POV: I am immigrant to the US and agree with Matt.
I know for a fact that this as a policy would be electoral suicide for democrats and would inevitably result in re-electing Trump and large racist republican majorities. I enjoyed the article though; I find it oddly comforting to know that even the usually ultra-pragmatic MY has his progressive blind spots.
Well crap. I missed this because I was traveling to Argentina, but since I have all the kids (raised 9), I have opinions.
1. Yes, teacher or child care visas would be great.
2. If I were to have another kid (wont happen), I would probably just hire an Au Pair.
3. One overlooked source of child care is home care by stay at home moms. Lets say you have a baby and want to stay home to look after it. Earning a little bit extra with a little more work might be worth it.
Over the long-term, subsidizing children is not "transferring resources [...] to a minority of the population" in the traditional sense, because every single person is, at one point in their lives, a child.
And everyone is a child for the exact same period of time; there are no incentive effects at play here.
This spring we went looking for a good local child care center for baby, nothing available for infants until summer/fall 2023!(!)
Just hired an 5-6 yr experienced nanny. Cost $3k to a nanny finding service to find, screen, background/reference check 5 candidates and set up interviews with us, help draft a contract. Nanny cost=$20/hr, guarantee 32 hrs/wk, 2 wks PTO, which I'm told is actually a pretty great rate for us in this area. Completely aboveboard with payroll service charging $45/month to file all paperwork with the state, withhold and pay taxes, etc.
We are fortunate we can afford this, but at the end of the year, this is $40k, which is college or fancy private school money. The lack of reasonable childcare available in this booming metro seems poorly aligned with ongoing growth patterns.
productivity growth in other sectors could alleviate pressures on child care though, right? according to friends in the MI auto industry, we're far from level 4 and 5 AVs seeing widespread availability, but if they're wrong, how would yuppies feel about their kids being looked after by retired truckers / uber drivers?
"But this doesn’t work for the youngest kids, and while you could have TV-oriented child care for three-year-olds with a fairly high kid-to-adult staffing ratio, most people would consider that a bad outcome."
Why not just let parents decide what's best for their own child? Abolish *all* regulations on child care and let each parent decide what kind of daycare they would like to have. Normal child abuse laws would still apply, of course, it's just that these laws won't differentiate between abuse by a parent and abuse by a person hired by the parent.
Same applies to liability laws - I would give blanket civil liability immunity to childcare centers. They would still be liable for criminal prosecution of course (just like parents are liable right now) but won't have to worry about a helicopter parent suing them over nothing.
Do the two things above, let the free market readjust, then see if immigrants are actually needed and at what quantities.
Isn't the Au Pair Program already something like this, with the added advantage of not straining the housing situation more (I'm having a kid in December and just started investigating them after a friend mentioned his sister has liked hers)? I'm fully on board with expanding it or creating an additional visa type to alleviate some of the child care cost problems though (and building more housing of course).
The Buc-ees tweet is an excellent, direct illustration of cost disease.
I was discussing this exact issue with various friends and family this weekend while visiting the DC/Maryland area (where childcare costs are notoriously high, as we SB readers all know). The private "nanny share" option seems like the only viable short-term solution, for those individuals who have the means and opportunity.
Something I think about a lot is how center based childcare can be so expensive despite its supposed economies of scale. My mom was a teacher - responsible for 25 4th graders - and she barely came out ahead on childcare for my one younger brother. And she had a master’s in education. You don’t need one of those to watch a toddler! How can this be?
One thing I think explains part of the story is that you’re spending take home pay but purchasing a fully loaded employee. I know this would be craven and neoliberal but ought not spending on childcare to be tax deductible? Perhaps even childcare workers themselves should be exempt from income and payroll tax? Or if you wanted to go the other way (I wouldn’t support this, but for illustration) tax stay at home parents the imputed value of the childcare they’re providing themselves. Right now the tax code is a massive push in favor of DIY.
"Right now the tax code is a massive push in favor of DIY. "
Isn't this true about basically everything? You get to use your own labor without having to pay tax on it. Pretty sure we don't want to change that either.
If we want to to be easier to use other people’s labor for this specific thing, then taking our foot off the scale would be a natural first step, wouldn’t it?
How would you do that? Do you charge people for taking care of their kids at night? Making their meals? Does that end, or do parents get charged for helping them with projects or to study for a test when they get into school?
