New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

https://www.governor.state.nm.us/2025/09/08/new-mexico-is-first-state-in-nation-to-offer-universal-child-care/

by toomuchtodo • 11 months ago

790 641 11 months ago

governor.state.nm.us

They'll probably just pass a law that states can't do this? Just like many states passed laws against municipal fiber.

bediger4000• 11 months ago

I've been told since at least 1980 that small, local government was best. I was given the impression that state level government was probably the optimum level to decide things, cities and counties could go off the rails in various ways.

I haven't see a coherent rationale for reversing course on this doctrine, which was extremely strongly held, and cited a lot.

outside1234• 11 months ago

There are no principles here, no moral compass, only power. It is important to understand this.

dataflow2• 11 months ago

Best for what purpose?

gchamonlive• 11 months ago

I also think smaller administration cells are more efficient, but when the president of the federation can just reshuffle the congressional districts and meddle with universities internal politics we gotta rethink how independent these states really are. There is no silver bullet, specially in politics.

stetrain• 11 months ago

This is generally the position of politicians with power in state governments, yes.

mcny• 11 months ago

I was given the impression that state level government was probably the optimum level to decide things

I don't think government at any level should get to discriminate based on protected classes and I hope most people alive today will agree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine

pjc50• 11 months ago

I've been told

By whom?

since at least 1980 that small, local government was best. I was given the impression

By whom?

extremely strongly held, and cited a lot

By whom?

Muromec9• 11 months ago

There is a rule of subsidiarity -- problems have to be solved at the lowest level possible, because it has the most information. If it's not, it bubbles up to the next level upwards. EU, US and Catholic church all do this to the various degree.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 11 months ago

There's no big money that wants otherwise. If anything, corporations are all for this.

post_break• 11 months ago

Paid day cares probably have a big issue with this.

Redoubts• 11 months ago

The federal government has a very different relationship to states, than states do to their municipalities. This law couldn't be passed, even if "they" wanted to.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 11 months ago

That's wild. New Mexico is fairly notorious for having terrible medical and social safety net stuff.

I have a friend that had a daughter that lived there, and had serious mental health issues, and I'd hear nightmare stories about how bad the state was for that.

I have family with similar issues, in New York, and they get an amazing amount of state support.

lp2512• 11 months ago

This is paid for by the oil and gas boom in Southern NM.

The medical situation is getting worse by the year, though. I don’t think it’s just a matter of shoveling more dollars

ChrisMarshallNY5• 11 months ago

What I was told, was it was anti-undocumented stuff.

People don’t want immigrants getting help that residents pay for, so they turn the spigots off for everyone.

pbk1• 11 months ago

I went on a road trip through Southern NM a couple years ago. Highly recommend stopping at Gila National Forest - it's a certified "dark park", remote enough from sources of light to see the Milky Way with the naked eye.

One thing that struck me - towns down there had a template. 90% of towns we drove through were just a blood plasma "donation" center, a dollar store, a gas station, and a cemetery. Very bleak existence out there, oil and gas boom notwithstanding.

silisili• 11 months ago

The icing on the cake there was that they just gerrymandered NM recently in a way that took all representation away from southern NM.

I know other states have as well, so nothing new there, but seeing as they basically fund all the state's social projects, felt a bit done wrong.

mythrwy4• 11 months ago

I live in rural New Mexico and medical services are very bad here.

I took my GF to the emergency room once with chest pains (turned out to be a lung infection). After an hours long wait we got to see the "doctor". The doctor came in in street clothes which were wrinkled jeans and a frumpy polo. He was not smart and from appearance, speech and thinking patterns easily could have been the janitorial mid level manager (no disrespect meant to janitorial staff). They did a chest scan, he said he would review it, then told her to go home and take a Motrin and then she got mysterious bills for the next year from the event.

I would go to Texas which isn't far if the emergency permitted it, and in fact they do airlift most serious cases directly to Lubbock.

tonyarkles• 11 months ago

Heh, I had a discussion with a security guard about rattlesnakes once while working in rural NM. "If you get bit by a rattlesnake, man, get on the radio and call me. I'll get you to the hospital. But we're going to Cruces... I'm not taking you to the hospital in T or C... you'll fuckin' die there."

potato37328424• 11 months ago

and in fact they do airlift most serious cases directly to Lubbock.

