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It isn’t really radical policy, when you consider public school funding works the same way.

A better term than subsidy might help. For example, we don’t describe property taxes that go to your school district as an “education subsidy”. It’s just a public service you pay for (that everyone benefits from at some point in their lives).

It is when half the people in one of the two major political parties think it is.

> Fundamentally, I believe the US either needs to subsidize childcare directly

We do this in America, although it’s through the back door in the form of generous tax credits. With two children we receive a fat tax refund every year. For those on the dole, solid increases in benefit allotments come for those with children.

Child tax credits ($2000/yr below the income phaseout) are an order of magnitude smaller than childcare costs. GP is talking about fully subsidizing childcare costs. And, uh, the income phaseout impacts it too.

Australian here. Subsidised childcare is great, and absolutely crucial for single parent households. It disproportionally benefits private interests though, not families.

For-profit childcare centres have absolutely mastered the art of simultaneously minimising operating costs (underpaying staff) while increasing pricing. These increases then create pressure to improve subsidies. With CCS at up to 90% for low income households this creates a flow of public funds directly to their shareholders while not actually improving anything for the people it should help.

In Norway at least, most childcare is provided by the state (via the local authority). There are some private nurseries but there are very strict rules on how they operate, to the point that the laws are hostile against their existence. What's interesting is that there are also private, not for profit, parent run nurseries, where the nursery is managed & budgeted by a board made up of the parents. There is an owner, making a reasonable salary like profit, but no shareholders. Nothing's perfect but works really well to optimise spending and minimise public money going to private profits.

> make peace that people will have less or no kids because they are unaffordable

Yes this is the right choice. We have immigration to make up for the missing workers. This is not a social problem like you are portraying it.

Society gains nothing from people having kids when we have unlimited immigration potential. Society would just be subsidizing someones lifestyle choice which is not its job.

What is the purpose of society? In the US, the stated goals were to

> form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity

I don't see "increase economic output" in there. I do see an explicit line item about Liberty for our Posterity (i.e. the authors' children and descendants). One might infer that actually that entire list was meant for us and our children too, and not just the people of the time.

That wasn't the stated goal of society, it was the stated goal of the adoption of a particular framework of government (replacing an earlier one which, implicitly, fell short in those areas, but may have been adequate to other areas important to the goals the authors had for society.)

Ok in that case, it's to end the the war of all against all, but genocide is a rather strong reason to dissolve the truce. The people unable to have kids because of policy decisions that it's economically inefficient would owe no obligation to society, including the obligation to warn anyone ahead of time that the contract with them has ended.

Crime and mental health would probably be cured if people were busy raising families instead of slaving away for someone else's yacht

You are encouraging genocide. Quite literally, as what you propose is one of the commonly accepted definitions of genocide, which is to impose economic hardships on a population that hinders them from having children as well as replacing them by mass moving other ethnicities into the lands that they once inhabited.

All because you believe it would benefit in some invisible deity of "society".

There are no missing workers and has never been. There are only missing wages.

Natives in America were historically the victims of genocide, because rulers and industry at the time decided it was too expensive to get them to labour effectively. The natives wanted to spend their time on other things, such as caring for their children. And European settlers were not reproducing quite fast enough for the hunger of the business rulers for young workers. So the natives were exterminated and replaced by cheap and effective labour brought in from Africa. How does history judge those actions?

And now hackers are here in 2023 using the same arguments again.

>one of the commonly accepted definitions of genocide

I need to see your definition or consensus sample:

the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were:

- killing members of the group (nope)

- causing them serious bodily or mental harm (you can argue mental harm, but it's a huge stretch)

- imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group (living conditions are down, but it'd be disrespectul to compare my living to slavery or a concentration camp)

- preventing births (I guess this is your angle. But discouragement =/= prevention. My parents discouraging me from having a kid isn't genocide. Moreover, this is a decision mostly made on free will; you CAN still have a kid, but the costs of raising a kid are always present)

- forcibly transferring children out of the group (nope)

>Natives in America were historically the victims of genocide, because rulers and industry at the time decided it was too expensive to get them to labour effectively.

yeah, because they furfilled at least 3 of the 5 definitions. You can easily argue all 5. What's happening today is 2 very iffy arguments across a nation, with ways out of society in the worst cases.

I consider the definitions that have made this list to be commonly accepted, and if you read them, they make sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_definitions

Economic subjugation / destruction of economic life is mentioned in several of these definitions. For example that a young family is forced to go into life long debt in order to have their own home, or pay exorbitant rents.

