#universal childcare

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Elizabeth Warren on weaponized budget models

In yesterday’s essay, I broke down the new series from The American Prospect on the hidden ideology and power of budget models, these being complex statistical systems for weighing legislative proposals to determine if they are “economically sound.” The assumptions baked into these models are intensely political, and, like all dirty political actors, the model-makers claim they are “empirical” while their adversaries are “doing politics”:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/03/all-models-are-wrong/#some-are-useful

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/04/cbo-says-no/#wealth-tax

Today edition of the Prospect continues the series with an essay by Elizabeth Warren, describing how her proposal for universal child care was defeated by the incoherent, deeply political assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office’s model, blocking an important and popular policy simply because “computer says no”:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-04-04-policymakers-fight-losing-battle-models/

When the Build Back Better bill was first mooted, it included a promise of universal, federally funded childcare. This was excised from the final language of the bill (renamed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill), because the CBO said it would cost too much: $381.5b over ten years.

This is a completely nonsensical number, and the way that CBO arrived at it is illuminating, throwing the ideology of CBO modeling into stark relief. You see, the price tag for universal childcare did not include the benefits of childcare!

As Warren points out, this is not how investment works. No business leader assesses their capital expenditures without thinking of the dividends from those investments. No firm decides whether to open a new store by estimating the rent and salaries and ignoring the sales it will generate. Any business that operates on that basis would never invest in anything.

Universal childcare produces enormous dividends. Kids who have access to high-quality childcare grow up to do better in school, have less trouble with the law, and earn more as adults. Mothers who can’t afford childcare, meanwhile, absent themselves from the workforce during their prime earning years. Those mothers are less likely to advance professionally, have lower lifetime earnings, and a higher likelihood of retiring without adequate savings.

What’s more, universal childcare is the only way to guarantee a living wage to childcare workers, who are disproportionately likely to rely on public assistance, including SNAP (AKA food stamps) to make ends meet. These stressors affect childcare workers’ job performance, and also generate public expenditures to keep those workers fed and housed.

But the CBO model does not include any of those benefits. As Warren says, in a CBO assessment, giving every kid in America decent early childhood care and every childcare worker a living wage produces the same upside as putting $381.5 in a wheelbarrow and setting it on fire.

This is by design. Congress has decreed that CBO assessments can’t factor in secondary or indirect benefits from public expenditure. This is bonkers. Public investment is all secondary and indirect benefits — from highways to broadband, from parks to training programs, from education to Medicare. Excluding indirect benefits from assessments of public investments is a literal, obvious, unavoidable recipe for ending the most productive and beneficial forms of public spending.

It means that — for example — a CBO score for Meals on Wheels for seniors is not permitted to factor in the Medicare savings from seniors who can age in their homes with dignity, rather than being warehoused at tremendous public expense in nursing homes.

It means that the salaries of additional IRS enforcers can only be counted as an expense — Congress isn’t allowed to budget for the taxes that those enforcers will recover.

And, of course, it’s why we can’t have Medicare For All. Private health insurers treat care as an expense, with no upside. Denying you care and making you sicker isn’t a bug as far as the health insurance industry is concerned — it’s a feature. You bear the expense of the sickness, after all, and they realize the savings from denying you care.

But public health programs can factor in those health benefits and weigh them against health costs — in theory, at least. However, if the budgeting process refuses to factor in “indirect” benefits — like the fact that treating your chronic illness lets you continue to take care of your kids and frees your spouse from having to quit their job to look after you — then public health care costings become indistinguishable from the private sector’s for-profit death panels.

Child care is an absolute bargain. The US ranks 33d out of 37 rich countries in terms of public child care spending, and in so doing, it kneecaps innumerable mothers’ economic prospects. The upside of providing care is enormous, far outweighing the costs — so the CBO just doesn’t weigh them.

Warren is clear that there’s no way to make public child care compatible with CBO scoring. Even when she whittled away at her bill, excluding millions of families who would have benefited from the program, the CBO still flunked it.

The current budget-scoring system was designed for people who want to “shrink government until it fits in a bathtub, and then drown it.” It is designed so that we can’t have nice things. It is designed so that the computer always says no.

Warren calls for revisions to the CBO model, to factor in those indirect benefits that are central to public spending. She also calls for greater diversity in CBO oversight, currently managed by a board of 20 economists and only two non-economists — and the majority of the economists got their PhDs from the same program and all hew to the same orthodoxy.