Just to be clear for those not familiar with the relative position of cities in Texas, imagine getting hurt in Illinois and the EMT's being like "the hospitals around here are shit, we're going to Gary".

yencabulator2• 11 months ago

Meanwhile, my worst experience with US healthcare was in a small town in Texas.

Groxx2• 11 months ago

Childcare is a great way to kick this off - it's politically hard to fight against anything "for the children" and it's not a stretch at all to extend coverage gradually, as people see the benefit and want it elsewhere / just one more year / etc.

Just gotta hope it stays funded enough to avoid descending into a bureaucratic death spiral with months of delays for everything.

runako2• 11 months ago

months of delays for everything

Private childcare is also filled with months (often years) of delays. Expanding on this a bit: if you have a sudden need to get childcare, in much of the country you are not likely going to be able to find something that is convenient and of any quality that is also available within a week or two. If you are willing to spend 2x+ the local median childcare expense, you may have better results.

bombcar7• 11 months ago

If you want a quick response, you need either dedicated quick-responders (how are they paid when not responding) or you need a lot of slack in the system (caregivers are allowed 4 kids, say, but most have two or three).

And that also needs to be paid for.

dfee• 11 months ago

Kick what off?

iamtheworstdev• 11 months ago

presumably universal care in general, up to and including healthcare.

micromacrofoot4• 11 months ago

Universal access to essential services

gbacon• 11 months ago

“This time will be different!” announce the proponents. Watch now, class, as the economic calculation problem works out as predicted in yet another instance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

oblio3• 11 months ago

1. What's the market economy solution for this?

2. What if not everything in life is about the economy?

mothballed24• 11 months ago

The majority of New Mexico is either not employed or only barely employed enough to count towards employment participation. The states employment participation rate is like 58%.

Without making any judgement on whether the economic calculation is "efficient" or not, it's not really something the majority of voters have to worry about as it's essentially entirely OPM to get the votes to get there.

Groxx2• 11 months ago

markets have criticism too. this is why we have nothing, neither roads nor businesses, and are currently hallucinating this conversation while scratching at the ground with sticks.

do we really need to point to how badly private healthcare has been working?

JumpCrisscross• 11 months ago

it's politically hard to fight against anything "for the children"

The entire incel and tradwife spectrum hates these policies.

runako2• 11 months ago

Important context here is that New Mexico's state income tax rates are in the "red state" bracket. Notably, they are lower than states like Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Montana.

kccqzy2• 11 months ago

I'm very unfamiliar with New Mexico (having only been a tourist in Albuquerque and Santa Fe for a few days), but according to U.S. News it ranks 50 out of 50 for education: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education. Given some level of geographic mobility it doesn't seem like a place I would want to raise a child.

Am I mistaken? Thoughts?

Nicook• 11 months ago

Like with choosing to live anywhere you shouldn't be looking at state level education for your child's education. That would be stupid.

kccqzy2• 11 months ago

The state certainly has an impact on local schools. In California for example the State Board of Education sets standards for education, and recently it published a framework whose first version discouraged students from taking Algebra I in middle school. Delaying algebra to high school and delaying calculus to college are opposite of my own upbringing and seem very wrong to me. It also had other guidelines that I vehemently disagree with, such as de-tracking in favor of heterogeneous student grouping.

dghlsakjg2• 11 months ago

You have to look at variability. The cities are doing ok, but it is out in the rural areas, and the reservations specifically, where there are going to be extreme negative outcomes. There are areas on some of the reservations that are yet to be electrified as an illustration of just what kind of challenges NM is up against.

bombcar7• 11 months ago

This is so important when looking at any statistic from an area bigger than "what affects you" - the schools in Roswell have basically no effect on those in Albuquerque.

lp2512• 11 months ago

Los Alamos is doing well. That’s about it.

delichon• 11 months ago

50 out of 50, plus the District of Columbia, for 8 consecutive years. I recently spent a few weeks as a instructional assistant in a New Mexico high school classroom. I saw nothing but highly dedicated professional teachers doing their best. But student performance is astonishingly low. I felt like running through the halls screaming like my hair was on fire, but there is very little in the way of alarm or anything but a few changes around the edges.

I went to a school board meeting, where they voted to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a tire alignment machine for the shop class. I would rather have seen it spent on online math instruction, but I could see their point of view: they want to graduate students who have a chance to get a job, and the academic side of the school is not providing it, and not trending in that direction. So they spent the money where they saw some hope.

