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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I don't buy this argument. Economics doesn't care about your feelings or your dreams. If you need money to pay your bills and the only way to get that money is to work a shit job, you will work the shit job.

Three things changed during the pandemic: 1) the government paid a huge amount of money to people to not work for a long time, 2) people got used to living much more cheaply than they had before due everything being closed, and 3) the immigration and trade market shifted significantly. So suddenly you have a large number of people who, at least temporarily, have options that they didn't have before and who probably aren't competing with the same size labor pool that they did before.

The whole narrative that Americans are suddenly waking up and realizing that they should all be entrepreneurs and follow their dreams is at best a feel-good second-order effect. It's a nice story, but the only reason new business starts are so high right now is because there were so many business closures last year. I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I just haven't seen the data or economic theory to support this video's position.

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We can also ask people why. When we do, we consistently hear a few things:

1. Reliable childcare still isn't a thing.

2. A lot of restaurant and retail workers had a full year to find something else to do. Many did. And why go back to working for tips if you found a junior marketing position that you can do remotely home and has a career path?

3. They moved! If you're a service job in an expensive city, many of the people you hoped to rehire relocated last summer and aren't necessarily itching to come back.

And that doesn't even cover the fact that a lot of the managers complaining about this really don't appear to be trying very hard. They don't want to pay market rate, or train anyone on the job, or offer a modicum of respect. Instead, they just call their would-be candidates lazy.

Calling people lazy is a great way to convince them to avoid you at all cost.

Your first point (childcare) is probably one of the more understated points. When families have 2 children under 5, the cost of childcare for both children encroaches the income of one parent alone. Many find it more convenient just to stay home with their kids for 3-4 years than work just so their kids have childcare.

I don't know that there is much the government can do. Childcare facilities actually run on thin margins and turnover is high. State regulations are often aggressive towards child to caretaker ratios.

I would also suggest a 4th point:

4. People that were on the verge of retirement (within 5-10 years) that were either laid off and never re-entered the workforce or opted for early retirement.

Age discrimination probably sets in with folks 50 and over that want to either change careers or re-engage with their career path after time off due to the pandemic. Plus with the stock market seeing record gains, their retirement plans are probably looking very enticing.

The dogmatism of putting all women to work for the last 50 years. Here we are, women have gotten their "equal" pay (rightly so) and are nearly all employees or freelancers. After a long battle, so of course childcare like everything else needs paid. Most social workers are women. What's the way out, migrants from poorer countries? Just pushing the problem for later.

We are waking up to the fact this model cannot work for the overall population. It has been promoted by those who would greatly benefit from having everyone at work, and echoed by those who would somewhat benefit, and echoed more times all the way down to those who had everything to loose.

The problem of childcare cost is unsolvable with women at work, it's as simple as that. At best the average working woman will pay the same as she earns to afford full time child care. But if tax is taken into account, then it won't cover it. Or we squeeze more staff per child.

I think it will take some more time for most of us to come around to the reality of a model doomed to fail.

Many countries have state-run or state-subsidised childcare.

Universal or managed childcare - like health care - is one of those things that is a massive drag on the economy if it isn't provided.

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/childcare-a...

Most of the countries with state run daycare have even lower fertility than US has. I don’t think there is a single country with all of: government childcare, high female labor market participation, and above replacement fertility. If anything, the correlation is opposite: the more subsidized the childcare is, the fewer children are born.

While I agree with your point in general, the Faroe islands might qualify.

I do not know why, but they have a 2.4 fertility rate, could be related to an influx of women from poor countries (which in turn might not participate in the workforce, confirming what you state).

If you asked me, I’d say that the most probable cause is that people in Faroe Islands have less opportunity to get Education and build a Career, which makes childbearing more attractive in relative terms, as opportunity cost is lower. For the same reason, policies that in the west make it easier to have Education and Career, like subsidized daycare, end up depressing the fertility even further, contrary to expectations.

> The dogmatism of putting all women to work for the last 50 years.

> The problem of childcare cost is unsolvable with women at work, it's as simple as that.

What kind of nonsense is this?

One in six women never go on to have children, it's great news that these women's access to the labour market has improved.

Second, childcare ratios aren't 1 to 1. In fact they're about 1 to 4 for babies <1 year, 1 to 10 for 5 year olds, and 1 to 12 at school age. Suppose all women had children (they don't), society still greatly benefits from the efficiency of a childcare ratio as high as 1:12 as opposed to women caring for their child 1:1.

Third, children aren't permanently children, and certainly not permanently babies. The first few years requires a lot of parental or private childcare, but afterwards kids mostly go to school for most of the day. A woman will have at least 45 years between adulthood and retirement and most of that kids won't need constant parental care like the first few years. Making sure women stay active in the labour force (even part-time) will greatly help their chances in the labour market throughout their career.

Fourth, I see no reason why we're speaking about women rather than about parents. Providing income and childcare are shared responsibilities. It's fine to arrange it in your own family as you wish, but society shouldn't speak about these topics as if they should only apply to women.

I do expect some sensitivity when daring to question women being in the work force rather than prioritising the care of their own children. Let me be clear first, I entirely agree with you that society shouldn't tell us what is right with this regard. But society has spoken, the dogma of having women be the same as men and get to work. With the pretence of more freedom and independence of course. I don't speak for women, nor men. Each person is free to decide whether they should enter the workforce or not. I'm not advocating that women shouldn't be allowed to work.

I disagree with the ratio argument you've proposed, I'm sorry 1 carer for 12 toddlers is undeseriable. Ask any stay-at-home moms how it goes when they get their 3rd kid. And a carer will never care as much as a parent, so 1 to 12 is surely compromising on the children well being.

I would gladly consider parents rather than women, but for the vast majority of human history it appears that females have been rather focusing on taking care of home and children. Things can be arranged differently, but there are surely some deep rooted reasons as to the adoption of the role fulfilled by women for so long, and it must have shown superiority over having men take that role since it has survived across very different cultures.

We aren't hunter gatherers, we are even past the sedentary model that organised societies for millenia, so models can and better be questioned, but the childcare dead end needs to be looked at the way it is. It is not working.

