Progressive Republicanism - Child Care Isn't Just a Personal Problem

“Child Care Isn't Just a Personal Problem. It's an Economic One, Too.”
http://ift.tt/1c1vgs8

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…, To put the scale and price tag in context, the long-term cost of the day care program after it’s fully implemented could easily outstrip the estimated $1.2 trillion cost of Obamacare over the next ten years. But the point isn’t whether such a government program could pass Congress now—or any time in the near future—but that we need to fundamentally reconsider the way we think about child care, whose economics are becoming increasingly crazy, to our economy’s detriment. “It is a big number, but the truth is that someone is bearing the cost—someone is bearing that cost every day, and it’s the hardworking families that are struggling on their own to piece together care on their own,” said Vivien Labaton, who is co-leading Make It Work’s campaign. “It’s a national problem that calls for a national solution.”…

In addition to merely helping families that we economically demand consist of (at least) two fulltime wage earners in order to be able to afford providing a decent standard of living and educational foundation for their families, it is an investment in the citizenry (and tax base) of the next several generations. We can’t reliably depend upon an eighty-hour+ a week family to always be able to reliably meet all their basic monthly obligations yet alone insure that their children learn good eating habits from take-out and microwave pizza rolls. As the canard goes “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten¹” …except that most parents can’t afford day-care or kindergarten, so there are a lot of people growing up in our nation without learning these most primary life lessons. It is increasingly expensive in trying to teach these leesons later on and even more expensive dealing with the consequences of those who never learn those lessons.


¹http://ift.tt/1KgEJux rgarten

Quote:

1. Share everything. 2. Play fair. 3. Don't hit people. 4. Put thngs back where you found them. 5. CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS. 6. Don't take things that aren't yours. 7. Say you're SORRY when you HURT somebody. 8. Wash your hands before you eat. 9. Flush. 10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. 11. Live a balanced life - learn some and drink some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some. 12. Take a nap every afternoon. 13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. 14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Stryrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. 15. Goldfish and hamster and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we. 16. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first workd you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.”

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1KgEH5W