[HN Gopher] New Mexico voted a child care guarantee into its con...
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       New Mexico voted a child care guarantee into its constitution
        
       Author : 8bitsrule
       Score  : 10 points
       Date   : 2022-12-05 20:51 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
        
       | prottog wrote:
       | I'm not against using O&G tax revenue for early education and the
       | like, but I struggle to see why this needs to be in the
       | constitution of the state. A law would have sufficed. Basic legal
       | documents like constitutions should be confined to negative
       | rights (freedom from the government doing something to you)
       | instead of getting creative with positive rights (freedom to have
       | something that the government needs to provide you with, on the
       | backs of taxpayers). See Chile[0] for an example of a place that
       | tried to achieve utopia by writing it into a constitution.
       | 
       | Plus, the exact details of the thing seem ill-advised: according
       | to TFA, it would make child care free for families that don't
       | appear to need it, like a family of four making $111k a year (in
       | a state with low cost of living), twice the state's median
       | income.
       | 
       | [0]: https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/09/08/chile-s-
       | rejection-o...
        
         | com2kid wrote:
         | > it would make child care free for families that don't appear
         | to need it, like a family of four making $111k a year (in a
         | state with low cost of living), twice the state's median
         | income.
         | 
         | I was wondering exactly how low cost of living NM is.
         | 
         | Infant/Toddler daycare in my high COL city costs between
         | 24k-33k a year.
         | 
         | Albuquerque is 1/3rd of that.
         | 
         | Damn.
         | 
         | Also
         | 
         | > But the national average cost of child care - $10,600
         | annually
         | 
         | Is a horrible statistic. What type of child care? Full day
         | toddler? Elementary after school program? Did they all get
         | averaged together?
         | 
         | Ugh.
         | 
         | Anyway, figure 111k a year, maybe 80k after taxes and savings,
         | two kids, so that is still 20k a year, or 20% of the family's
         | take home income.
         | 
         | The real reason for these programs is that quality (or even
         | just "not terrible) child care shows dramatic improvements in
         | lifelong cognitive abilities. That, ideally, results in higher
         | earning potential and then more taxes going back to the
         | government long term. Lots of secondary effects of course,
         | lower crime, a workforce better able to meet the needs of an
         | information economy (assuming we aren't replaced by ai), etc,
         | etc.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-05 23:02 UTC)