Yes children grow up, I give you that. And of course it is natural for women who were mostly taking care of their own children to find an occupation, work is one. My comment was in the context of the child care chaos we've created. Not in the context of trying to hijack the thread into claiming women should not be in the workplace.

Surprising sexism aside, I think the broader point here is that focusing on specifically the women is kind of weird and unnecessary. The issue isn't that men and women are being treated equally, the issue is that both parents are expected to work.

If women drop out of the workforce, are employers suddenly going to start doubling salaries so household income will stay the same? If not, then this isn't really a problem with gender roles, it doesn't seem.

It sounds to me like the thread of logic you're following is:

- Women have started working more, so child care is harder

- Child care costs went up during the pandemic, so more workers of all genders are staying home to care for their children directly

- Therefore, there's a labor shortage.

Well, the obvious conclusion from that thread of logic is that employers apparently need women to work in order for the economy to keep functioning, and if they stop working and stop sending their kids to daycare then there'll be a labor shortage.

If you don't have a plan to fix that problem, then complaining about gender roles seems kind of useless. If you're worried about the direction of childcare and you think more women should be in that role, then shouldn't you be happy that more people are staying home now to take care of their kids, and that this is forcing the market to adjust salaries to meet the new numbers of available workers?

You can't both have your cake and eat it, you can't be upset that women aren't staying home to look after their kids and upset that there are fewer available workers to hire once parents start staying home to watch their kids.

> If women drop out of the workforce, are employers suddenly going to start doubling salaries so household income will stay the same?

Taken in reverse, that's pretty much what happened when women entered the workforce in large numbers. It now generally takes two incomes to support a household, where it used to take one. (Yes, the standard of living and expectations in general are higher these days, but still.)

Well then this thread is very odd, because if people have that perspective about why current wages are what they are, then I don't understand what they're complaining about with the current labor shortage. They should see lower supply driving up wages as a good thing.

Yes, for the government to respond to wage inflation by allowing inflation in the general market basket of goods would be an error imo.

I am not upset women aren't staying home to take care of children. I'm upset that women have so willingly been trapped in fighting for their rights to be part of the Labour force, and in the end have to work full time without the ability to afford child care.

At least you got a few things right. Yes, women have been working "more" and it has created the difficulty to get their children proper care. It's rather logical. You can add to that it is not just women's problem. It's men's too. It is our problem : we have a model that cannot solve an absolute road block: if women work, and get equal pay, then childcare become out of reach to a large portion of the population. Unless you increase the kids to carer ratio of course, or build robots as carer. I think the issue with the work arounds are rather obvious. Or maybe not since I've only commented with simple logical critics but many won't cease to conceive a society with women taking care of their children until a proven solution comes along.

I don't have a plan to fix that problem, no. That's why I blame the dogma that introduced the problem in the first place. And I refer to the previous model that worked for millenia, which is a gender based role system. It doesn't have to be that way, but sure let's consider any way, but I don't see why criticising today's model and referring to one that worked is useless.

So I guess same question as I ask below. Are you happy with the current labor shortage, do you see it as a good thing?

It seems like it's directly addressing a problem you have with the current state of child-rearing, and that in order to move to the model you prefer, businesses necessarily need to get used to the fact that fewer people are going to apply for jobs and that they'll have to pay workers more.

This should be a good thing as far as you're concerned, right?

I'm sorry there is no labour shortage, there is inadequate training. Unaffordable universities mostly not delivering on their promise. That was meant to create what looks like a labour shortage. Train, and increase wage, suddenly you will find more workers to fill those jobs. Yes. A higher pay would put back women at home and in community participation which is what a good portion past 30 would much prefer. A couple to work less and take care of children rather than chasing affordable childcare services, it won't happen in a taxed market in economy that paying for a full time service would work unless for those who earn significantly more of course.

I worked on a remote work program for a large company about a decade ago. One of the objectives was to improve retention of female professionals.

Women have two heavy drivers for leaving the workforce - pregnancy/early childhood (age 20-35) and caregiving (45-60). This is a big deal, as when you lose a skilled attorney, engineer, or product manager, it’s difficult to replace them.

Offering work flexibility was projected to reduce this attrition by 30-50% depending on occupational category.

I don't think it was dogmatism -- it was the need to have money. The cost of living rose such that families needed two incomes.

Even where it is not strictly necessary for women to work having women in the workforce can be an economic advantage. For instance it is plausible that the increasing proportion of women in work since the 1950s has contributed as much to Norway's economy as the oil.

It is dogmatism. Just look at the propaganda from the 50s and 60s. And all the way to today, it is less cheesy but nonetheless propagandist: schools educating boys and girls to get jobs, encouraging girls to be more ambitious, campaigns to get women in industries they are not interested in, and to fight for equal pay. Add to that how politically incorrect the comments I made are. If that is not a dogma, I don't know what is.

"the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others"

So you're saying that the general progression away from the patriarchy wasn't evidence-based?

I agree with your conclusion. Childcare is a societal issue that needs to be addressed at the societal level. Women who stay at home is a poppycock solution.

At a cynical minimum it wastes tremendous resources. I want smart, competent, engaged women to have children. I also want them to choose how to direct their considerable energies as they see fit.

I'm all with you. I'm denouncing the dogma that put women to work. It doesn't imply that women should be kept off the work force.

If we make childcare a societal issue then we need to broaden that to make it easier for anyone and everyone to not only care for children but have children. There are plenty of those who want children but can't have them for a variety of reasons, some of which are other related costs (medical, legal adoption, etc.).

If you select childcare alone you bias towards those can easily have children which can foster resentment and opposition for tax based support. We already do this a bit where everyone pays for for public schooling regardless to if they have children or not and we also subsidize parents further by allowing them to be claimed as dependents.

Let's not keep this limited and make it so anyone wanting a child through a socially acceptable method be able to afford them long term since ultimately that's more generically what we're taking about.

I think you could have preserved the good points if you had removed what I perceive as sexism. Instead of saying the problem is having put women to work, the issue is that costs (due to larger houses, desire for luxuries, and generally keeping up with the Joneses) have increased. They have also increased because incomes have increased, and the ways in which to spend your money have also increased.