For all its pretense of objectivity, modeling is a subjective, interpretive discipline. If all your modelers are steeped in a single school, they will incinerate the uncertainty and caveats that should be integrated into every modeler’s conclusions, the humility that comes from working with irreducible uncertainty.

Finally, Warren reminds us that there are values that are worthy of consideration, beyond a dollars-and-cents assessment. Even though programs like child care pay for themselves, that’s not the only reason to favor them — to demand them. Child care creates “an America in which everyone has opportunities — and ‘everyone’ includes mamas.” Child care is “an investment in care workers, treating them with respect for the hard work they do.”

The CBO’s assassination of universal child care is exceptional only because it was a public knifing. As David Dayen and Rakeen Mabud wrote in their piece yesterday, nearly all of the CBO’s dirty work is done in the dark, before a policy is floated to the public:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-04-03-hidden-in-plain-sight/

The entire constellation of political possibility has been blotted out by the CBO, so that when we gaze up at the sky, we can only see a few sickly stars — weak economic nudges like pricing pollution, and not the glittering possibilities of banning it. We see the faint hope of “bending the cost-curve” on health care, and not the fierce light of simply providing care.

We can do politics. We have done it before. Every park and every highway, our libraries and our schools, our ports and our public universities — these were created by people no smarter than us. They didn’t rely on a lost art to do their work. We know how they did it. We know what’s stopping us from doing it again. And we know what to do about it.

Have you ever wanted to say thank you for these posts? Here’s how you can: I’m kickstarting the audiobook for my next novel, a post-cyberpunk anti-finance finance thriller about Silicon Valley scams called Red Team Blues. Amazon’s Audible refuses to carry my audiobooks because they’re DRM free, but crowdfunding makes them possible.

[Image ID: A disembodied hand, floating in space. It holds a Univac mainframe computer. The computer is shooting some kind of glowing red rays that are zapping three US Capitol Buildings, suspended on hovering platforms. In the background, the word NO is emblazoned in a retrocomputing magnetic ink font, limned in red.]

#empirical facewash #wealth tax #elizabeth warren #cbo #congressional budget office #penn wharton budget model #budgeting #economics #economism #computer says no #pluralistic #universal childcare #build back better #bipartisan infrastructure bill

[thoughtportal]

#bank run #build back better #bt news #congress #bank bailouts #student debt #student loans #student loan crisis #cancel student loans #cancel student debt #student debt forgiveness #student debt relief #paid family leave #infrastructure #universal childcare #instagram

[kp777]

Right-Winger Tries To Take On Katie Porter... INSTANTLY Regrets It

TYT Investigates

April 18, 2024

Rep. Katie Porter absolutely shreds Lindsey Burke, a right-wing Heritage Foundation official, who tries to say there's not enough money to invest in universal childcare. Porter delivers a brilliant breakdown on the nationwide need for an investment in universal childcare, points out how there's plenty of money available to invest in children for future, sexism in Congress and so much more.

#universal childcare #patriarchy #single parent #katie porter #Youtube

[alanshemper]

Heightening the contradictions by getting big corporations in our city on the record as opposing early childcare. Hearing from office workers that are pissed that their company is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in opposition. Even forcing some uncomfortable conversations between rank-and-file and management in certain building trades local unions as well. And we're gonna beat the bastards too.

#socialism #universal childcare

[jessica-marie-baumgartner]

Universal childcare sounds like a great idea until you check the data on areas that implemented it. It's a long-term nightmare.

#universal childcare #government control #parenting #kids #education #news #current events #politics #taxpayer funded

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

#us politics #twitter #tweet #abortions #abortion bans #lelia cohan #2022 #biden administration #paid maternity leave #us healthcare #us health insurance #parental leave #free childcare #universal pre kindergarten #pro life #pro choice #abortion is a human right #abortion is better than negligence #abortion is healthcare #women's health #women's rights #women's bodily autonomy

[newsfromstolenland]

Hello, a union of childcare workers is fighting demolition of their daycare center by the university of Ottawa! If you felt like sharing their petition I'd appreciate it, TY! https://timeforchildcare.nationbuilder.com/garderie_bernadette

"This is a stunning blow to the workers and families of the Bernadette Centre, as well as to the campus community. The University of Ottawa administration made this decision without consulting university workers or students. Access to bilingual child care that is affordable and on campus is an important issue for student and campus workers alike. Since learning of the closure, campus unions and associations have requested to meet with the administration and discuss the impacts this will have on the wider campus community. The administration has refused. 