If you can afford to do better than public school for your children in New Mexico, it's an imperative.

pavel_lishin2• 11 months ago

I'd also not want to move there to raise a child, but turns out people live there non-the-less - and the people who'd qualify for this program are the people who can't just pick up and move to California or New Jersey.

Glyptodon• 11 months ago

The thing to keep in mind about New Mexico is that there are totally fine public schools here and there - Rio Rancho maybe, Las Cruces has some maybe, maybe some random ones in a few more remote small towns, Los Alamos, etc., but the state as a whole is extremely poor and has lots of reservations and pueblos which have huge complicated histories to overcome.

I will say that (and this is 20+ years out of date) coming from a good for New Mexico public school put me about a year ahead of everyone else in a decent California public school when we moved.

So overall my main point is that you probably want to look at schools on some kind of basis other than the state overall, especially in states like NM and AZ.

hedora8• 11 months ago

Ignoring the complicated history of the rural areas, I periodically drive Route 66, Since the early 2000’s, the bit in New Mexico has basically been eaten by climate change. I can’t imagine how much damage the encroaching desert (badlands? What’s the word for a desert that’s drier and dustier than before?) has done to the local economies.

They weren’t doing well before, but it’s not been trending well.

Having said that, Albuquerque is nice. Props to the Navajo nation for helping out with early COVID vaccine testing.

vjvjvjvjghv2• 11 months ago

New Mexico is a very strange beast. It wants to be progressive and green, but is basically an oil state. There is a widespread poverty mindset of low expectations which prevents change because people are used to the way things are and don't want change. Crime is high, education is bad, health care is bad. Stupid drivers. Lots of corruption.

But you can have a pretty nice, affordable living in places like Taos, Santa Fe, Los Alamos and parts of Las Cruces and Albuquerque.

dzink4• 11 months ago

This is fantastic! I hope they succeed and there is no abuse or other issues, because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential. Families who were previously in poverty because the mom would struggle to pay for childcare to work can now have assurance kids are ok while the mom can pursue jobs, start her own small business (huge chunk of businesses are small businesses ran by women) and prosper. If you pose your child’s safety vs another dollar, most parents would vote for their children. But if the children are taken care of, parents can give the economy their best and the taxes paid and GDP gained will pay back for the expense manyfold.

mothballed24• 11 months ago

Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare. Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers. This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred.

bombcar7• 11 months ago

There are many things that may be better overall, but because they're not financialized, they don't show up on GDP and so are deemed "worthless."

Breastfeeding doesn't move money around, but formula does; things like that.

Cooking your own meal doesn't raise GDP beyond the cost of supplies, but door-dashing from a restaurant does.

dzink4• 11 months ago

Depending on how they structure the childcare, women who want to stay with their kids can be childcare providers at one of the centers, so they take care of not just their kids but also others. Similar to the Israeli Kibbutz system.

jvuygbbkuurx• 11 months ago

This is how it works in Finland, but with some adjustments based on family income. You are eligible for up to 500€/month if you take care of your child. The other option being childcare costing up to 300€/month.

Aurornis3• 11 months ago

Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare.

This is a great way to kill a policy.

It would technically be most fair if every parent was given the same amount of money per child, period. Then they could do what they needed or wanted with it.

But doing so would not only increase the costs dramatically (by a multiple) it would give money to many parents who didn’t need it for child care.

That’s great in a hypothetical world where budgets are infinite, but in the real world they’re not. The more broadly you spread the money, the less benefit each person receives. If you extended an equal benefit to parents who were already okay with keeping their children home, it’s likely that the real outcome would be reduced benefits for everyone going to daycare. Now you’re giving checks to parents who were already doing okay at home but also diminished the childcare benefit for those who needed it, which was the goal in the beginning.

patrickthebold• 11 months ago

I agree.

Ideally we could just increase the tax credits so it's large enough to cover the childcare expenses (and other necessities), and let the families decide what is best. And yes, some people are going to do a bad job taking care of their kids and spend the money on something else. But my understanding is that it generally works well to just give people money, rather than pay for specific things.

motorest4• 11 months ago

Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers.

I don't know how can anyone arrive at that conclusion.

This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred.

This assertion is baffling and far-fetched. There is only one beneficiary of this policy: families who desperately needed access to childcare but could not possibly afford it. With this policy, those who needed childcare but were priced out of the market will be able to access the service they needed. I don't think that extreme poverty and binding a mother to homecare is a valid incentive cor "children staying with their mother".

zamadatix• 11 months ago

I'm not sure there is equal value, in economic terms at least. A stay at home parent caring for 1-2 children comes at the opportunity cost of a full time worker, which would typically be a lot more than 12-24 thousand dollars this is saving them in childcare costs. On the flip side, a childcare worker in NM can care for the children of ~6+ such stay at home parents (depends on randomness of ages and number of children each had).