It has nothing to do with genders - it has to do with the carrying cost of a household nowadays is tied to dual incomes (+ housing and health care costs have eaten up a lot of surplus income)

It does have to do with sex. There are of course exceptions, but women are naturally more equipped and inclined to be nurturers and caregivers, and men providers, especially for young children. It is also why women are disproportionate in early childhood care and education jobs (it gets somewhat more even with older kids; e.g there is a much higher proportion of male teachers at most high schools compared to elementary schools or preschool/daycare).

It is sad to see the most logical comment out there is getting downvoted given the logical aptitudes of this community.

Statistics show you are right, evolutionary biology says you are right.

Evolutionary bio makes psychology look like Newtonian physics, in terms of objectivity and generalizability.

Statistics show the combined result of nature and nurture. How would you even begin to design an ethical study that could prove causation?

Stats and evolutionary biology converge on this topic. On the opposite side, we have politically loaded opinions.

And in the middle are most people, who are skeptical about the value from evo bio. Again, the statistics are only descriptive - it is not easy to tease apart nurture from nature.

There's very little reason to think "statistics and evolutionary biology convergence" reveals any truths in this case. The only conclusion to draw here is that confirmation bias is a hell of a drug.

Do you realize how hard it would be to disentangle nature from nurture on a gender-wide, cross-cultural study? You have some unchecked assumptions about biology - there may be indicators at a very crude level, but I don’t even know how you could design a real world study that would support conclusions you take as assumptions.

FWIW, I think your argument would earn a lot more consideration if you used a gender neutral term like "partner/spouse/parent" rather than "women", because it distracts from what I charitably assume is the seed of your point.

Certainly, my wife and I have ~semi-annual conversations on whether our lifestyle still makes sense (2 parents working, 2 kids under 5 in daycare:). There's definitely room to discuss that on societal level too. But there's no immediate assumption that my wife would necessarily be the one to quit work and spend extra time with kids - we're both engaged parents, both have our strengths and weaknesses, and once breastfeeding stage was complete both equally capable of parenting; and at the same time have both been career oriented and hold very successful positions.

in short:

"Are we as society on average supporting the model of two parents working" - a reasonable even crucial discussion to have.

"Should women be working" - hopefully settled a long time ago and anybody still questioning this will seem regressive at least, misogynistic more likely :-/

Point taken. My other comment hopefully clarifies the rather provocative choice of terms.

I think the debate hasn't been settled though. It wasn't so long ago that women were, for the most part, prioritising being a successful housewives rather than their careers. Surely they had little to no choice since society expected just that from them. I wouldn't argue that the pressure wasn't forcing their hands, but was a model where the roles were gender defined. The good thing with clearly defined roles for something as challenging as being a parent is that one can work towards developing the required abilities to become an adult well equipped when family comes around.

I do see your point though. Your parental situation is not a rarety any longer, a gender based role assignment can't de facto be most adequate.

I don't have a desire to regress. It does seem to me we have regressed though. We created created society of kids at day care then schools, and are only starting to see the contradictions that come with that.

Two parents work 5 days a week because family houses cost so much they're unaffordable unless you have two parents working.

If the norm was instead working 2/3 days a week for less pay, there would be less money to spend on houses, so prices would come down (because the money that's charged is what can be afforded)

But part time jobs are nowhere near as common as full time jobs - especially for professionals.

Having parents looking after kids is a far better solution than outsourcing parenting to an external company, but it's far less profitable, and reduces things like GDP and stock markets, which is bad.

You summarised the issue quite well.

We could have both parents work part-time, and make everyone happy. But we want the GDP to go up, not down, throw more people and hours into the system, at the expense of children (our future they say) well-being.

> Having parents looking after kids is a far better solution than outsourcing parenting to an external company

I don't necessarily agree with this. If the people/company that is looking after the children can do a good job, then it's far more efficient to have multiple children per person (company) vs 1-2 per person (parent). Plus (some of) the people that work for the company generally have an education that supports good developmental growth for the children under their care.

your dialog with your wife is one way to live, of many

IIR from the Pew Research Foundation on Family in the United States, less than fifty percent of all children in the US have two married parents, across all demographics and education levels, minus the one-percent highest income bracket.

lots of people in the city here with children, almost entirely the women.. the men are out of the picture for lots of reasons.. a non-zero percentage of young children have not met their biological father. The dental hygenist told me a month ago she has five kids of various ages and their father "lost his green card" and is gone.. she was cheerful and matter-of-fact. A plain spoken man in his fifties told me he has five children with three women and he never married any of them. This is not "terrible" it is true in his own words, he complains about the women and changes the subject.

And we are destroying our society by normalizing this behavior.

But at least we aren't "regressing" to how societies always worked, having the expectation that a woman would prioritise the care of children over a "career".

Thanks for pointing out the separation rates. It would be misogynistic to dare considering a correlation between women not prioritising being a housewives over a career and men getting less interested in sticking around.

> But at least we aren't "regressing" to how societies always worked, having the expectation that a woman would prioritise the care of children over a "career".

No, but where there are 2 parents involved in the child's birth (most cases), we _should_ have the expectation that both of those parents contribute to raising the child, barring edge cases.

And over the history of humans, they contribute in very different ways. It's a contemporary fantasy to claim they don't and to think this is progressive.

Progressive forces don't have the agenda they outline. Just repeat the same lie many times and it becomes truth.

Normalizing what behaviour exactly?

Er, it's detailed in the comment to which I responded.

the joke is on the USA - "normal" is quite different in most of the world. Your reaction to unmarried mothers is warrented, yet, plural marriage and restrictions by the State on marriage, are "normal" by sheer numbers, not the USA ways.

colleagues - different can mean really different. Even sophisticated people don't see it .. reality speaks in its own ways

Not picking on you but this scenario is so common I find it borderline humorous as it is so outrageously ridiculous. Both parents working all day and the kids getting a mediocre upbringing under the care of strangers - now that's freedom! Thank goodness for democracy and equality helping us improve our society. Where would we be if only 1 parent worked and the other took care of the kids.

