70% of the benefits of Trump's childcare credits will go to households earning $100K and up

boing
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And you think he’s wrong?

I pay close to $10k a year for daycare in NC and our household doesn’t make six figures… At the same time my wife and I are heading toward later 30’s and our son is still in daycare. We waited, like a lot more people are doing, simply because it wasn’t as financially viable when we were late 20’s.

If you run some rough numbers on this concept:
-roughly 4 million children born a year
-roughly 120 million employed people in the US
-assume $10k on average for daycare per year.
That’s a cost of $40 billion a year or $333 per person (employed).

Now that seems like a fantastic deal, but lets be realistic about it. As someone making a decent amount above the poverty line I’m probably going to be paying at least that, if not more. Ideally someone making over a million should be paying a large chunk of it, but I’m not hopeful of that. So lets say I pay $333 per year (and my wife pays her $333 as well). Take into account a working span of 45 years, that’s works out to about $30k over our lifetime. While that’s better than the $45k we are paying now, I also believe I wouldn’t get out that easy and would end up closer to breaking even…

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Interesting math. It seems you’re looking at this almost like a social security type plan, with the payout (childcare) up front, but covered over the following years through fees/taxes on the individual. That’s a very interesting model, and one I think is worth exploring. I also think it’d be worth exploring some kind of employer contribution program - a payroll tax like fee that would be paid by the employer on a per-dollar basis. I’m no OMB math-wizard, but I would also expect that the increase in productivity and income tax might offset a large portion of such a program. Of course, Republicans would call it a “job killer” so it’ll never happen.

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All in all daycare is a RACKET. They charge all that money per kid and they pay their workers min wage. So 4 kids per provider (6kids per for pre-k) they are raking in the dough. My daycare, takes up an entire strip mall! I love them to death because they consider themselves exclusive but man are they making a killing lol.

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How do we charge people with no kids for childcare for everyone else? Having kids is not the same as medicare or social security…Kids are a choice (for most) and my lack of ability to afford childcare should not be anyone else’s problem. Plus again, low income folks get the sliding scale so they are not getting slammed with the same cost as middle to upper middle

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In my opinion if you are going toward any type of socialized form of daycare it’s all or nothing. You are 100% right it’s not fair to someone that doesn’t want kids or can’t have one, but it’s for the greater good of the country…? That’s about the only argument you can really have - because I agree with you, if it’s me paying on top of what I pay now just so somebody else’s child gets reduced or free daycare then it’s unfair to my kids future. I don’t really care if someone thinks that’s selfish, my wife and I didn’t wait another 7 years so we could pay for someone else having a child they couldn’t afford.

I’d think different if I had one of those +1% tier level incomes…but who knows I’d probably just open a daycare and make it cheap and awesome — and because I think this way I’ll never be in the %1 tier.

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People without kids already pay for public school - this is just an extension of that. And I agree with @bcsizemo’s argument - it’s a “greater good” to provide child care options for everyone, just like it’s better for society to have a well-educated workforce. And if it were structured like social security, the benefit would go to all income levels, rather than just those who are too poor to afford it. While that increases the cost it also somewhat democratizes the benefits.

As for your “sliding scale” that’s not always available, so while you many benefit, others may not. There are many people who have to rely on friends or family, or who simply have no childcare options. This means far too many people are not able to enter the workforce or take advantage of educational opportunities that could improve their lives significantly.

I think the best argument for a government funded child care system is one that you’ve already made yourself; without it, we are squandering productivity and talent because it makes more financial sense for someone like you to be a stay-at-home dad instead of joining the workforce, which is ridiculous. I mean, think of all the money society has invested in you already - just putting you through high school probably cost a quarter million dollars, never mind college and grad school that you may have done. Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s great for the kids and probably for the parent too (I’m a semi-stay-at-home dad myself) but from an economic perspective, it’s not making the most of our country’s best resources; our human capital.

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I spent several years as a single parent, making $30k a year in the late 90’s in Southern California. At first, I was actually working for a daycare, and one of my benefits was that I got to enroll my daughter in the infant room. This effectively doubled my salary, because childcare for an infant is the most expensive as they have to hire a teacher for every 3 infants.

