of impressive-sounding titles, but as far as I can tell, his only post-secondary credential is a BA in English literature from the 1970s.
For Warren to even suggest free child care for working parents makes you people hysterical.
I love being lectured on hysteria by the person who claimed The Handmaid's Tale would be the outcome of voting Republican in the Obama/Romney election.
The symbolism seems to capture the modern era of left wing bipolarism where they alternate embracing their insanity with pretending they are reasonable while those they disagree with are insane.
Head Start is a failure. It has been for years.
That depends on the standard used to evaluate it. Left wingers love it which suggests there is some standard it achieves. Granted they sold Head Start as educational and those alleged benefits have been proven not to exist. But even knowing that left wingers still support it wholeheartedly.
Warren and others are now showing their hand by evaluating it as a child care program. It was never intended to increase educational achievement. So the real takeaway seems to be an admission by the left they lie when advancing their policy preferences.
Now that it's been shown to have no long term educational benefit, isn't head start essentially a meal plan/nutritional supplement program? Perhaps it's value is in harm reduction? (Not that I think expanding it is a good idea!)
HoodlumDoodlum said -
"It's a program that feels like it ought to work--seems like it ought to make a long term difference. The problem is it really doesn't. There are studies and counterstudies, naturally, but it's been around for more than 5 decades and the best that can be said is that children in the program do better while in the program and there is at best a very minor benefit to the program in the long term (by high school)...but most likely no long term benefit at all. That comes, of course, at an very high cost in terms of resources spent, and not spent in a highly-targeted way."
This is an area I have some professional experience in. First, HS was NOT intended to be childcare -- from the beginning, its role in the War on Poverty was to provide part-time preschool, medical/dental, etc care at the level of the community (and so break the intergenerational links of poverty by having children 'ready for school'). When it was scaled up in 1969 from the tiny demo projects, over the objections of literally everyone who knew anything, it was absolute chaos. The first evaluations (Westinghouse, early 1970s) should have been enough to kill it, but what saved it were the "sleeper effect" studies from Perry and Abracadarian that showed long term gains. (Such effects have *never* been found for HS). So on we went -- a program serving (mostly) 4 years olds, 4 half-days per week, with teachers who may or may not have even an associate's degree (about half have this or more). Of course it has no effects -- not social-emotional, not cognitive, not pre-academic. It would require a belief in magic to think that it would. And as a half-day program, it is not even really 'child care.'
The larger issue though -- Warren is conflating child care (somewhere to 'keep children while parents work') with early education (something enriching or compensatory, focused on children's developmental needs). Most research on early education in the US focuses on "early education as intervention" -- for kids who are at risk of poorer education etc outcomes. Even well run programs, with skilled / credentialed teachers, do not get the results we want (i.e. the school-run preK programs being conducted in the various states.) The best predictors of school readiness (social -emotional and academic) is still poverty status, parental education, and family structure.
Having said that, there are lots of ways to do child care -- in most High-Income Countries (HIC) there is some kind of paid leave so that parents can stay home for varying amounts of time; we could probably do something similar, at the state level, with something like what we do with unemployment insurance.
For example - if we are comparing to other countries -- let's look at tiny Finland, where the goal is to support families taking care of their own children. In Finland, after the maternity leave period, there is a child care subsidy. If the parents want to use that in part time care (or full, but most don't do full for a while), they can, and then keep the rest of the subsidy. Most 3-5 year olds are in at least part time care, and 6 year olds are in kindergarten (half day, at child care). Child care is private or municipal. Child care workers are college graduates, with even the helpers having 2 year/ vocational credentials. So - child care and early education go together.
Finland is lovely, has very high social trust, is extremely homogenous, and is half the size of Ohio. Thinking we can just scale up from that to the *entire US* is lunacy.
Sorry for the length of this post -- but this is a terrible idea in so many ways. If we want to help children "be ready for school" it is long past time to take a hard-headed look at the data and stop trying things that do not work.
well you haven't read mortal splendor then, Russell meads apocalyptic screed, from the late 80s, intuiting financial collapse, socialist uprising and and/or military intervention, not necessarily in that order, in the late 90s, he had this crazy scheme about buying Siberia from the Russians, not that was a realistic scenario,
But if history--especially modern history--teaches us anything, is that when you expand the power of the State, only good things happen!
Woman's Dictionary: "Couldn't afford"- 'Does not want to pay as she has better uses for her money than her actual children'
See Birth Control, Abortions, and 'necessary labor to get to the top of a career field'
We r speshul. We can make it work while other counties collapse.
We will just “tax the ‘rich.’”
Countries collapse.
Inga: "There’s so much to be learned from European countries, but that would make you people scream about socialism."
LOL
Step 1: have another nation, say a large economic and military power, essentially defend you for 70 years while you spend a paltry 1.2% on your own defense (but not really because you include things like "roads" and other social programs in your "defense" budget)
Step 2: have that same nation essentially transfer billions in wealth to your nation through structured trade deals that guarantee your nation comes out on top
Step 3: pray that a Donald Trump is not elected President since he will demand that all change.....
PsychProf - thanks very much for the info. I agree conflating early education and childcare is a real problem on this topic.
Inga said...There’s so much to be learned from European countries, but that would make you people scream about socialism
Be small, rich, ethnically homogeneous/overwhelmingly white, and have a high-trust society??
Inga what an ugly thing to imply! I'm surprised at your naked racism and dog whistle for white supremacy. Please be better.
"Germany: From Machine Guns to Broomsticks"
https://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/75653
We have so much to learn from Europe........
Meanwhile, the Germans are running natural gas directly into Germany from Russia, bypassing European allies, and all those sweet sweet Euro's are flowing directly into Putin's pocket.
Currently, Germany uses natural gas for 35% of its energy needs and Putin supplies about 80 to 90% of that energy to Germany.
But wait, it gets better: The Germans have killed off nukes and are reducing coal and, lets face it, wind and solar a bit of joke, so guess what? Natural gas imports from Russia will, over the next 10 years, soar in response to the increasing reliance on natural gas in Germany....which means......(you already know, don't you?.....).....Yes! Putin and his pals will very soon control a majority of the energy supplies to Germany and other western European nations.
So, per Inga: here's the road to success, have another country pick up your full defense tab while importing the vast bulk of your energy from Russia, directly, so Putin can cut you off whenever he wants.
Yeah!!
Good thinking Inga! Master Strategery-ist she is!
More 'jobs for the boys'. It's how the Left finances itself.
"Inga* said...There’s so much to be learned from European countries, but that would make you people scream about socialism."
Yeah, all those awful people who value liberty. Not at all like Inga, the State's Handmaiden.
Howard said...
This is classic, you people will die on the hill to help the mega rich don't have to be taxed more. Useful idiots
...
I will never be mega rich but I wish that government would just stay out of the way and let everyone do the best they can.
"This is classic, you people will die on the hill to help the mega rich don't have to be taxed more. Useful idiots."
Says the State's useful idiot.
I suspect more than half of Americans are not willing to let Trump or his family get off Scott free if criminal activity is found. No President is above the law. Trump can’t pardon the criminals in his midst or himself under state jurisdiction.
We will see about the premise for that if. At present no such evidence is known.
In the meantime, what “more than half of Americans” (51% vs 38%) really want is that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the attempted coup in the Federal government against the Trump administration that has (according to, e.g., former FBI director Andrew McCabe) occurred over the past few years.
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