Candidly, I think this idea is internet brain worms and as soon anyone mentioned the idea to a "normie" they would consider you absolutely bonkers.
My understanding is that center based childcare spends a *ton* of money on 1. liability insurance (for obvious reasons) and 2. renting the premises (the center has to be close -ish to where lots of middle-class parents live and/or work, and that likely means high property values).
The very concept of income tax is to moderate anti-social excesses of purchasing power. When a use of money is considered prosocial (retirement savings, homeownership, solar panels, EVs, etc) we make it tax deductible. You're right that this isn't a new idea w.r.t. childcare, but the $5000 limit on a dependent care FSA is sort of hilariously low relative to the actual costs of putting a kid in daycare, I guess my suggestion would be to make it cover more of the cost.
Matt - I'm a single dad of young twin sons and I think you are on the money (so to speak). In New York childcare workers earn a vast range of income, depending on location, situation, skills, business instincts, legal status, tax compliance and luck. For instance, the high end of the twins and multiples baby nurse / night nurse market for newborns in NYC is dominated by women from the Caribbean who have skills like nobody's business, are very well networked, and are in constant demand and earn relatively high (cash) wages. The ones I know have attained middle-class-ish status and have savings, notwithstanding the fact they are often contributing to relatives back home, and whether they are documented or not seems a side note. On another topic, I would love for you do a similar analysis of the market for elder care. We have an au pair program for childcare; it would be great to see one for elder care.
I am (very) far from an expert on this, but there have been some interesting market effects from California's move toward universal transitional/pre-K. Childcare workers who were getting $13/hr are getting union school district jobs paying nearly twice that with much better benefits - and shorter hours.
Also, parents of kids who are now in the "free" pre-K can't find spots in pre- or after-school care at the schools, so some wish they would have stayed in daycare.
Those older classes at daycares that used to house the pre-K age kids were the profitable ones that kept the businesses afloat in contrast to the money-losing infant classes. Despite higher tuition, they tend to be unprofitable due to very high student-teacher ratios.
All I know is I pay $3k a month for two kids in mid-range suburban daycare. Prior to COVID, 80% of the teachers were amazing and went far beyond the call of duty for paltry wages. Post-COVID, many of the great teachers are gone. I understand - it's a very difficult job that I wouldn't last a week in at double the salary.
My in-home daycare provider immigrated to the US decades ago, though I have never asked her from where. Doing some napkin math, she pulls in around $8,000 per month and could pull in more if she wanted to hit the max ratio. I know that that’s not accounting for taxes and expenses, but her husband is a CPA so I assume she maximizes her situation.
Her house is nicer than mine and in a nicer neighborhood. She also is taking 4 weeks off for the birth of her first grandchild over the winter holidays, which she can easily do without jeopardizing her situation because she actually slightly undercharges in the current market and is otherwise extremely reliable.
Looking at my state’s requirements for in-home daycare, it actually doesn’t look terribly onerous. There appear to be no minimum square footage requirements and the time spent training and licensing sounds manageable.
I also think having a single caregiver has great benefits for my daughter as opposed to a revolving door of people working at a childcare center, but that feels more like personal preference.
This is all to say that I very much so agree with Matt on this one.
If Tucker Carlson wants us to return to the 1950’s then MY seems to want to return us to the 1910’s where the well-to-do can afford cheap immigrant labor for basic household functions.
Personally I’m much more concerned about the working poor, particularly single mothers, who could never hope to have a dedicated or shared nanny. MY’s child care ideas sound great for the upper middle class, but unless there are enough subsidies to make it effectively free for the working poor, they are just another example of bad technocracy where benefits are highly skewed in the name of economic efficiency.
>>then MY seems to want to return us to the 1910’s where the well-to-do can afford cheap immigrant labor for basic household functions.<<
I don't interpret his piece in this manner (at all). Under the status quo, quality childcare is increasingly the province of the affluent. Greenlighting an increase in immigrants specifically allowed to work in the US as childcare providers might go some way toward increasing the affordability and availability of this vital service.
Did the rest of this article get cut off at some point? It ends with “...because you are raising the unsubsidized cost of child care.”
He hasn’t even got to the immigration part!
Thanks so much! I’ll be back after I finish moving and starting a new job 😵!
POV: I am immigrant to the US and agree with Matt.