We, the undersigned, urge the university administration to reverse its decision to no longer provide space for a child care centre on campus after the Brooks building is demolished. We call upon the university to provide a new space to allow the Garderie Bernadette Child Care Centre to continue its operations. If the university truly cares about its community, it will strive to ensure that the necessary services are accessible and available to its members."

#child care #childcare #university of ottawa #petition #petitions #garderie bernadette #bernadette daycare #salcristina #asks #ottawa #ontario

[cmweller]

Challenge #04017-J364: Chaos in the Domicile

The parental is injured and their companion friend is trying to get a rambunctious 4 yr old into the bath. -- Anon Guest

"No, no, no, no, NO!" Kindergartener Eyn ran squealing through their domicile, bouncing off of anything and everything, including their Prime Rennie, Quie.

Who was currently flopped on the family couch, on heavy medication, and waiting enough energy to make it all the way to the matrimonial sleep nook. "Ow!" She missed the grab. "Menace... Mama's already had a horrible day."

"I'm not taking a bath!"

[Check the source for the rest of the story]

#instant story #just add prompt #amalgam universe #childcare #cleanliness

[internutter]

Challenge #03770-J117: Big Chaos

Small Human Child: "For some reason, I always do a chaos if I'm not next to Rennie at bed time."

Small Child's Parent: "It's true. You don't want to see it. I didn't want to see it last night. Can you play quietly until I'm ready to go to bed?"

SHC: "Maybe." -- Escla

Companion Ghayth considered the very small Human currently playing with their KidReader(tm)[1]. They were peacefully guiding a digital effigy on a randomly-generated world. Chopping trees and digging up things and taking scans of the flora and fauna.

They didn't seem to be that threatening, but these were also Humans. Whatever a 'chaos' was, Ghayth didn't want to witness it. "How bad of a destruction radius are we talking about?"

"I was cleaning glitter and sticky stuff out of the vent filters for two months," said Human Url, petting her kid's shoulder. "That's a chaos I never want to repeat."

[Check the source for the rest of the story]

#instant story #just add prompt #amalgam universe #humans are weird #childcare

[captain-hen]

YES, thank you! I don’t know why so many people took it to mean that Ana was the one to do all the heavy lifting in the Diaz household during Eddie’s time off when she obviously hasn’t even been over for longer than a day judging by the way Eddie’s about to send her home before the breakup. There are posts about their relationship expressing pity for her because “she stood by and cared for him when he was shot” like who said that? 😭 Eddie “it’s not serious” Diaz?

right? i swear, people heard "she's been a godsend" and instantly decided to ignore the latter half of the dialogue, where eddie actually says outright exactly what he means by that. there's a huge amount of difference between ana being in the diaz household for months, helping eddie recover, and her being there for a couple of days while eddie was working. sometimes it rly feels like eddie gets more flack for things that never even happened, with regards to the eddieana breakup, than buck got for actually cheating on his gf...i know ana is a more sympathetic character, but y'all have got to stop making things up.

#also potentially controversial take but: i think we need to take ana being with chris during the blackout with a huge grain of salt #because it's very obvious that it was a narrative device to make eddie realize how he felt about spending his life with her #rather than something that made sense in the actual canon of the show #considering that carla was back in the picture (unlike s4) #and in s4 itself it was well-established that eddie had somehow managed childcare without carla's help during the pandemic and everything #so there was no *real* reason for ana to be there at all—with what we know of the show's universe it makes no sense #it was purely a narrative device #and that needs to be kept in mind while interpreting that particular arc #neethu answers #anon

[thingstrumperssay]

#queue #abortion #universal healthcare #childcare #medical leave #abortions #roe v wade #pro-choice #pro-life #pregnancy #ectopic pregnancy #pro-forced birth #anti-choice #america

[amarrymeinbostonwriter]

He's right; there is an education gap between men and women in many fields. I agree with him on the trades part too. Encouraging many students to go into trades instead of traditional university education is probably the best route for many people. But I do not like the implication that women's success has somehow caused this trend for men.