None of that is a statement that it wouldn't be nice for everyone to be able to be paid as a full time parent, just that the economic value is not necessarily equal with a waiver.

thinkingtoilet2• 11 months ago

Sure. Right after I get all my tax money back from all the userless wars we've fought in the last 20 years because I was against them.

forbiddenvoid• 11 months ago

In what way does this disincentivize anyone? If you want to stay home with your kids, stay home with your kids. This is literally not preventing anyone from being a stay at home parent.

clickety_clack• 11 months ago

I totally get the reasoning behind that, but the majority of women are not stay at home moms, and most families don’t have the resources to make it happen. Society is just not oriented to family creation, and both women and men (to a lesser extent) take a hit when they decide to start a family. The entire world is in a fertility crisis now that could easily endanger the very society we live in, with all the ideals and principles we take for granted, and that calls for solutions that may not end up being absolutely fair to everyone in it. If the tradeoff is between childcare that actually works versus a watered down version because we are also paying people who don’t avail of it, I think the former option will do most to support families.

koolba2• 11 months ago

I’m sure people will find creative ways to scam the system where I watch your kids and you watch mine, and both of us get paid for it.

Pet_Ant2• 11 months ago

Stay at home moms do not provide a less valuable service than childcare providers.

They are strictly less efficient than commercial daycare because the adult-child ratio is much higher. How many women would be of out of the work for if they were taking care of children?

Also, it prevents trickle down and the lifting of the poorest in society.

TulliusCicero• 11 months ago

Would make sense IMO to provide an equal value waiver to those who take care of their kid rather than send them to childcare.

From the government's point of view, they want more people out in the workforce, so it probably doesn't make sense that way.

jimbo808• 11 months ago

While true, social policies do not need to provide an equal benefit to everyone. People who can afford to stay home with the kids are not the ones who need this sort of policy.

ryandrake6• 11 months ago

I just don't understand this mentality.

My wife is a stay-at-home mom. We are lucky that we can afford to do this. Most of our kid's friends have both parents working and they pay for child care. If suddenly they were able to have that childcare paid for, that would be wonderful! It doesn't affect our situation at all. Why would we oppose it? I don't need to have my own "waiver" payment in order for me to be in favor of my neighbor's burden being lifted.

It's like free school lunch. We pack our kid a lunch every day, but some families rely on the school-provided free lunch. It's never even occurred to me that we should get a $3/day payment because we don't take advantage of free lunch. Having free lunch available is unequivocally a good thing, regardless of whether we personally partake.

crazygringo• 11 months ago

This policy appears to disincentives children staying with their mother even when it is preferred.

It does no such thing. If you could afford to be a stay-at-home mom before, this isn't going to make any significant difference to that.

Think of whether it would make sense if you applied your logic to other areas -- do public schools disincentivize people sending their kids to private schools? That would be absurd to say. Creating choice where there wasn't any before doesn't "disincentivize" anything. It gives people options to make the choices that are best for them.

daveswilson• 11 months ago

As a resident of New Mexico I can tell you that it is a miracle that we can afford to launch this program at all. Perhaps when the long-term economic benefits begin to pay out, we'll be able to pay people to support their personal preferences. As it stands, while I don't have kids at home anymore, I can see the long-term economic benefit to the state, and am very pleased that my tax dollars are helping to get this done.

lillecarl3• 11 months ago

In Sweden we value equality and everyone working. If someone is wealthy enough to have a stay-at-home parent it's their choice to do so, we shouldn't subsidize the rich.

It is good for children to go to a place where they learn to interact with others early. We give 480 days off to the parents to share (90 "mandatory" per parent), then they go to childcare.