I know for a fact that this as a policy would be electoral suicide for democrats and would inevitably result in re-electing Trump and large racist republican majorities. I enjoyed the article though; I find it oddly comforting to know that even the usually ultra-pragmatic MY has his progressive blind spots.
Well crap. I missed this because I was traveling to Argentina, but since I have all the kids (raised 9), I have opinions.
1. Yes, teacher or child care visas would be great.
2. If I were to have another kid (wont happen), I would probably just hire an Au Pair.
3. One overlooked source of child care is home care by stay at home moms. Lets say you have a baby and want to stay home to look after it. Earning a little bit extra with a little more work might be worth it.
Over the long-term, subsidizing children is not "transferring resources [...] to a minority of the population" in the traditional sense, because every single person is, at one point in their lives, a child.
And everyone is a child for the exact same period of time; there are no incentive effects at play here.
I'll just throw it out there for reference:
This spring we went looking for a good local child care center for baby, nothing available for infants until summer/fall 2023!(!)
Just hired an 5-6 yr experienced nanny. Cost $3k to a nanny finding service to find, screen, background/reference check 5 candidates and set up interviews with us, help draft a contract. Nanny cost=$20/hr, guarantee 32 hrs/wk, 2 wks PTO, which I'm told is actually a pretty great rate for us in this area. Completely aboveboard with payroll service charging $45/month to file all paperwork with the state, withhold and pay taxes, etc.
We are fortunate we can afford this, but at the end of the year, this is $40k, which is college or fancy private school money. The lack of reasonable childcare available in this booming metro seems poorly aligned with ongoing growth patterns.
productivity growth in other sectors could alleviate pressures on child care though, right? according to friends in the MI auto industry, we're far from level 4 and 5 AVs seeing widespread availability, but if they're wrong, how would yuppies feel about their kids being looked after by retired truckers / uber drivers?
Interesting article on the link between college educated women, employment, and immigration enforcement that I think is relevant.
https://twitter.com/ChloeNEast/status/1501236876799135746
"But this doesn’t work for the youngest kids, and while you could have TV-oriented child care for three-year-olds with a fairly high kid-to-adult staffing ratio, most people would consider that a bad outcome."
Why not just let parents decide what's best for their own child? Abolish *all* regulations on child care and let each parent decide what kind of daycare they would like to have. Normal child abuse laws would still apply, of course, it's just that these laws won't differentiate between abuse by a parent and abuse by a person hired by the parent.
Same applies to liability laws - I would give blanket civil liability immunity to childcare centers. They would still be liable for criminal prosecution of course (just like parents are liable right now) but won't have to worry about a helicopter parent suing them over nothing.
Do the two things above, let the free market readjust, then see if immigrants are actually needed and at what quantities.
> a child care visa program
Isn't the Au Pair Program already something like this, with the added advantage of not straining the housing situation more (I'm having a kid in December and just started investigating them after a friend mentioned his sister has liked hers)? I'm fully on board with expanding it or creating an additional visa type to alleviate some of the child care cost problems though (and building more housing of course).
+1, just expanding the au pair program will solve this and would also avoid sending money to bloated childcare corporations.
I don't know that it would solve it, but it would help and might at least be politically plausible to enough people on both sides of the aisle!
The Buc-ees tweet is an excellent, direct illustration of cost disease.
I was discussing this exact issue with various friends and family this weekend while visiting the DC/Maryland area (where childcare costs are notoriously high, as we SB readers all know). The private "nanny share" option seems like the only viable short-term solution, for those individuals who have the means and opportunity.
Something I think about a lot is how center based childcare can be so expensive despite its supposed economies of scale. My mom was a teacher - responsible for 25 4th graders - and she barely came out ahead on childcare for my one younger brother. And she had a master’s in education. You don’t need one of those to watch a toddler! How can this be?
One thing I think explains part of the story is that you’re spending take home pay but purchasing a fully loaded employee. I know this would be craven and neoliberal but ought not spending on childcare to be tax deductible? Perhaps even childcare workers themselves should be exempt from income and payroll tax? Or if you wanted to go the other way (I wouldn’t support this, but for illustration) tax stay at home parents the imputed value of the childcare they’re providing themselves. Right now the tax code is a massive push in favor of DIY.
"Right now the tax code is a massive push in favor of DIY. "
Isn't this true about basically everything? You get to use your own labor without having to pay tax on it. Pretty sure we don't want to change that either.