We would be back to the dark ages where women were chained to their husband's tyrany.

That too is a relevant discussion, but probably better off without sarcasm and with a little bit more intellectual honesty.

If I had to pick one point - it's that absolutely, yes, freedom is great, options are great. We HAVE the social and legal freedom to choose what lifestyle and combination makes the most sense for our family. And we weigh all the pros and cons and think of short and long term benefits and then have that discussion again few months later to see if anything has changed. We are lucky, blessed and privileged, on many different levels. So I don't feel picked on; I only wish more people here and around the world had the freedom, support and opportunities my wife and I have.

(as others have pointed out, daycare is not necessarily a bad thing. It's staffed by certified professionals who specialize in teaching kids - whereas let's be honest I'm just making it up as a parent. It's also great opportunity to socialize and make friends outside of their family. We don't see daycare as a downside - we see it as opportunity for our kids to get diverse experience between family and friends. As I said discussions revolve around all the many factors and options but certainly does not start from "daycare is bad" stance)

> It's also great opportunity to socialize and make friends outside of their family.

For what it's worth, everything I remember from daycare/preschool through elementary school was that it was a blast. Being home with just one parent instead of being/playing with other kids all day would've been way worse. Look at villages in developing nations: the young kids there run in packs, with free rein of everything, and are having an absolutely great time.

One could make the same argument that a professional cleaning service is better than our own ability to make things shine. The question is not only economical, but the economy is a call back to reality. A growing portion of the population cant provide decent care to their children.

> Both parents working all day and the kids getting a mediocre upbringing under the care of strangers

The only problem here is the ‘mediocre’ upbringing. My daughter is in a daycare where she is learning Spanish words/phrases in addition to English.

My daughter will be 2 in December and the daycare has her recognizing most letters, numbers, colors and shapes through dedicated practice. She uses tongs and spoons to practice picking up items and separating them by color or by number ‘grab 4 purple fuzz balls!’

These are teaching programs I would never have thought of at her age. I’d just point to fingers and toes and count to 10 or sing the ABC’s.

My daycare printed out paper with every letter and asks her to grab the letters of her name. Or she has an image with lower case letters on it and she asks my daughter to match the upper case letters out of a pile.

Long story short, raising kids newborn to 5 is a specialized skill just like teaching 5 to whatever, and society can benefit from having better educators for our children than what random adults turn out to be.

This is great for your family, but in the end just an anecdote. Babies can and have been raised by strangers successfully, and many would have had a more fulfilling upbringing with their own British nanny, but in most cases daycares are not being run to the highest standards.

It would be great if we could come up with a socially supported system that raised the standard of child-care, so that every child gets the same treatment as your daughter.

How much does that daycare cost and what area do you live?

Giving birth can also be specialised. The argument doesn't address any of the concerns, it only points out that for those who can afford quality care, that care is superior to the natural caring of the parents. If only people could start looking at societal issues due to a system that is flawed rather than cherry pick personal beneficial situations that satisfies them to justify the broken system.

Most women (and men for that matter) work shit jobs as clerks or similar and not the sort of professional level jobs you're probably thinking of. I highly doubt they find these fulfilling in any way and would rather stay at home with their children if given the option. Polls support this. https://fortune.com/2016/10/05/working-moms-stay-home/

Although we have sort of solved the issue of "which parent" through the uses of baby formula, refrigerated breast milk, and other workarounds, there is still something to be said for direct breastfeeding, which is generally done by the mother (or a wet nurse, but that's another, older workaround). It's not misogynistic to recognize biologically beneficial relationships between small children and their mothers.

The big thing that went wrong when women went to work, is that it didn't really help households in any way. What should have happened is that either households doubled their income, or each earner would work only 3 days a week at most. Instead, thanks to decades of stagnating wages and rising housing costs, households wouldn't have any more money to spend, but have a lot less time.

What should have been a great deal turned into a terrible deal. Unequal pay meant that initially, men didn't want to work any less when their wives started working, rising housing costs and child care ate up pretty much all the extra income, and stagnating wages meant that even as the pay gap closed, households still weren't getting ahead. We're overworked and underpaid, and employers just got more productivity for the same money as before.

We should go to a 24 hour working week.

I don't know that there is much the government can do

Real estate is much of the cost keeping childcare high, particularly in big cities, which is to say left-leaning cities, and some movement is afoot to address this problem: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/opinion/supply-side-progr....

If cost of housing for the workers themselves is high, they'll also be forced to demand higher wages to compensate: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...

I think a lot of people are now classifying NIMBY people as conservative, after all, they are advocating for the status quo and increase value of their personal property.

I don't think people care about property values. Otherwise they'd petition to have their house rezoned as high-density commercial/industrial, since properties with good zoning sell for a lot more.

And to add some more nuance to point 4: there were a LOT of people who could have retired years ago, but chose not to for various reasons. This was their reason. I've seen estimates as high as 2M extra people in the US have just flat out retired due to covid (some left under their own volition, some not - but few of them are coming back). This isn't just old people either - early retirees are a sizeable contingent here.

The estimates I saw were 3.5 million took early retirement.

Also, sorry this is grim, but the pandemic has also killed hundreds of thousands of people. Many of them were workers.

Your second point, grim as it may be, is probably worth larger consideration. I'm projecting here, but I believe many of them were the kind of people that had 3 jobs in order to make ends meet and couldn't take time off to get the vaccine, and the subtext is that the economy was actually more reliant on that tiny pool of people (<0.2% of Americans) than we realized!

Your point still stands (those people had high contact jobs), but most of the people who died did so prior to vaccine availability. It's only been the past ~4-5 months where there's been widespread availability. And there are very few people at this point (in the US) who haven't gotten the vaccine solely because of their scheduling (though that reason might be cited as a clean justification!). It's clearly vaccine hesitancy...

I'd doubt it. Those in said positions are the younger portion of the population and thus at dramatically lower risk of death.

I think there is actually a lot of data that many of the low wage positions are long term jobs for a middle aged to older demographic.