Individualism breeds privileged shits, if you want your kid to be one of those then you pay out of your own pocket. We subsidize childcare so everyone can afford to work.

jrflowers2• 11 months ago

This makes sense. If something objectively good happens, it is not actually that good if a completely different good thing did not happen.

onlypassingthru2• 11 months ago

Your taxes pay for the public service whether you use it or not. Take a look at your property tax statement and I bet you can find all sorts of things you may or may not use: parks fees, library fees, health/hospital fees, schools, etc. Should everyone who reads but doesn't use the public library get a book voucher? I'm a stay-at-home-reader, why shouldn't I get the government to subsidize my reading?

mattmaroon• 11 months ago

I don’t get a voucher for not receiving medicaid or food stamps. Fairness is a concept meant to tame unruly preschoolers, let’s just solve problems.

eirikbakke• 11 months ago

Norway does this. Kindergartens are nearly free ($120/mo), but with a "cash-for-care" benefit for parents who choose to stay at home with the child ($750/mo).

https://www.nav.no/kontantstotte/en

hereme888• 11 months ago

Absolutely.

Nothing is free. This means less resources for something else, marketed as "compassion".

Mothers generally take much better care of their own children than childcare. Childcare was already previously available for low-income families. To incentivize women to work when they can afford to care for their children is very bad for a country in the long term.

angmarsbane2• 11 months ago

I see benefits for stay at home Moms, universal childcare means she has somewhere safe to drop her kid off while she goes to her own doctor appointments, or when she needs a break, or if there’s a family emergency she needs to attend to or even if she’s going into labor to bring kid number 2 or 3 into the world. There are a lot of stay at home parents that don’t have family near by or a reliable sitter and this can help plug some gaps.

arathis2• 11 months ago

Nonsense. Absolute Fucking nonsense.

dzink4• 11 months ago

This would solve a lot of Republican’s problems as well. Israel has the kibbutz system and they have the highest birth rate of developed economies. They also have amazing tech and women participation and excellent contributions even in the military. If you raise the country’s children well, you get more GDP and less prisons and less need for policing, and less need for welfare programs. Plus you get quality workers for those american-made factories.

ch4s37• 11 months ago

Only about 1-2% of Israelis live on a kibbutz, and unsurprisingly that number has recently fallen. You actually see the elevated birth rates even in Tel Aviv. There’s a broader cultural expectation that would be impossible to recreate elsewhere.

ajcp• 11 months ago

Israel's current birthrate has more to do with the ultra-Orthodox and Arab communities and nothing to do with the kibbutz system. The ultra-Orthodox communities are also exempt from those "excellent contributions even in the military". While female ultra-Orthodox participation in the workforce is around 80%, that's largely due to males not participating (50%).[0]

0. https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredi-mens-employment-growth-...

WD-424• 11 months ago

You realize a lot of people actually prefer to give their child their best instead of outsourcing it so they can focus on bettering the economy, right?

dzink4• 11 months ago

And with this option they can have that choice. Right now, many don’t.

unethical_ban• 11 months ago

What an insulting way to phrase that.

For a single parent, providing the needed money to survive and eat requires working, and child care can be impossibly expensive.

micromacrofoot4• 11 months ago

Yes and we should make that easier as well. Many people don't make enough money to have that choice.

mrkeen• 11 months ago

It's an interesting way to divide up a country's labour.

50% do child rearing, and the other 50% do literally all other professions.

If you did have such a large cohort engaged in that activity, there should probably be some kind of education where one could learn 'the best'.

Of course people with kids would be too busy to attend.

And the ones who did attend wouldn't have any kids to look after.

Aurornis3• 11 months ago

You realize a lot of people actually prefer to give their child their best instead of outsourcing it

My wife and I staggered our work schedules to minimize the time spent at daycare.

The one thing we didn’t expect: The kids absolutely loved daycare. It was a great place with excellent caretakers. Most of all, it was socialization with their friends.

From reading sneering interment comments (like the one above) I was led to believe that daycare would be an awful experience and I should feel guilty for sending our kids away. Instead, it turned out to be a very fun thing they looked forward to that was also great for their development. Our kids still hang out with friends they made early in daycare days.

darth_avocado2• 11 months ago

Even if you’re stay at home unemployed person, a daycare will do more for your child’s development than you would be able to. Kids need socialization, they learn from their peers as much as they learn from adults.

fph• 11 months ago

A lot of parents think they are better at educating their kids than a trained professional. But are they right?

alt227• 11 months ago

it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential

Why bring gender into it? There are plenty of families who choose to have stay at home Dads while the mother goes back to work full time. We are not in the 1950s any more.

inetknght• 11 months ago

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. I'm hopeful that the parent comment simply didn't think about Dads because it's not in their "worldview", and perhaps also not in many others'. Nonetheless, I think your point is completely valid.

