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Comment by billconan | Hacker News Reader

While I don't have children of my own, my ex-girlfriend used to manage a daycare center. The fees charged to parents were quite high, while the salaries of the teachers, including my girlfriend's, were surprisingly low. It appeared that the primary expense was the cost of renting the property. In my opinion, the government should provide financial support to these facilities, particularly in the form of reimbursements for education infrastructures.

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My aunt runs a very well regarded (and fully licensed, insured, etc) childcare business out of a building she inherited and it's a subsistence living.

Complying with regulations, dietary restrictions, allergies, little special requests that all seem reasonable in isolation, replacing supplies, etc, etc. It's basically the opposite of a software business, it doesn't scale.

She could do better for herself by raising rates (she has parents coming to reserve spots pre-conception), but she can't bear the idea of pricing out hard working people.

There are some things that probably don't work as businesses, even with subsidies, and if we want another generation of kids we probably have to think outside the market box.

We have free school for older kids, and maybe we could just extend public schools to age zero, but what about subsidizing new parents to stay at home and actually bond as a family? Or cooperatives of parents to take care of each other's kids on a shift basis? It would be cool to see this kind of creative thinking.

I worked with a daycare on a building project, and I saw how amazingly expensive childcare is. The teachers are paid what many would consider to be barely a living wage, but property costs and especially insurance were substantial. The owners did it our of their love of doing it, not because because of typical financial goals.

Yes, they could raise their rates, but if they did, many parents would have had to go elsewhere. It was a balancing act to charge enough for the quality they wanted to provide while also being able to be affordable for the community they served. Most teachers were younger, and did not last very long (two years at most).

This doesn't lower the costs, it just causes all taxpayers, including childfree adults, families with a stay at home parent, and families with older children, to subsidize the cost of childcare for those families where all adults are working full time. You could even hypothesize that this extra tax burden ends up being enough to force some stay at home parents get a job and put their children in childcare, creating a vicious cycle.

That's not obviously bad, but we should talk clear eyed about whether that's the right social contract to enter.

Why wouldn't a landlord just raise rates for just a daycare then?

If support were to be given, I'd imagine you'd have to be very careful on how the laws were written.

In New Zealand, the government subsidises up to 20 hours of Early Childhood Education (basically preschool/daycare). However, daycare providers usually only allow you to take 6 hours of subsidized daycare a day, and charge an excessive sum for the 7th-8th hours, essentially double dipping. Most people will pay the extra hours because they work ~8 hours a day and need daycare for all or most of it.

Basically the subsidy doesn't really help parents, it just goes to the daycare's pockets (and subsequently, their landlord if they don't own their property).

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