Later, I went to work as a PA for a real estate agent. At that point, my choices were to keep working and pay more than half my salary toward child care, or stay home with her and collect welfare. There was legitimately no way to pay rent and buy food AND pay for daycare on my salary. I wanted to work! But I couldn’t afford to! I tried having the sprog’s father watch her, as he worked nights and was available in the daytime, but he was so consistently unreliable that it put my job at risk. My parents worked. All my friends worked. There was no “informal child care arrangement” I could make. Fortunately, I managed to get accepted to a state program that paid a subsidy to working parents for their childcare costs.

That’s it. That’s the choice the current system gives you. You’re a single parent with a kid and you want to work but you make below a certain income? You can’t. Working should be the better option, but it genuinely wasn’t. And then I had to get a government handout anyway. To work.

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I see said the blind man…great points. Staying at home with 3 technical degrees had me crying for intellectual stimulation, luckily it lasted only two years. I am glad this thread has been taken over by the level headed lol.

Best two years ever!!!

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Well I hope you enjoyed those two years from a parenting perspective at least. Mine is off to pre-k next year and I’m already predicting some post-partum.

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Did you offer that other parent your assistance? Did you try to help them?

No son, you protected yours.

And that’s exactly how we got here.

(not saying your wrong, but it’s hard to hear someone complain that their broad shoulders hurt more than anyone elses! We got the broad shoulders, we get to carry them. That’s what we do. It’s not as rewarding as thieving or giving up can be, but the alternatives are wearing pajamas in public, or orange jumpsuits in private. For real. Keep your chin up.)

ETA: I got a PM from a ‘concerned’ commenter that used the word ‘son’. I assume you have bigger fish to fry, as do I, but please do let me know if you find that offensive of me. I was being friendly, but the tone police are on the case if you are bothered by that, and isn’t that reassuring!!

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Without a sufficient number of kids, Medicare and Social Security are sooner or later heading off the cliff.

Personally, I question the article’s premise that friends and family generally provide poorer care than “official” child care agencies. I’m in favor of giving family members a sizable tax credit for taking care of a relative’s little one.

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I’m the “concerned commenter” and I don’t give a shit if you reveal that. Yes, that kind of tone isn’t appropriate here.

As for the idea of being responsible for correcting the nonviolent parenting of others, that’s just absurd. Nothing in the situation presented warrants intervention, nor is there anything anyone could do to to “fix” it. And if you’ve ever been a parent you would know well that getting involved with someone else’s parenting is a very delicate matter.

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lecture someone else, Dad

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I pay insane amounts for daycare as well, and lots of people who make $100k could use help finding more affordable daycare in big cities. The idea that people making more than $100k should get 70% of federal money directed at child care is nauseating unless more than 70% of the population makes $100k or more.

We shouldn’t be saying that a household income of $100k makes people equivalent to the super rich, but poorer people need more help than richer people. If you aren’t so concerned about people who already have excellent subsidies, I get that, but what about people making $60k a year, or $70k a year who face the same situation you did but with less money to cover it.

Well, they’ll take the money to pay for it out of a program that actually does benefit the poor, so the net amount will be more in the 130% range we would have expected.

Yeah, it’s fucked. In Quebec, Canada, the government runs a provincial daycare program. It costs $7 a day. Even though that’s still real money out of the pockets of people who are having food security issues (though I think the very poor can get the feed waived), that’s cheap enough that no one is ever going to say, “I can’t keep my job because I can’t pay for daycare” or “I’d just lose money if I got a job.”

They did a huge study on it, and estimated that for every dollar they put into the program they took in about $1.05 in taxes, because, you know, people are working. That’s not counting some probabilistic spin-off benefits of kids doing better in school thanks to early childhood education, it’s just a straight up accounting of the money they are taking in year-over-year. Their participation rate of women in the workforce, over the first 12 years of the program, went from 63% to 74% while neighboring Ontario’s went from 67% to 71%.

Affordable daycare just plain pays for itself. There should be a national plan, but if there isn’t a national plan there should be a provincial/state plan, and if there isn’t that, then I think even big municipalities should be doing it. But, hey, why help poor people, middle class people, and even a lot of fairly well-off people when it’s profitable to do so?

