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From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: Re: Make the rich pay?
Message-ID: <628@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Dec-86 19:08:12 EST
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.628
Posted: Mon Dec 15 19:08:12 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Dec-86 22:25:57 EST
References: <826@mprvaxa.UUCP>
Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Distribution: can
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 42
Summary: why not

In article <826@mprvaxa.UUCP> acton@mprvaxa.UUCP (Don Acton) writes:
>Daycare is education? I think that is really stretching things. Just
>about everything is an educational experience....

     I would agree that there are various ways in which daycare
cannot be considered to be education.  However, I think Jim's
comparison is still valid.  At one time, education was considered
something which you either had to pay for or do at home.  The
more money your family had, the better your education was, and
therefore the better job you got.  Clearly, this was a major
part of the cycle of poverty.

     Now that there are fewer and fewer families who can afford
to keep one person at home to take care of the kids, it seems
like the same argument applies to daycare.  Either someone stays
home and the family lives in poverty, or someone does part-time
work and neglects the kids, or the family finds some daycare that
is cheap enough (and therefore bad enough) to justify someone
working full-time at the highest-paying job they can get.  In any
case, the kids are trapped in a cycle of disadvantage.

     The word "rights" has been used so loosely in the last few
years that I don't know what the colloquial usage is anymore.  So
I wouldn't say subsidized daycare is a "right", but I would say
that it's a very good idea, given today's economic realities.
I would assume that it would be paid for by property taxes, or
whatever it is that pays for education now.  If you argue with
this, do you also argue with subsidized schools?

>                        ... Everyone seems to want a free lunch but they
>forget that in the end someone has to pay....

     I think the main thing that's wrong now is that everyone
wants the best for themselves and doesn't care about anyone
else.  That certainly applies to welfare freeloaders.  But it
also applies to rich, well-educated people who want to deny
their so-called "hard-earned money" to people who just haven't
had the advantages they have.

--Jamie.
...!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
"L'amour, c'est si simple"