Yes, many of the workers who died were in front-line / public-facing jobs. I heard "line cook" was one of the jobs with the highest mortality level. So tragic.

and dont forget those who cant work anymore because of (most serious versions of) long covid.

"but the pandemic has also killed hundreds of thousands of people." Apparently it wiped out the flu too.

Take COVID stats with a huge grain of salt - the reporting around them has been (and still is) grossly politicized :p

All you have to do is require companies to offer child care facilities when building real estate. Having a parent just a few minutes away makes working and parenting more possible with young children.

> I don't know that there is much the government can do.

Universal subsidized childcare like most developed countries?

Childcare lobby doesn't pay enough for that. All joking aside, I wonder if some people had one of those near-death experiences during the pandemic and realized wasting the only life you have slaving away at some dump for chump change wasn't a great path to be on.

It’s not a matter of access for many. The universal subsidized childcare of primary education was closed for over a year, and subsequently private childcare couldn’t keep up with demand. Combined with the fact that existing childcare providers couldn’t necessarily expand their sizes due to distancing needs and labor shortages

I wonder about Universal Childcare, and it's not that it's not needed.

I wonder who's going to provide it.

Being male, I don't know if I would even venture into the area. I couldn't imagine being interrogated by parents, and the whole vetting process. And yes--it might make more sence for a woman to open up a child care facility? The list of government regulation must get onerious too?

Where are we going to find all these babysitters?

Second--the money will come on the form of a federal tax credit. Why do I feel that money will end up going to other things a young family needs?

At this point, I'd rather see a Basic Income that goes to all low income Americans. They could use the money for anything.

Tax credits are not the only mechanism for government funding.

We already have a very successful model of government provided childcare: the public school system.

> At this point, I'd rather see a Basic Income that goes to all low income Americans. They could use the money for anything.

If you apply this logic to other government subsidized programs, where we remove the subsidies and give people some cash, you'll quickly run into problems.

Look at how much money it costs to simply buy health coverage on the individual market for a family with one kid with no subsidies. It's $16k - $24k in yearly premiums, with $6k - $12k yearly deductibles, and $17k+ yearly out of pocket maximums. Almost all of the proposed UBI amounts would go towards just the premiums alone, without even getting into deductibles, out of pocket maximums, copays or out of network care.

The situation many families would face would be a choice between being able to see a doctor, receiving adequate and safe childcare, paying rent, etc.

You could make similar arguments about any government job that requires lots of manpower (schools, the military, sanitation, whatever), and yet they do find the workers. That's not a problem. Your average government job is a lot better than your average fast food/retail job in terms of pay/benefits/job stability, so they'll definitely find the employees.

Interesting second order affect:

lack of childcare -> smaller available labor pool -> disproportionate difficulty hiring in childcare (because it doesn't pay well) -> continued lack of childcare

We could actually be looking at a bistable system, in which (because childcare jobs are towards the bottom end of the pay spectrum) you don't get available childcare unless you have surplus labor, and until you have available childcare you will have a labor shortage.

The solution would be the pay more for childcare, but that money has to come from somewhere, and a lot of people who require it cannot pay a lot more. A conundrum...

If only there were some sort of system, by which the richest people would give money to some sort of a shared pool, and the money in that pool could be given out to pay of childcare. It's pretty out there, I know!

Yeah, crazy talk...

Heck, or they could just fund the DoD budget exclusively from the top marginal tax rate because that's who's profiting off war anyway.

You could almost say that reliable childcare is necessary infrastructure as bridges and highways are. Almost.

We could always invite in more au-pairs using the J1 visa. Many au pairs end up taking up college here and switch to an F1 visa. This system is tested and works well.

Somehow I don't think it's jobs that pay enough to afford an au pair that have trouble recruiting.

Pandemic of course messed with much of the social infra the world over, BUT no real social option for child care in a developed country is a very USA problem. Good family leave policy (1 year+) and wide availability of kindergarten-type facilities (no it’s not a “grade” in childcare, it’s a type of a facility) with universal guarantee of availability are the norm elsewhere and do wonders to enable parents to work.

When caring for a newborn for more than a few weeks means one becomes unemployed, no wonder families decide to not play that game until kids are a bit older. Otherwise, you look for a job just to risk needing a leave that can result in loss of this job if the kid gets sufficiently sick.

And when childcare facilities close due to Covid?

Adapt.

Restructure child care to account for pandemic. Smaller group sizes, no intra-mingling, contact tracing, nordic style outdoor classes, etc.

Ya, it costs more. Whatever. Investing in childcare is LONG overdue.

Subsidized childcare. That’s it, that’s the secret. Societies that value their workforce use tax dollars to fund childcare.

Or better yet, government-run healthcare. Subsidies have the unfortunate problem of being swallowed whole by rentseekers (see: college loans vs college tuition costs).

>(see: college loans vs college tuition costs)

College is easily five to ten times more expensive then when I went in the 90's - and the vast majority of that increase is from government guaranteed student loans. No risk on the part of the schools, so they jack tuition up with a bunch of amenities because they are getting paid, no matter what. Handing out $100K+ to people with little guarantee of getting it back? Where else can that happen but within our insane student loan system?!?

Articles like this is what brought it home to me: https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/tricked-college-campuses-wa...

Give me a break! I think that schools should be on the hook for at least half a loan if someone can't get a job and earn enough that will let them pay the loan back within a fixed time - say six years. That would tamp down a lot of this utterly unrealistic spending for degrees that have little chance of ever returning any meaningful value for what is paid out.

There is one aspect that helps with this in certain cultures, namely grandparents. Grandparents are usually thrilled to spend time with young grandchildren.

This is an age old mechanism that mostly alleviates two problems simultaneously - old age care, and the two working parents situation.

The other option (which also works nearly as well) is what other commentators mentioned - European style subsidized childcare/old age support.

The USA shuns the first culturally (I get strange looks from people when I say I am happy working and living with my parents), and shuns the second culturally as well as politically. Some awareness/willingness to learn from history/other cultures would fix that, but I am not holding my breath.