JKCalhoun• 11 months ago

I would suspect the numbers show we're closer to the 1950's than you think. But I'm happy to be proven wrong.

chongli2• 11 months ago

I appreciate your optimism but I’m skeptical. I dated someone who worked in child care (with a degree in ECE). She was quite miserable caring for a dozen screaming babies all day. I think the burnout and turnover for such a job (which requires a degree but still paid minimum wage) is likely to be extremely high.

The other thing that doesn’t make sense to me is the economics of it. The pay for the staff is very low but the cost of service to parents is very high. That means so much of the cost is overhead which would make the whole thing quite unsustainable, even when ostensibly covered by the government.

I live in Canada and a similar issue is occurring with our universal health care system. The costs are skyrocketing even as wait times are increasing.

nemomarx3• 11 months ago

Burnout and turnover for teachers are also like that, so it's what you'd expect? maybe they can unionize like teachers though

ardit33• 11 months ago

This is some weird logic. "I dated someone that didn't like to work on child care and therefore I don't think universal childcare is a good idea".

Yeah, I dated someone that was a teacher and didn't like her job. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't provide education to kids.

ambicapter• 11 months ago

Maybe babies aren't meant to be cared for a dozen at a time? But no, we have to "scale" child-rearing, just like we have to scale everything for greater growth numbers. \s

LgWoodenBadger• 11 months ago

What sort of huge overhead is there that dwarfs the pay for low-paid staff?

lbschenkel• 11 months ago

Twelve is a quite high ratio of children to carer. In Sweden what is considered a healthy ratio is 5:1, and many places do meet that rate or are very close to it. 10:1 would be considered a very poor daycare, and most people wouldn't want to put their children on it — only if they have no other choice.

Regarding pay being bad this happens over here as well, unfortunately. Teaching in general is not paid as much as it is worth.

colechristensen3• 11 months ago

The problem with more people entering the workforce is that the people never end up better off. Prices just go up and people end up working more for the same result.

Changing the definition of full-time hours to 30/week would do far more for families and children than giving free childcare so mothers can work more.

Making mortgages with a > 20 year term illegal, putting limits on the total principal allowed to loan as a multiple of income, and barring entirely non-human (i.e. any business entity) ownership of single family homes would do far more for families and children by removing the burden of ridiculous housing costs by removing the ability for people to compete for ridiculous housing prices.

Loudergood2• 11 months ago

That last part is just going to make more housing cheaper for landlords and force more people into renting.

9rx4• 11 months ago

Changing the definition of full-time hours to 30/week would do far more for families and children than giving free childcare so mothers can work more.

You want to change what now? The dictionary definition does not specify any particular time. There is no legal definition for full-time. The IRS uses the term full-time, but they actually use it exactly like you wish: 30 hours per week.

People out on the street often casually use full-time to refer to 40 hours per week. I anticipate that is what you are referring to. But that usage is simply used to refer to how many hours they are working. 40 hours under that usage is an observation, not a commandment.

bcrosby95• 11 months ago

Any system, program, or social group involving tens of thousands of people is going to have issues. But if you systematize it you can work to address them rather than ignoring them in search of the perfect system (which doesn't exist).

bluGill6• 11 months ago

Why the sexist word "women"? Do you really mean to imply that men/fathers should not be stay at home dads? I know several stay at home dads who by all reports do a very good job of raising their kids while mom works. (granted the vast majority of stay at home parents are mothers). Fathers are people too, and they should be treated like the great parents they can be (until proven otherwise).

dataflow2• 11 months ago

> when women are allowed to work to their full potential
Why the sexist word "women"? Do you really mean to imply that men/fathers should not be stay at home dads?

That's... not even remotely what the sentence said? Or are you offended because you believe childcare obligations have historically prevented men from working their full potential?

tuckerman• 11 months ago

I mean, I’m a gay dad, so I get that what you are saying is a real problem, but I don’t think it’s a problem in this thread. If you had a goal of improving women’s ability to participate in the workforce you’d likely come up with a policy like this (that would also help some dads too, even if that weren’t the primary goal).

Women are far more likely to be the primary, stay at home caregiver if one exists and face a lot of discrimination in the workforce as a result of those expectations (on top of already facing other workplace discrimination issues).

giantg27• 11 months ago

I suppose if maximizing GDP is the goal, your comment makes sense. But if feel this is more of a bandaid of deeper underlying labor/pay issues.

palmfacehn• 11 months ago

Worker productivity has consistently increased, yet workers are struggling to support their families or delaying having a family, because they cannot meet the cost of living. Instead of looking towards the inflation of the monetary base as a driver of price inflation, families are supposed to let the state raise their children. Pricing parents out of the house and into the workforce is instead marketed as "liberation". Liberty implies that a choice is given. Mothers or fathers should have the ability to choose to stay home and benefit from the increases in productivity.