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So true! I am a single mom and because I made $75,000 I had to pay $1300 a month in daycare for one child. Parents who made less paid as little as $100 for the same care. I was living in a tiny apartment at the time which I paid $1200/month but had I made less money, I could have paid $400 for the same apartment with government assistance. At school, their kids got free or reduced lunch while I picked up a second contract after my 40-hour a week job to pay the bills which includes around $80 monthly for school lunches for both my kids. Then, because I made more money, I paid more taxes and lost some tax credits. I struggled to afford health insurance while the families making less got Medicaid.

One Christmas, my daughter’s “low income” friend in the same complex got an iPhone for Christmas from her mom and an xbox from Angel Tree donation which her mother had signed her up for… that same year I sold almost everything I had that wasn’t necessary to buy my kids modest gifts.

This same lady frequently went on tirades about the government screwing her over and went on about race, etc with the other un or underemployed mothers then went back into her subsidized apartment with subsidized food, healthcare, education, utilities, and free mobile phone. I, on the other hand, had to quickly run home while my kids ate fast food in the car so I could start my second job while never complaining that my taxes are paying for their lazy lifestyle!

My point in the rant is hell yea I deserve more child tax savings if I have paid in 10, 20, 100 times more than someone getting reduced care. If I had free care with family or friends as an option you better believe I’d use it. I don’t think people will stop asking for more no matter how much we give them for nothing. People just don’t want to work and earn their own way and it’s easier to whine about it on the internet than it is to better yourself.

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I think you’ll find just about everyone here agrees with you about this. But you’ll notice you don’t even make enough to be included in the group that is getting the most out of this. When I see 70% going to people who make $100k or more, I immediately think of people like you who make too much to get subsidized daycare or housing, but who have to endure substantial hardship to pay for daycare and housing.

It’s hard to find childcare for infants for under $2000 a month where I live, it gets cheaper as they get older, but it always remains extremely expensive. Not to mention that if you want the privilege of paying $2000 a month for childcare you have to get yourself on a waiting list the second you find out you are pregnant. I get paid pretty well and have a two income household and we ultimately decided that childcare is worth that price to us. When we get our bill, I don’t worry about my ability to pay, and I’m thankful for that, but I sure worry about how that kind of price is affecting other people.

A much better way to address something like this is to provide affordable child care to everyone. Don’t check how poor or rich they are when they walk in the door. I wrote above about the government of Quebec that provides health care spots for $7 a day. They found the program more than paid for itself because more people work when they can afford child care.

Tax breaks are a bad way to fund child care. Income thresholds where you go from $0 in subsidies to $1200 in monthly subsidies are a bad way to fund child care. I agree you should have more help, and I think people like you will see very little help from a plan like the one described here.

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Color me shocked by yet another horrible move on the part of 45’s Admin.

All childcare is exceedingly expensive, in my experience.

When my kid was young enough to need it, it was like paying a second monthly rent.

That being said, it never occurred to me to look at other parents with feelings of resentment and animosity due to my own difficult circumstances.

I know who’s at fault for the current status quo of society, where the rich only get richer and everyone else has less assets and resources to work with as each year passes.

eat_the_rich.jpg792×1032 128 KB

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I remember dropping off my kids and a parent was wearing pajamas and dropped of there 2 kids, didn’t even come in, just pushed them in at the door and walked away. The director made eye contact with me, as I shook my head, she then said “yeah, they going back home to watch tv and they only pay $80 a month for 2” and im sitting here paying $26K AFTER TAX!

So if they were fully clothed, dropped off their child, hugged and took time with their kid when they dropped them off does that make a difference if they only pay $80 a month? The way it’s phrased made it sound like they were leeches on the system.

I feel your squeeze. I have friends that feel the same way. They float to get by, one thing can make them crash.

I also have friends who are on welfare and the whole cycle of “poorness” keeps them poor. Cars, transportation, jobs that don’t pay enough usually treat employees like shit—limiting their hours and dicking with their schedules. I mean the bad luck the poor get is bizarre.

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FTFY

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You know deep down I KNOW that. :disappointed:

tbh I truly struggled mentally judging their challenges. It was very much, in my head…well, if you did this, or that differently…but really watching it sucked, big eye-opener. Fee upon fee, it was always a no win situation for them. A $5 miscalculation and everything they worked for is gone.

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