Grandparents only work if your parents retired or your grandparents are alive and functional. Current generations millennials and Z have grandparents dead(shorter average lifespan, waiting with having children) and working parents(economic situation, better healthcare). Not only that, but you also need to live close by. We are migrating way more than before, there are whole cities in Europe and US left with retirees. You also need to have a larger house to host grandparents. Millennials have a worse economic situation than boomers.

Current life of young people look like:

  — Get expensive degree
  — Move to expensive city for jobs
  — Hard to find partner
  — Cannot afford to start family, postpone children
  — Have children without family support 
  — Get into high level of debt

There two things happening

  — People have less or no children. This lead to increased taxation and increasing retirement age in many countries. It often causes social unrest when governments try uncontrolled external immigration to fill the gaps. 
  — People try to live frugal lives, reduce spending and try to save for retirement individually. This disturbs housing market and stall country economy and destroy luxury brands.

Also your parents have to not suck. My ‘greatest generation’ grandmother took care of me a lot when I was a kid, and my children’s two boomer grandmothers really can’t be bothered. Yet another anti-boomer trope, but so real in my life.

I don't have kids, but my parents treat my brother's kids like plague rats to be avoided. It's very sad because the kids love them but the ship sailed on changing who my parents are now a long time ago.

I wish more people that pull out the moralizing "everyone should just" would understand that just maybe the rest of us don't have a life that looks like theirs, and not for reasons under our control.

> the cost of childcare for both children encroaches the income of one parent alone

That's the case in the US. In countries where family welfare policies exist and where governments incentive and support families: that's hardly the case. Childcare is pretty much free or does not cost as nearly as much as in the US.

I think the US may be an advanced country for many aspects, but it is just ridiculously behind when it comes to healthcare and families.

> When families have 2 children under 5, the cost of childcare for both children encroaches the income of one parent alone.

Except: 1) That was true BEFORE the pandemic, yet there was no labor shortage. 2) Salaries have gone up due to the (temporary) labor shortage, so it should be easier for more parents to justify childcare costs.

So I don't see that it has anything to do with the current situation.

Childcare costs have gone up also. As have most other cost of living metrics. That's what inflation is.

Full time child care in Brooklyn, NY was $2000/mo for 1 child when I inquired earlier this year.

Childcare can definitely be made much more efficient. Here in Quebec we have 7$/day and 8.5$/day childcare, the total budget is 2.5 billion dollars for an 8.6 million people population.

I’ve heard getting spots can be exceedingly difficult.

Funded, but not really funded so readily accessible.

Getting spots in a CPE can be very difficult. Getting spots in a family daycare that's not fully regulated is really not that difficult, unless you live in a really underserved area. Where I live, there are ads for spots in family daycare, and these aren't that uncommon. It's not what's best but it's better than having to quit your job.

It could definitely use an extra 30% of funding, but there is also a severe lack of trained staff for high quality childcare because people just don't want to deal with that.

For childcare, it is not just cost-cutting, but that parents discovered that they preferred spending time with their children to wallowing in Outlook all day.

  > I don't know that there is much the government can do. Childcare facilities actually run on thin margins and turnover is high. State regulations are often aggressive towards child to caretaker ratios.

ive heard the 3.5T infrastructure bill will have alot of provisions for childcare, i wonder how much that will help the situation?

> I don't know that there is much the government can do.

One super obvious thing the government could do, that many other governments do successfully, is to simply run child cares. First grade used to be the first year of schooling then kindergarten was introduced, and now pre-K is common in a lot of places. Just keep going down a few more years, and boom, child care problem solved. This would solve a lot of the disincentives to having children, so you would think the people complaining about the low birth rate in the US would be in favor of it, and yet ..

While it's a good to think about childcare, something more constructive needs to be done about growing up in the modern world than extending the caging of modern children.

John Taylor Gatto (iirc) advised keeping kids out of school as long as possible, as nothing important is learned in the first few grades that wouldn't be learned anyways, or couldn't be learned more efficiently later. http://johntaylorgatto.com/

If the government were to extend school-as-childcare, it could be done in a way that restores the ability of children to learn from the real world. I don't know what 4, 5, 6 and 7 year olds should be learning, but imho Pre-K, K, 1st and 2nd grade "classrooms" are stifling.

Gatto's essay, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, is all over the interwebs.

What did Native Americans teach their 4 year olds?

Looking back at my own school experience, I don't think I learned anything of value in the formal lessons of school until third grade. But being around other kids and maturing together was quite-worthwhile. I probably could have done that hanging out with the neighborhood kids playing on the street.

The experience of being around other children can frequently be pretty awful for a lot of kids. There are a lot of asshole children out there who belong in a zoo rather than a school. Socialization is good, but forced socialization under a poorly run authoritarian regime, not so much.

I think Japan does well with schooling small children, they mostly focus on teaching manners, how to clean up after yourselves, how to play well with each other, that kind of thing. It may be worthy of emulation.

Reinforcing your 4th point, I was shocked by how many old mules who had big plans to pack it in until they were 75 suddenly called it quits after a year off with their families.

They weren't all the highest earners, but relinquishing their spots in the org chart freed up a lot for the frustrated younger people who put in 10-20 years but could never meaningfully move up, either by responsibility or compensation.

I remember the same thing happening in 2008 in the private sector then in 2010 in public but with the opposite effect. So many people that had put everything in the stock market and housing suddenly saw themselves pushing off retirement for another decade. A neighbor offered for me to take over the last 20% of a mortgage on a home because he'd sold his primary residence and had retired to Florida right before the crash, and I still don't know why I turned him down. It would have been a 800% return today, which is just stupid.

The child care point has been my wife's and I's position for the past three years. She pretty much did not work a job because it would have cost more to put two in day care than she would have brought in.

This brings up a good point. Most (all?) people get complacent to some degree or another. When you have a big event come along and disrupt, in particular, low paying jobs, suddenly the inertia of complacency is gone and people start looking for options. I think that's a large part of what we've seen here. That combined with the societal realization of how shitty service jobs are lead to a perfect storm of migration away from such jobs.

> 1. Reliable childcare still isn't a thing.

I think lack of reliable & economical childcare drives a series of tradeoffs that are in many cases strange to think about.