Citing GDP growth is cute, but as nothing has been done to address the underlying drivers of price inflation, we can reasonably expect that socialized child care will become an economic necessity. Any potential benefits of productivity gains will continue to be eaten by those who are first to drink from the monetary spigot. While GDP and hours worked may increase, living standards may not.

janalsncm3• 11 months ago

I’m 100% on board that GDP is increasingly becoming a poor proxy for well-being. That being said I can’t really think of many other things a state can do. The trends you are describing are national if not global.

Also “having the state raise your children” sounds dystopian until you realize the alternative was them not being taken care of in many cases. Handing a kid an iPad is not raising them.

throwawayqqq11• 11 months ago

And what choice do you have regarding rising cost of living?

There are many public services we already rely on and there are many countries that offer free child care already in some form. What you call (forced) liberation is just societal specialization and not bad per se.

Focusing on fiscal/wage issues is a big and important topic though. I bet over time, budget hawks will reduce this public service like others and like in many other countries too. We are so many humans on our plentyful earth, we could achieve many things, yet, "we" lack money.

fragmede5• 11 months ago

There will obviously be abuse and other issues. The question is, does New Mexico give up at the first sign of trouble like a bunch of losers, or do they push through, because of, or despite all the voters. It just takes one shitty person, in just the wrong place, and not enough good people fighting against him or her no matter, (or especially) how righteous he or she thinks they're being, to fuck it up for everyone else.

KetoManx6411• 11 months ago

You don't understand how economics work if you think this is actually going to be helpful. By providing "universal" child care, you just moved the cost of childcare from the individual to the tax base so now everyone has to pay an ineffifient system that often eats up 30-50% of the incoming money in bureaucratic inneficiencies before it will even reach the child care system.

On top of that the increased taxes are going to raise prices of everything because the businesses don't just eat the cost of taxes, they pass it off to the consumer. So all these families that get free childcare are going to be paying more for their groceries, rent, unilities and everything else.

To top things off, you now have random strangers with no bond with your children looking after them in a ratio of maybe 1:8 or 1:10. So your children are going to be stressed out and anxious and are going to act out both at the childcare place and at home, so you're just going to be getting phone calls all day about your children fighting other children.

All in all, you might feel like you're better off but once you do the math you're at about the same place if not worse off.

nemomarx3• 11 months ago

You could say all of this about public schooling, but that one worked out.

s46dxc5r7tv8• 11 months ago

Please post the math then, instead of wild conjecture and speculation about cause and effect.

ericfr11• 11 months ago

I just use my bike: why should I pay taxes for roads maintenance. Unfortunately, a society is not just about economics

sensanaty• 11 months ago

Yes, surely the hyper efficient free market is much better here, not like we have decades of proof of the perverse incentives there. We should instead ensure every mother is crippled with life-long medical debt if their kid needs any help!

Also if we care so much about these inefficiencies, why is it that I still have to subsidize drivers? Why aren't we investing in better public transport infrastructure, rather than letting drivers take up 1000x the space on roads that I'm forced to pay for?

justinrubek• 11 months ago

Oh no, society will have to bear the cost of the infrastructure to maintain itself rather than reap the benefits of a population without putting back into. How terrible.

lenerdenator• 11 months ago

There are more important things women - and other people - can do than simply grow the economy.

One of the reasons you must have a two-income household to be economically middle-class in most American metros now is because two-income households became the norm. When I was growing up 25-30 years ago, that made you comfortable. Then people realized that there was "untapped" value in that extra income and raised prices accordingly. If you're looking to buy the things that make up the "American Dream", you are now competing to buy against people who are willing to throw two incomes at the problem.

Now that there are two incomes, the only way to grow is to start shedding other things that keep people from creating more value for their employers. Kids, home improvement, community involvement, all are - or have been - going by the wayside.

orthoxerox3• 11 months ago

If I'm not mistaken, Elizabeth Warren has literally written a book about this problem, so it's not some reactionary desire to keep women in the kitchen.

shafyy• 11 months ago

I hope they succeed and there is no abuse or other issues, because it will show how much an economy can grow

I know you are meaning well, but while the economy growing can be a nice side effect of this (and probably is), I always find it a bit sad when economic profit is used as a reason to justify to create a more fair and equal society.

