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stephenkmacksd.com/

Nov 08, 2025

Editor: Zanny Menton Beddoes is that dredful combination of Neo-Conservatine and Neo-Liberal: In sum the double reincarnation of Leo Strauss and Friedrich Hayek! Name her a Politica/Moral Toxin! So the latest diateribe fashoned by her minions can’t surprise its readership! Women must put their Working Lives first. The apperance of Zohran Mamdani, is just well, kismet?

Headline: Universal child care can hurt children

Sub-headline: Its growing popularity in America is a concern

Editor: The first paragraphs :

Across the rich world, parents of young children face a problem. In America, one of many countries with few subsidies, a household with two working parents and two young children can spend as much on child care as on housing. This pushes families to space out or have fewer children to avoid financial ruin. High costs also keep women out of the labour force, as it can be uneconomical to return.

Politicians are scrambling to respond. In America, the right is full of talk—J.D. Vance, the vice-president, has argued in favour of lower tax rates or cash handouts for families to help mothers stay at home—but, so far, little action. Instead, it is Democratic lawmakers making moves. On November 1st New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, expanded free child care to all families with children, starting from six weeks of age (it had previously been available only to poor and middle-class ones). Zohran Mamdani, who will be sworn in as mayor of New York at the start of next year, plans to follow in Ms Grisham’s footsteps. States including Vermont and Washington have recently made child-care subsidies much more generous.

American legislators are not alone in their enthusiasm. In Australia access to subsidised day care will be broadened next year. During the school term, Britain now offers 30 hours of free child care a week to parents who bring in less than £100,000 ($130,000) after tax. Since July middle- and low-income parents in New Zealand have been able to claim rebates for 40% of child-care fees, up from 25% before. The likes of Ms Grisham and Mr Mamdani are unusual, however, in believing that the state should bear the entire cost of care for families of all income levels, starting near birth.

Editor : Beddoes just cant let go of Michelle Lujan Grisham nor Mr Mamdani, as the vipers in this Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative near Biblical pastiche!

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Editor: The final paragraphs of this diatribe

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The kids aren’t alright

A need for lots of adult interaction implies there are few economies of scale to be found in the care of babies and infants. By school age, an adult can oversee 20 to 30 children. At pre-school, they watch 12 or 15. In the best nurseries a carer looks after two or three. Subsidised centre-based care is of high enough quality in Finland that when a stipend was introduced to pay Finnish mothers to stay home after ten months, child development and female incomes suffered. But to reach such standards the government spends much more than the OECD average. Although New Mexico is funding its generous programme with levies on oil and gas extraction, fiscal room is more limited in New York and other states, which spells trouble.

Ultimately, child care is expensive. It is expensive for parents in America, it is expensive for the Finnish government and it is expensive—in the long run—in places that try to do it on the cheap. These costs are paid either via exorbitant sums handed over to day-care centres, forgone career progression, high taxes or by undermining children’s development. None is palatable. Yet the worst are the extremes: that mothers should forgo work for years or that families might be incentivised to place babies into an underfunded mode of care ill-suited to their needs. What a pity that those are the solutions American politicians seem most determined to seek.

Editor: The very notion of this collection of propagandists, stepped in the Neo-Liberal/Neo-Conservative milieu, headed by Zanny Menton Beddoes, straines credulity to the breaking point!

Newspaper Reader.