A - I have good / economical childcare, or supportive spouse, and I can do a demanding professional job

B - I have good childcare but it is too expensive. Considering the cost and tax burder of two workers, best I quit and let my husband/wife/partner/etc work only, and I stay home with the kids

C - I have neither good, nor economical childcare, or cannot afford it. I'm trapped into a bad situation. I don't have a spouse. Welfare/WIC/foodstamps/Section 8 is better than starving. I'll take that.

D - I have neither good, nor economical childcare, or cannot afford it. I'm trapped into a bad situation. I don't have a spouse. Jobs in my local area offer me nothing over Welfare/WIC/foodstamps/Section 8, so I will stay with that.

C & D both provide a strong argument for UBI. Although I am against communism, I do think that if we are going to do transfer payments, UBI is the least evil / most righteous approach, but I am concerned about the potential inflationary effects.

> 2. A lot of restaurant and retail workers had a full year to find something else to do. Many did. And why go back to working for tips if you found a junior marketing position that you can do remotely home and has a career path?

To this end, I have several friends who worked in the food industry pre-pandemic who have spent the last almost 2 years studying, finishing school and finding jobs in the tech sector.

Some are now working as software engineers after waiting tables two years ago. They aren't going back to working for tips any time soon.

I’ve been quite surprised by the attitude of local employers who are utterly contemptuous of workers not knocking down the door for what are essentially dead end jobs.

I’ve even remarked on occasion that hey, if you had a lousy job working for someone who took you for granted and something happened that changed that you might not rush back either.

> 3. They moved! If you're a service job in an expensive city, many of the people you hoped to rehire relocated last summer and aren't necessarily itching to come back.

From my experience, that point increases in resort towns where hospitality is mostly the only game in town and not so much in the expensive big cities with lots of other kinds of jobs. The expensive big cities are back to their outsized growth mode they were at before the pandemic, the resort towns are really hurting.

Both you and parent’s comments are correct.

1) child care (schools and crap). Especially schools.

2) unemployment insurance

3) move out from expensive cities (where restaurants are)

4) immigrantions is stopped / shifted

5) people found different jobs

6) people living more frugal

7) people starting their own business

8) retiring

I personally saw each of the above. One’s political affiliation will ranks them differently…

> the government paid a huge amount of money to people to not work for a long time

They did? I remember three teeny tiny payments. Certainly not enough to live on for a long time.

Did you go on unemployment benefits?

This is an important question. The pandemic response added both extensions to unemployment and additional payout beyond the typical maximum ($300/week extra, if I remember correctly). If you were laid off any time over the last 18 months, you would be making well over minimum wage by doing nothing. That's a pretty big incentive for plenty of people.

But if that were the case I'd expect to see the employment numbers dramatically shift in states that removed their unemployment assistance earlier than others, which I don't think we've seen any evidence of yet.

Has it been quite a month yet? If there is an effect I'd guess we won't even see it in the statistics yet, and that's without accounting for the fact that it takes time to find and start a job even in a favorable market.

So far the evidence is that job growth is worse in those states.

https://www.reuters.com/business/amid-covid-surge-states-tha...

If you received maximum benefits and the extra $300, then you got more than you would have earned on minimum wage. You'll receive however maximum benefit only if you earned fairly well before. So I don't see anyone getting more benefits than they could plausibly earn, if the jobs they held before were still available to them. Last year, for a time, $600 were paid in addition to unemployment benefit, which changed that equation.

> That's a pretty big incentive for plenty of people.

If $300 a week (before taxes) is a "big incentive" for people, they were being criminally underpaid before they lost their job.

Ah okay, that's the difference. No I didn't.

The stimulus checks were a very small part of the overall program.

For several months last year there was a $600 a week federal unemployment supplement, and there has been $300 a week since the beginning of this year (it expired a couple weeks ago).

Netting out $400 a week (state+federal) isn't a huge amount of money of course.

Several other rules were also changed, but there are still limits on the number of weeks people can collect unemployment.

What I've seen here and there is that the states that ended benefits earlier did see a small bump in employment (but not a particularly meaningful one).

Massively, they did, yes. By both injecting money directly and taking away the burden of repayments. And this unemployment boost that expired is just one small piece of equation:

1 - unemployment boost 2 - stimulus payments 3 - extending unemployment to workers who would normally be ineligible (contractors etc) 4 - eviction moratorium 5 - mortgage forbearance programs 6 - student loans forbearance 7 - locally available , utilities payments pauses 8 - ppp grants

I have at least 3 friends who were working retail jobs who were on unemployment for over a year. 1 has gone back to work. 2 still milk it. They just figured out how to live VERY modestly. It’s mostly trailers and video games.

Trailers and video games sounds preferable to any type of "customer is always right" retail job. Retail jobs are abusive and cause depression. They are not viable careers. I too would live on the poverty line before returning to that life.

Easy solution: pay more. Easy to get people to go back if they get paid well enough! At some point, the employer will find enough people to go back to work - and that point is what (economically) the job is worth. A lot of people realized their number is higher than they thought because their alternative was not as bad as they thought.

It's still a dead end job though. Even if it pays $100k/yr, if that's all it'll ever be, it's just not worth if the alternative is something with an actual career path.

If retail paid well, even if it was still a dead end unto itself, would allow people to save money. They would have options. Retail is a dead end job and barely pays above poverty level. They usually don't get any healthcare coverage either. Unless a retail worker is lucky or lives like a monk it's hard to make enough money to ever get ahead. One bad illness or injury can ruin them financially.

Retail could be a starting point for someone. It doesn't have to be a career. But with low wages and no benefits it's usually just enough to keep someone barely living.

Considering the median wage in the US is around 35k, a 100k "dead end" job sounds pretty good.

It also doesn't remotely sound "dead end" to me at all. That leaves you set for life; you're better off than most people. And if your partner also works ...!!

Any job making $100k/yr isn't "dead end". You don't need a career path because you've already reached the end of it. You can live quite comfortably almost anywhere in the US at that salary and thus need no further advancement. If $100k counts as "dead end" by your definition, then your definition is useless. What number would you put as the threshold if not $100k, or even something below it?

