Drawbacks Of Universal Childcare

For our opponents, universal McDaycare is a win-win solution. They get a nation-wide institution that allows them to get a hold of our children a year or two earlier, while those parents that oppose Liberal social engineering, end up being forced to pay twice: First they have to pay hefty amounts in extra taxes to sustain a state-run universal childcare system, which they could never trust and then they're paying out of pocket for an alternative system that actually respects views and values - with no opt-out credit and no support whatsoever from the government.

Let's not forget that under the current "progressive" income tax system, merely staying home with the children is also punishable by excess taxation: A single-income family, where one of the parents has to work for two, pays income taxes for three. And, talking about taxes - the estimated cost of the proposed McDaycare is $15B. That's more that the Liberals could look forward to raise by repealing the 2 percentage point GST cut. The real cost could probably amount to $20 Billion or more, resulting in many more tax hikes.

But maybe the benefits of early education justify the overtaxation? Not really. Ben Eisen, a policy analyst with the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy, has published a report titled "Myths about Childcare Subsidies". Here are some of the findings:

1) Generally, the benefits of early childhood education (childcare) wear off by the time the child is in Grade 3, so that there is no meaningful cognitive advantage for children who went to preschool compared to those who did not.

2) Programs geared specifically toward poor and minority children, such as the HighScope Perry Preschool Project and Carolina Abecedarian Project, yield modest lifetime improvements in both social development and cognitive outcomes, but that such programs are not replicable in a broad, universal program for the middle class because of the intensity of the program (from teacher-child ratio to family engagement). Furthermore, poor children have more social disadvantages to begin with which an intensive preschool program might be able to address, but which are broadly unnecessary.

3) Middle class and affluent parents already have access to childcare and thus it is questionable whether scarce public resources should be used to subsidize such care, especially considering that there is little indication of long-term benefits, wheareas targeted subsidies for the poor might make some sense based on the marginal cognitive and social benefits seen in this subsection of the population.

4) There are numerous studies that show there are some problems related to enrolment in childcare, including negative social development such as “heightened aggression and anxiety” and increased incidents of various health problems.

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(Linked via The Interim)

So, it's not the children who need universal McDaycare. Grown-ups need it - for the obvious reasons: The slow motion suicide crowd wants to maintain their grip on the young generation and this is the best way for them to do so, while punishing those parents daring to oppose financially. As for the children - they're better off spending their pre-school years with mom and dad.