Tricky, tricky, tricky!
In the NYT Sunday Opinion headlines, wow:
Kavanaugh? Roberts? Coney Barrett, you think... Who could it be?!?
Doh! Forgot this is the history-writing columnist, pulling from the archives to make some obscure point today... Quite unfair to run that headline on the digital front page newspaper though.
And with "news headlines" like that, they wonder that the Supreme Court carries no respect in minority circles today... #StopSpinningInNewsprint
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Ditto this one:
MATT BRUENIG
The Case for Paying Parents Who Care for Their Own Kids
C'mon, the man is plugging his own Policy Project, that he founded with no "checks" built in, except the ones he is collecting. At least have the smarts to run the opposing opinion right alongside his, explaining basic economics and why men like him should support his stay-at-home disabled/epileptic part-time working wife (who likely has to keep her hours under the Social Security part-time requirements if she qualifies for disability pay for herself, and for caregiver pay for the two children with a disabled parent. They are a very public family online: mom also bakes cookies and cakes in her spare time -- for pay sometimes, and she writes and reports, scoring bylines in national publications, currently writing at The Atlantic. And she is blunt about her medical marijuana prescription too, and scoring legal weed at the dispensary...)
I don't think that's a popular public policy prescription:
paying parents to stay home and care for their children. Most educated professionals work outside the home after marrying -- and save, save, save! -- often investing in a house before planning their first child. If you do that early, your options for childcare -- stay at home? -- increase greatly as you have more money, and time, to choose to opt out of daycare.
If you choose daycare, it's usually government regulated -- even/especially in-home daycares. Some parents go that route too: choose to care for their own, and take in other working people's children too -- so the parent can afford not to leave the home to work...
The worst of all worlds, is seems to me, would be to provide a no-strings check to parents who have children in the home who need a monthly government check to support them, but want it with no regulations. At daycares, you can monitor who is hitting milestones at least.
If you start incentivizing "low income" * parents to stay home and make babies they cannot afford to care for, you are going to end up replicating the troubles with large low-income, low-achieving "families" on permanent welfare who rely on the government help and work to make more babies to get an increase in "pay". No thanks. That's not how you build a healthy society...
It's like Judge Judy says: if you are too disabled to work outside the home and rely on a check to support your children because you cannot work, why are you still having babies you cannot support? You can work. You're doing childcare, right? and making more work for yourself when you have more...
God bless the self employed, and those who set up ThinkTanks to plug their own beliefs. That's not really work either, in many eyes, but if you can sell it to somebody, bless you.
But please, plan your families so what you have structured as low income to qualify for the "free" taxpayer funds isn't really just robbing from the pockets of productive taxpayers who could put that money to much much better use. It turns out people who get easy money spend it wastefully, compared to others who have really earned what they've got. Social media today lets us see how these other types live, and spend their money and time. Own it.
Contrary view?
The government should not support an able-bodied man's wife and children that he created young. He, and she -- if necessary, should. That's why people in America plan their families, and use the freedoms afforded here to make the best choices for their own children. Asking us to pay higher taxes to support other people's choices is not the same as taking care of needy and neglected children who really need State aid for survival... That, most of us, support. We work to educate young parents to avoid, not encourage, those situations.
If you make a baby, or more, basic economics should tell you: you have to work to feed that child. That's the minimal requirement really. It's not a noble thing, or a rare one either, that a parent would resist "stocking shelves" or working the register at the local grocery, accessible by public transportation for those who cannot drive or get to work without transportation provided, by a spouse or aid program; and prefer to stay home on government pay raising the children. Most people would!
The parent working inside the home solely on child raising is a luxury you have to save or sacrifice for in America today. You can't demand the rest of us pay for it, without the same accountability for our dollars as those that fund daycares. Imagine all the low-income FATHERS who would gladly take government pay and continue to stay out of the workforce, seeing their "job" as stud, making more babies than they already can support... Nope, it's obvious why encouraging this is not a winning idea.
Most parents raising kids at home don't want the government involvement in their families. They work hard, and sacrifice consumer goods, to afford this lifestyle for their children. (Immigrants are good at this, as they've never lived on on the hog like a lot of American-raised parents today.) If you take the government checks for raising your own children at home, you should have to meet the same standards as home-daycare workers, I would think. Inspecting and regulating those home workplaces could be costly. That means everything from looking at the temperature your water heaters are set at, to the window exits and structure of the buildings you are raising the children in. The nutrition you are feeding them, etc. Maybe drug testing the workers, if need be...
Freedom isn't free. Government checks to support your home means government in the home. Most of those who are raising their own themselves really aren't courting that.
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