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From: chrisr@hcrvx1.UUCP (Chris Retterath)
Newsgroups: can.politics
Subject: (Repost after Ont hiatus) Subsidized daycare
Message-ID: <1447@hcrvx1.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 14-Dec-86 13:58:22 EST
Article-I.D.: hcrvx1.1447
Posted: Sun Dec 14 13:58:22 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Dec-86 19:35:08 EST
Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto
Lines: 32
Re: comments on subsidized daycare by  Jim Clarke (utcsri!clarke)

I fail to see how government can provide daycare any cheaper then private
daycare -- in fact, it will probably cost more, because of the extra costs
required to administer it. I fear a trade union, like teacher unions, will
then emerge at government daycare centers, which will force costs up even
higher as they have done at public schools. Of course, this will all be
justified by a requirement for child care degrees, which will help keep down
the number of people providing daycare and rationalize the need for higher
wages. (This is a classic element of unionization: the restriction of entry
to the union to form a closed shop at the expense of people not in the
union. Note that this been done with nurses, teachers, physicians, airline
pilots, carpenters, plumbers, vets, university professors, et cetera.)

There is no doubt that cheap but good daycare would be nice to have. It used
to be that mothers stayed at home to provide 'free' daycare for their own
children. This service is considered to be inelegible for payment when you
take care of your own children, but not if you take care of anothers!
(Just try paying your spouse a salary for babysitting/daycare services and
deducting the amount as a child care expense.) Given that people may wish to
work outside the home, they should pay for their own children's upbringing
for that 5 year period before our professional daycare -um- schools take
over. Given that some people want to take care of their own children, or may
not see the benefit of working outside the home given the amount daycare
will then cost them, I see no reason NOT to allow the payment of the
prevailing rate for daycare services from one spouse to another, such payments
to be fully deductable from income.

What this would mean is that many more people who may want to stay at home
during their childrens' developing years can affort to do so, with their
contributions acknowledged with an income. This alone would free up more
daycare slots for other children whose parent(s) are working.

	Chris Retterath.