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Comment by friend_and_foe | Hacker News Reader

Please god no. We went through this already, it halved wages and made single income households a luxury. I personally don't want some stranger raising my kids for me, I want it to be me and my wife doing it. I don't want to delegate rearing of my children to the state, looking at educational attainment in aggregate, they're really bad at it. I don't care about a labor crisis, I care about my family. If wages go up, good. You're not taking my wife and making her your secretary or putting her on a factory floor to keep my pay down.

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> I don't want to delegate rearing of my children to the state

Okay? Then don't. Universal doesn't mean mandatory.

Are you suggesting we should reverse womens' rights in the workplace so you can keep a particular family model?

> If wages go up, good.

Wages don't go up infinitely. They go up, then you run out of workers, and raising wages further doesn't bring more labour to the table. At that point, you cut services and increase prices to temper demand.

Bad faith interpretation. Clearly there are benefits to having a parent dedicated solely to child rearing. I do not think a daycare is the optimal environment for child rearing. The issue here is not women's rights but the responsibility we have for our children.

> Bad faith interpretation

Sorry, I am having trouble finding a gentler parsing of "we went through this already, it halved wages and made single income households a luxury." To what does this refer to if not women entering the labour force?

> do not think a daycare is the optimal environment for child rearing

I don't either. But the choice isn't caring parents or daycare. It's the number of parents who feel forced by the cost of childcare into being reluctant parents. Or single parents in economic insecurity, or worse, forced negligence.

> It's the number of parents who feel forced by the cost of childcare into being reluctant parents.

If childcare is such a significant cost that a family would make the economically rational decision to forgo the potential income of one parent, then the work of a stay-at-home parent is economically valuable, and moving them into the wage economy would not increase overall economic productivity (your original contention).

> Sorry, I am having trouble finding a gentler parsing of "we went through this already, it halved wages and made single income households a luxury." To what does this refer to if not women entering the labour force?

What I believe the parent is referring to is the lack of change in household wealth from a time when most households had a single earner to now when most have two full-time earners. Household wealth has remained stagnant for decades despite more overall hours being worked by parents. The gains from increased labor force participation have been eaten by higher costs and stagnant wages. More money is moving but the average family hasn't seen their wealth increase.

> what does this refer to if not women entering the labour force?

It was a reference to women having to enter the workforce due to inflation. Only a little over half of women want to work outside the home: https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer.... For women with children under 18, only 45% want to work while 50% want to be homemakers.

The fact we’re talking about “universal childcare” while ignoring the equally large if not larger demand women have for staying at home shows our warped priorities. Instead of universal childcare, we should just pay families for children and let them decide whether to use the money for childcare or to enable one parent to stay home.

> The fact we’re talking about “universal childcare” while ignoring the equally large if not larger demand women have for staying at home shows our warped priorities. Instead of universal childcare, we should just pay families for children and let them decide whether to use the money for childcare or to enable one parent to stay home.

It would be interesting to see a direct cash transfer longitudinal experiment where you pay families for a parent to stay home and provide care for childrearing vs universal childcare, to see what that does to fertility rates and wellbeing of both care provider parent and the children being raised.

It seems so incredibly silly and shortsighted to be offering up free childcare to enable a parent to work when they could be working at home (if they choose!) raising their kid(s).

At the very least it seems shortsighted to pay for a different person to take care of the kid when the parent wants to stay home and take care of the kid himself or herself.

> Instead of universal childcare, we should just pay families for children

This is fine, as long as it’s cash and not a tax credit. I always imagined a universal childcare program being administered by states to be given a block grant by Washington. Most states would simply offer vouches/credits. Some would want to run it themselves. But in no case would the federal government be opening direct care—that is simply unprecedented.

What’s the concern with a refundable tax credit? I like the re-use of infrastructure and the strong precedents for prosecuting tax fraud cases that would be automatic if we ran it as a tax incentive program.

> What’s the concern with a refundable tax credit?

It requires the recipient file taxes in a timely manner; is paid ex post facto, which means expenses are being reimbursed in arrears; and requires good money management to last the whole year. Imagine if unemployment were a refundable tax credit: you get it, lump sum, credited against your taxes after you’ve been laid off.

Give the mother one year's worth of check in advance when the kid leaves the hospital (or when adoption is finalized). Then the first year was pre-paid and all subsequent years are pre-paid (from a timing perspective as well) via the taxation system.

I just figured I'd weigh in as a childless single man and say I'd rather not work outside my home either.

Yeah but you’re not serving an indispensable social purpose by staying at home and attending to your hobbies.

Eh, the way society is headed, I think we're better off with less children to feed to the collective grinder.

How silly. My dad grew up in a village in Bangladesh. He remembers a happy childhood. Do you think it’s going to get worse than that in developed countries?

It’s a cold day in hell when rayiner and I agree on something but I think he’s got this one pat.

I think that there is extensive evidence that happiness is not dependent on absolute condition alone, and often more signidicantly driven by condition relative to both past experience and contemporary context, so that your question is...largely irrelevant to experienced misery.

> more signidicantly driven by condition relative to both past experience and contemporary context

Well, if this is true, your point is moot. Children don't have past experience to compare to, they're children. Ask a 4 year old what 'contemporary context' is and you'll get a blank stare.

Kind of feels like you're arguing for the sake of arguing.

It's going to be a rough retirement for you if population drops too quickly. Other people's children are going to need to provide labor to support your retirement. Even if you and all of your friends intend to die at your desks, there are plenty of vital services that require a lot of labor that isn't well-suited to older workers.

Low fertility rates are a real problem across the developed world.

> Wages don't go up infinitely. They go up, then you run out of workers, and raising wages further doesn't bring more labour to the table. At that point, you cut services and increase prices to temper demand.

wow, what a great problem to have. how common is it to encounter this issue? Amazon warehouse workers? Did they increase wages?

> how common is it to encounter this issue?

It's common in regulated professions where entry is gate kept.

To be clear, I'm not convinced we're in a general labor crisis. (Automation should release a lot of supply.) But claiming the concept is mythological is historically inaccurate. (See: raging inflation in mining towns and settlements, which were disconnected from large labour markets.)

> Amazon warehouse workers? Did they increase wages?

Yes [1]. And it's working in that they're managing to hire some people [2]. But productivity per employee is going down, which is directly feeding into increased prices to consumers.

[1] hhttps://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/19/amazon-adding-250000-workers...

[2] https://gadallon.substack.com/p/amazons-holiday-shopping-lis...

> Then don't. Universal doesn't mean mandatory.

Ah yes, the market fundamentalist argument of "market forces don't actually affect you". Wonderful, amazing, very good-faith.

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