Especially the first definition in the list is worth reading, because it dispels the myth that genocide needs to be immediate and brutal. It can also a long-term plan carried out by rulers to exterminate an ethnic group.

> yeah, because they furfilled at least 3 of the 5 definitions. You can easily argue all 5.

There is nobody today that would argue that natives in America weren't subjected to genocide.

> commonly accepted definitions

uh no. I didn't read rest of your comment.

Or leverage immigration and cheaper housing to solve the gap.

Alternatively conditions can be created where one parent, most likely the mother, can stay home and wages will automatically increase because of the reduced labor force.

And then you have sexism though. I want to enjoy my children as much as my wife and we both want a career too

Yeah can’t have it all. I’d be willing to put up with some sexism if it meant everyday wasn’t a low paid grind to the gravestone. I would bet a lot of women would given how dissatisfied the workforce is currently.

No one wants to be told they can’t have it all. That is the reality. Life is about choices. Not gender specific.

The reality is also everyone can’t have it all. If a lot of people make choices that lead to a worse outcome for everyone then maybe we should prioritize other avenues of fixing the problem rather than continuing to optimize for complete freedom of choice.

I mean, dads have sacrificed dadhood for years (talking as a dad), without even a chiice. I've been in the privileged position of working from home, so I see my children every day, can take a minute or two to play together during the day, eat together, bring them to school, and of course when they were 0-1 years old they slept on me so many times (even while working. Computer did wonders!)

I don't know for a fact, but I suspect it is possible to have two parents working from home and an external person coming home a couple of hours during the day and have both career + children, but I'm not entirely sure (my wife is fully dedicated to children, although we are at the tail end).

That being said, the choice shouldn't be determined by sex. Breastfeeding is a thing, but with Canada's paternity/maternity leaves, the problem is heavily mitigated (1 year, although with very low compensation)

To be fair you have a choice: find an ambitious woman (or man) willing to be the "breadwinner" and appeal with your ability to care for children.

I'm not saying that choice is plentiful, but it exists. I'm sure there are other people willing to have kids but also wants to progress in their career.

>I suspect it is possible to have two parents working from home and an external person coming home a couple of hours during the day and have both career + children, but I'm not entirely sure

sure, we call those nannies or simply babysitters, depending on the amount of involvement. Not impossible but it is a large expense to consider. Alternatively, be fortunate enough to have trustworthy neighbors who has a stay at home parent who can keep an eye on things for a few hours.

I wouldn't mind a return of the latchkey kid. those stranger danger initiatives probably did more damage than good with regards to letting a kid properly engage with the world.

What's a latchkey kid?

Also, to maximize health benefits for the children, breastfeeding is preferable (according to WHO, for 2 years), which partially takes away that choice (it's really hard to make a choice against child health if it's purely based on my interest).

That's just what they called kids who had a house key ("latch" being the keyhole). They would either be capable of walking home, going in the house, and being okay by themselves for some hours before the parents got home. Or in the older days they would simply wander the neighborhood or town and come back in before sundown. of course, these days that is considered borderline child abuse to kids under 13, but those days weren't that long ago.

Can't say much about the breastfeeding. if that needs to be from the source and is an invariant for you you are definitely treading in deep waters. Still not impossible, but wet nurses are a very archaic concept (and crazy expensive these days if they still exist).

Wages are not 1:1 corresponded with reduction in labor force, because companies will often gladly squeeze individuals harder and harder rather than pay more to hire more. Look at all of the people who complained about 'people not wanting to work' when fast food and restaurant industries had a lack of workers.

Additionally this can tend to have bad effects on the rest of our systems, for example the nursing shortage isn't resulting in better pay for most individuals despite them being in high demand. It's resulting in a rise in traveling nurses which also impacts the salary of other nurses. Companies are incredibly resistant to paying people more, especially when they have monopolistic control over jobs in certain areas which allows them to forcibly depress wages.

I would bet there is only so much squeezing you can do and losing 40-50% of the workforce would mean that you cannot sustainably as one person to do the job of two for an extended period.

The key word is 'sustainably'. If companies cared about that, we wouldn't be in this spot. Companies will gladly coast with the bare minimum even if it means losing people can ruin entire systems or projects as long as the next quarter results look good.

>as long as the next quarter results look good.

And companies always underestimate how much their burn and churn affects the next year at the cost of the quarter. I won't exactly sympathize with them as they degrade and a facility that doesn't drain blood from a rock rises.

Feminism arose in the US during the 1950s in the first place because a significant amount of women were not satisfied with being stay-at-home mothers and wives. Even if the world were suddenly taken back to the 1950s, the same thing would happen again eventually.