Spoken like a true tech elite. Most of the country would kill to get a “100k a year dead end job”.

I agree, but on the flip side, these guys aren’t doing anything to better themselves. They can’t hold down relationships and they wouldn’t be able to support a family anyway.

I don’t think this is the kind of behavior we want to incentivize. But you are right - we have GOT to bring some jobs back that pay a decent wage.

The stimulus payments were just that - extra money to stimulate economic activity - not assistance to those directly impacted. There was an order of magnitude or so more money (per recipient) available through the unemployment supplement programs, and a huge amount (meditated by employers) available through the PPP program.

Well you could also stop paying rent and not get evicted, so there's that.

Those are the general stimulus payments, the upthread comment is referring to the temporary boost in unemployment to on-average full-replacement level instead of around 2/3, along with the temporary removal of job search requirements.

There were many people making the equivalent of $50K per year, between federal and state payments. That was more than many of them made when working.

These are all expiring now, we'll see what happens next.

>2) people got used to living much more cheaply than they had before due everything being closed

Not just more cheaply,the lockdowns forced many to become more self-sufficient and in many cases, they either needed or wanted to do some services they typically paid for. For example, if there's a type of food you were craving you'd normally just order, you probably tried to cook it. In many cases people learned it's not that hard, they too could do it, and it was portion of the cost. That's just eating out. People probably also tried all sorts of stuff like basic car maintenance, simple housework, etc. because they not only had incentives to save money, they also lacked access to services and had free time to give things a try themselves.

From talking to people, most people have realized how disposable they are to their employer, and the mythology around the dignity of work is broken - nurses, grocery workers, anyone in a restaurant, all considered “essential” got a little cheer on from society for a month, then turned to their management who told them to pound rocks if they think they deserve to not live in poverty for sacrificing their health and well being.

People are trying different stuff because everyone got a big jolt and woke up to what they were actually doing. Time having to be spent at home, with whomever they happened to be living with, and all external entertainment and distractions having gone away, lots of people saw how fundamentally unhappy their lives were, and want to do something about it.

Fuck entrepreneurship. A tighter labor market, as you say, will be much better to spur more investment into automation — and thus us — than whatever wantrepreneurship trend the video is trying to hype up.

Agree and would emphasize these options are temporary. The sustainability of this labor program is dubious. People are going to wake up to a very different labor market when these benefits end.

What do you mean?

The US labor force is on track to be constrained for decades. If we don't massively expand immigration or figure out how to have more babies, that's where we will be.

I mean there is this UBI experiment is going to have a crushing impact on small business who can't afford to compete against the government and their preferred business partners for labor. This will produce a cascade of unemployed competing with each other for crappy jobs in the service sector. Meanwhile, the border is wide open and people are most definitely coming. Are they high-skill laborers? Hardly. They'll also compete for the low-skill agriculture, construction, and service sector jobs. The net-net will be that the Precariat will be driven to penury and servitude. Don't worry, they'll be masked so the rest of us don't have to see the anguish on their faces.

At the same time we're automating away millions of jobs, so maybe we shouldn't be so quick to take measures to flood the labor market.

the benefits have already ended. Places still can't get workers.

Give it time.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-20/employers...

https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/14436282057352233...

Well, economies are severely path-dependent. It will be different from today, but it will also be different from the pre-pandemic.

Economics actually does care about your feelings and dreams. Its the study of how people spend money. People's individual values effects their spending habits, what they are willing to work for, and what businesses they start. Its literally a social science.

That said I also dont really agree with this video. I think it enforces a bootstraps-like view on how people should adapt.

Frankly I think we need a more empathetic economic system that rewards but does not demand entrepreneurship, and that values worker autonomy above all else.

4) Returning illegal immigrants has hurt the number of people available to work 5) People who used to be able to work multiple jobs work fewer jobs maybe due to higher pay or unavailability of the other jobs they had before, 6) a lot of people died who also worked.

Economics is fundamentally about peoples' feelings: their subjective valuation of various things, and the resulting decisions made in allocation of scarce resources to the most "preferred" ends. It begins and ends with value judgements.

Don’t forget almost perpetual swelling of normally uncorrelated assets across almost every class. More wealth in assets = less need to work for a segment of the population.

yeah, i’m sure it applies to a few thousand peoples but not the millions of jobless people. not everyone even has a dream they are passionate about following in the first place. for the most part people just want a stable job and to be able to enjoy their life outside work. there aren’t millions of new entrepreneurs out of nowhere. it’s a romantic idea

While I agree with your three points I simply do not understand why this narrative rarely, if ever, seems to take into account the fact that:

children cannot yet be vaccinated rules are based on a local level and changing all the time women are making a decision between work and managing their home and their children

a 2 income home is very common but also often enabled by external help, even if its babysitters or after school programs or kids hanging out at the park

> Economics doesn't care about your feelings or your dreams.

This is an example of business thinking gone wrong.

Economics prescribes behaviors to humans using logical and historical arguments, and tries work out how this scales up.

You can't use it to pretend humanity doesn't exist.

> If you need money to pay your bills and the only way to get that money is to work a shit job, you will work the shit job.

I think you'll find the rising homeless problem in every major city in america proves this wrong.

Sometimes you just get anxious and depressed until you fall into an addiction fueled rut and you end up homeless and clueless.

yep, and funny enough, both your reply and OPs comment show the limits of economics as any sort of explanatory science for the behaviors of people at scale. It’s at some level basically reading tea leaves.

I think you'll find the rising homeless problem in every major city in america proves this wrong.

How many millions of subsidies are being payed to handle these homeless people?

LA alone dedicated a BILLION dollars to help fix this. Yet here we are.

How many houses were built for those BILLION dollars to house homeless? My guess is zero.

And ironically enough the economics world has known that this naive perspective of microeconomic market rationality trumps all human behavior hasn't been true for quite some time. It's not like Kahneman and Tversky won the Nobel as some sort of fluke. It's a deflection by people who don't want to look at and address the problems of what's actually going on. And if you look at who makes these arguments, it's overwhelmingly one demographic category. Conclude what you want from that imo.

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