If we want to to be easier to use other people’s labor for this specific thing, then taking our foot off the scale would be a natural first step, wouldn’t it?
How would you do that? Do you charge people for taking care of their kids at night? Making their meals? Does that end, or do parents get charged for helping them with projects or to study for a test when they get into school?
Candidly, I think this idea is internet brain worms and as soon anyone mentioned the idea to a "normie" they would consider you absolutely bonkers.
My understanding is that center based childcare spends a *ton* of money on 1. liability insurance (for obvious reasons) and 2. renting the premises (the center has to be close -ish to where lots of middle-class parents live and/or work, and that likely means high property values).
The very concept of income tax is to moderate anti-social excesses of purchasing power. When a use of money is considered prosocial (retirement savings, homeownership, solar panels, EVs, etc) we make it tax deductible. You're right that this isn't a new idea w.r.t. childcare, but the $5000 limit on a dependent care FSA is sort of hilariously low relative to the actual costs of putting a kid in daycare, I guess my suggestion would be to make it cover more of the cost.
Matt - I'm a single dad of young twin sons and I think you are on the money (so to speak). In New York childcare workers earn a vast range of income, depending on location, situation, skills, business instincts, legal status, tax compliance and luck. For instance, the high end of the twins and multiples baby nurse / night nurse market for newborns in NYC is dominated by women from the Caribbean who have skills like nobody's business, are very well networked, and are in constant demand and earn relatively high (cash) wages. The ones I know have attained middle-class-ish status and have savings, notwithstanding the fact they are often contributing to relatives back home, and whether they are documented or not seems a side note. On another topic, I would love for you do a similar analysis of the market for elder care. We have an au pair program for childcare; it would be great to see one for elder care.
I am (very) far from an expert on this, but there have been some interesting market effects from California's move toward universal transitional/pre-K. Childcare workers who were getting $13/hr are getting union school district jobs paying nearly twice that with much better benefits - and shorter hours.
Also, parents of kids who are now in the "free" pre-K can't find spots in pre- or after-school care at the schools, so some wish they would have stayed in daycare.
Those older classes at daycares that used to house the pre-K age kids were the profitable ones that kept the businesses afloat in contrast to the money-losing infant classes. Despite higher tuition, they tend to be unprofitable due to very high student-teacher ratios.
All I know is I pay $3k a month for two kids in mid-range suburban daycare. Prior to COVID, 80% of the teachers were amazing and went far beyond the call of duty for paltry wages. Post-COVID, many of the great teachers are gone. I understand - it's a very difficult job that I wouldn't last a week in at double the salary.
My in-home daycare provider immigrated to the US decades ago, though I have never asked her from where. Doing some napkin math, she pulls in around $8,000 per month and could pull in more if she wanted to hit the max ratio. I know that that’s not accounting for taxes and expenses, but her husband is a CPA so I assume she maximizes her situation.
Her house is nicer than mine and in a nicer neighborhood. She also is taking 4 weeks off for the birth of her first grandchild over the winter holidays, which she can easily do without jeopardizing her situation because she actually slightly undercharges in the current market and is otherwise extremely reliable.
Looking at my state’s requirements for in-home daycare, it actually doesn’t look terribly onerous. There appear to be no minimum square footage requirements and the time spent training and licensing sounds manageable.
I also think having a single caregiver has great benefits for my daughter as opposed to a revolving door of people working at a childcare center, but that feels more like personal preference.
This is all to say that I very much so agree with Matt on this one.
If Tucker Carlson wants us to return to the 1950’s then MY seems to want to return us to the 1910’s where the well-to-do can afford cheap immigrant labor for basic household functions.
Personally I’m much more concerned about the working poor, particularly single mothers, who could never hope to have a dedicated or shared nanny. MY’s child care ideas sound great for the upper middle class, but unless there are enough subsidies to make it effectively free for the working poor, they are just another example of bad technocracy where benefits are highly skewed in the name of economic efficiency.
>>then MY seems to want to return us to the 1910’s where the well-to-do can afford cheap immigrant labor for basic household functions.<<
I don't interpret his piece in this manner (at all). Under the status quo, quality childcare is increasingly the province of the affluent. Greenlighting an increase in immigrants specifically allowed to work in the US as childcare providers might go some way toward increasing the affordability and availability of this vital service.