He also conveniently ignored some history. The fields of education (mainly as teachers to children) and health (mainly nurses) were for a very long time some of the only jobs women could have. I feel like this is missing a lot of information that would round the picture out a bit more. Historically, mainly only Men were professors and doctors, the leaders in these professions. Only recently (the last 120 years or so) did women start being allowed into higher positions in these fields.

I'm not going to write an entire thesis in response to this video. I have some thoughts but I'm still mulling it over. I feel like this would probably be something to share with my grad class next semester for sure.

#school teacher and nurse were some of the only jobs available to women for a very long time #and are both considered 'feminine' even if they shouldn't be so men are less likely to want to work those jobs #I agree with his idea about the trades though! That is true a person can make a very good living in the trades (my brother is) #and yes there is an education gap which is concerning #but there's just a weird tone to this almost like it's blaming women's success on men's failures? which is not right #men have choices- the fathers part was troubling too #society has harsher standards for mothers than it does fathers so women are expected to take on the majority of childcare #IDK I'm looking into education debates because I'm interested but also my next class is a teaching course #so I've been saving videos for next session #and this is both interesting and has some good points #education #I'm in grad school to become an English professor to undergrads (that's the hope) #trade school should be touted as much as university because it is better for some students really truly #we have an education crisis in the school system in America currently and I think we're going to have to start making some changes soon #big think #richard reeves #youtube #mychatter #Youtube

[the-everqueen]

i forget how much masking i do in work and even friendships until the weekend comes and i have an excuse to not talk to anyone except the gf and my mom via text. 

#about me #brain things #the gf is a good safe person #my mom requires at least one text to be appeased that i didn't die overnight #this post brought to you by: #yesterday i babysat for my cohort-mate #and it was 8 hours of childcare and then 3 hours of letting the mom vent #and even when i'm being relaxed i'm not always... #NOT thinking about modulating my facial expression or being tactful #today she asked to talk on zoom and i was so much more curt #just because i...need some space to not be processing her emotions #is this my fault for not asserting better boundaries? #do i inadvertently make myself available to people in Crisis because then i get to be the person who is In Control? #probs! but also like. i do feel like there's maybe something on her end to be aware of. #like maybe how she isn't the only person in the universe

[me-myself-and-my-fos]

giles deserves to be malewifed, and is very happy to be! good job, and congratulations ^_^

HE DOES!!! THANK YOU!!!

He’s faced demons and vampires and helped save the world multiple times but now he faces his biggest challenge yet: PTA meetings and after school activities

#I like the idea that I own a bakery in England and make enough that we’re able to live comfortably off it so he never saw the need for a job #especially when the kids are born. I think sometimes he’d like volunteer to lecture at universities about certain mythologies and demonology #but it’s sort of something he just does and doesn’t get paid for. he’s more content to be the kids and take care of the house #and the moms on the PTA love him and think it’s so sweet he takes care of the house while I work and ‘it’s so nice to see an involved dad’ #I’m of course super involved with the kids and take over childcare once I get home from work and make dinner so he can relax. but he’s #malewife’d so hard in the ship #Giles rocking up to the school’s bake sale with cookies his professional baker wife made the night before #also him packing me lunch for work everyday and eventually making lunches for the kids to take to school #sorry I went on a whole ass rant but I have feelings about this #Giles deserves peace #my librarian #anon #otp: how to love a werewolf #bad for crow

[askalocalireland]

Our aim is to help you find anything you may need in a area that may be new to you.

From baby clubs to nights out, we are here to provide the information you may need to make life easier. As an increasing rare "native" in Dublin, I am constantly asked questions by new neighbours and new parents who have recently moved into the area so I decided to write this blog to help, advise and direct where I can :)

#parents #family #children #schools #university #health insurance #health insurers #health industry #alternative medicine #cars #parks and rec #playgrounds #childcare #preschool #parenting tips #parenting #theme park #zoo #after school club #activities #bank holidays #beaches #biketowork #bonkers #churches #asian supermarket

[cotton-candy-jester]

one of my favorite things about Aster is that she got the anime dead mom hairstyle 90% of the time

#tha other 10% she has it in a messy bun or a high ponytail #the funny part is thay she's be a better mom than her own lmao #doesn't help thag in some universes she's either working in childcare or an actual mother #matty rambles #💙 Aster