Also, if half the working population stayed home, the economy would be half as productive. Wages won't automatically increase; business will just go to some country or region where comparable labor is more abundant, and the country's economy becomes less competitive.

You’re making it sound like feminism is the cause for our current dire situation and I’m not completely sure that’s true.

Isn't feminism and the women's liberation movement what caused women to stop becoming stay-at-home mothers and enter the workforce instead?

I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would. Otherwise we land at “feminism ruined America”.

I don't think feminism ruined America.

> I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would.

I thought it was common to teach that women's employment rose with second-wave feminism in the 1960s.

My background knowledge: after WW2 ended, women were fired and replaced with men. The average age of marriage dropped, and the portion of women attending college descreased. Housewives were increasingly dissatisfied, which drew them to the second-wave feminist movement. This is why the book The Feminine Mystique sold well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feminine_Mystique

>I thought it was common to teach that women's employment rose with second-wave feminism in the 1960s.

that would time well with being one generation removed from the one that lost 400k to war. the 60's would be when boomers would start entering the work force.

I'm sure some of the silent generation women also entered, but they wouldn't lead the bulk of the workforce shifting by the late 60's/70's.

> I thought it was WW2 and the lack of men to do the jobs they usually would.

That doesn't track the reality of the timeline of women in the workforce. Women temporarily worked during WW2, and after the war things returned to the previous status quo. Women weren't common in the workforce until the 1960s. It wasn't until 1967 that women's labor force participation broke 40%[1] but then it pretty quickly hit 50% by 1978.

"Women's liberation" is what brought women into the labor force. That doesn't mean it "ruined America", it just means the approach had flaws that need to be iterated on.

1: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002

Cottage industries from at least the time of Queen Elizabeth did have women working though. It was just that there were no factories until the industrial revolution, so that industrial activity remained in the home "the cottage", for both husbands and wives.

Feminism and women's liberation resulted in the waterwheel and steam driven textile factories being majority staffed with women during the industrial revolution?

Invention of dish washer, washing machine, supermarkets (A&P) where you can do all your shopping in one place, they freed up the women labor force. Then WW2, men went to war, women started filling in some of the roles.

I don't think any progress in women can be attributed to feminism. They still don't have any ownership of their own bodies (abortion, sex work), their bodies are controlled by 80+ year old white males running the govt.

> Feminism arose in the US during the 1950s in the first place because a significant amount of women were not satisfied with being stay-at-home mothers and wives. Even if the world were suddenly taken back to the 1950s, the same thing would happen again eventually.

I don't think anyone is advocating for returning to the 1950s status quo. We should, however, do away with the delusion that couples can have both two careers and raise children. Sheryl Sandberg sent this message to women quite a while ago at this point, she just tilted it toward "give up on the family and focus on the career".

We can create incentives that allow it to make sense for a family to have a single income, and a mother to raise her own children again, without telling women they're required to do that. Right now there's not much of a choice at all. Couples are forced to have two incomes because they can't make economic ends meet otherwise. Giving women real choice is a whole lot better than what we currently have and better than the 1950s. Women who wants careers can have them, and women who wants to be full-time mothers should be able to do that without it meaning being destitute.

I agree that being able to have children on a single income without 1950s gender roles would be the most ideal outcome.

Like I said, though, I kind of wonder how a country could get there. If it became more common, the country would become less "productive" in the short term, because we don't count raising children towards the GDP, even though we should. So, in the short term, if voters and politicians keep chasing short term GDP growth, they'll never try to make the ideal outcome a reality. That would only start doing so when population goes down and immigration can't supplement population growth anymore, but by then it will be too late.

> If it became more common, the country would become less "productive" in the short term

technology and education already solved this. We're not in the 50's anymore with a Ford-esque assembly worker chain dedicated to pushing one pencil each. One modern 2020's man can do the work of 10 minimum wage men back then. So why does he have less earning power than his grandfathers?

we're plenty productive, and the govt. shouldn't treat their people like a tech company does chasing "infinite growth". pay people a living wage, give them choices in lifestyle (part time, full time, contract, etc.), invest more in training and growth so each worker can do more, because to be frank we don't need a single cashier dedicated full time to checking items out anymore (as one example). If that training is valuable enough to poach, bring back proper bonuses and other retention incentives (but let's be real, most of that training these days is in college).

And come down the other way too. Stop letting housing rent for people who are actually living in a place get out of control. Same with food (and it'd be a nice bonus to subsidize more sustainable, healthy foods while we're at it).