It's similar with those studies showing hiring a diverse workforce is actually good for your business. It might be, but, like, it's also the right thing to do to not discriminate against minorities.

bialpio• 11 months ago

I know you are meaning well, but while the economy growing can be a nice side effect of this (and probably is), I always find it a bit sad when economic profit is used as a reason to justify to create a more fair and equal society.

Unfortunately, this is how some people think, so phrasing things in this manner is a way to win them over ("paying a bit more in taxes is actually going to benefit you").

erichocean• 11 months ago

because it will show how much an economy can grow

bleak

SilverElfin17• 11 months ago

because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential

This feels like the wrong goal. Why does it matter how much an economy can grow? Is that worth not having a parent raise the child? In my opinion, it’s important for kids to spend more time with their families not less. Having one parent at home is very useful for bonding, development, etc. And frankly no childcare, even one with good ratios of workers to children, can substitute for it. I think the notion that “if the children are taken care of” is perhaps not recognizing that there are different levels of “taken care of”.

gwbas1c2• 11 months ago

I stayed at home with my mom until I was old enough for school. My wife and I sent our kids to daycare.

Our kids are fine.

Turns out kids need a lot of time with other kids.

WalterBright4• 11 months ago

My mom was a full time mom and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

ksenzee7• 11 months ago

That’s great, but not every mom is your mom. You just lucked out. This is like saying “my dad was a doctor and we lived very well and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.” Some dads aren’t cut out to be highly paid professionals. Some moms aren’t cut out to be good stay-at-home parents.

chlodwig12• 11 months ago

because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential.

Disagree. Everyone needs to realize that having two parents who both have "greedy jobs" is a path to misery. Giving out childcare does not change the situation. One parent will always need to step back from their career or there will be misery, I've seen too many cases. Even if both parents are comfortable putting their kid in daycare 9 to 11 hours a day (to cover both the workday and the commute), which they should not be, they still have to deal with many sick days, needing to be out of work by 6pm every day, not going on business trips, teacher's conferences, school plays, PTA meetings, not getting a good night sleep because baby or toddler is having a sleep regression, etc. etc. There is no world where you provide everyone universal childcare and now both parents can "work to their full potential" and "give the economy their best."

The reality furthermore is that there are few non-greedy jobs that are non-subsidized/non-fake and that contribute to the economy enough to be of more value than childcare. Subsidizing childcare, so the second parent can get a non-greedy job as a neighborbood coffeeshop owner, or working as a strict 9-5 government lawyer, isn't really a win for the economy.

swed420• 11 months ago

Agreed. We should have been freed a long time ago:

https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/

Unfortunately late capitalism made sure we went in the opposite direction.

benterix2• 11 months ago

Not sure about your point. I live in Europe, and State pays for the first 1 year or two. Then you get your kid to preschool which is either paid or free. In this way the mother (who usually has more burden related to breastfeeding etc.) can finally breathe freely. Can she go to work? Yes, and in some Europaen countries she has the right to ask for part work with the current employer, and they can't refuse. A few years later the kid goes to school (again, paid or free) and parents can decide how they organize their lives based on their needs an expectations. If your kid is sick, you can stay with them, and I always assumed this is normal and civilized way, I can't imagine otherwise.

apwell23• 11 months ago

i just got laid off 1 week after coming back from paternity leave.

tempfile3• 11 months ago

I was with you til the end, so now I need to ask what you really mean by "greedy jobs". I took it to mean jobs that are all-consuming, no fixed hours, high pressure, high stress. If that is what you mean then I seriously doubt your claim that there are few non-greedy jobs that contribute to the economy. The vast majority of jobs are non-greedy by this definition, unless the US has really regressed so far from Europe as to be unrecognisable.

Chinjut• 11 months ago

Family is not the point of life. Family is a chore we put up with to get to the point of life, maximizing profits for employers.

bryanlarsen3• 11 months ago

1 greedy job + 1 non-greedy job + daycare is surely better for the economy than 1 greedy job + no job, isn't it?

If the economy is what you're trying to optimize for.

gedy• 11 months ago

I think this just makes it harder for single income families tbh. Not a social or moral commentary, just unfortunate observation

ksenzee7• 11 months ago

How so? What do they have now that they will be losing under the new system? It seems like having childcare paid for would be beneficial to any single working parent.

prewett• 11 months ago

parents can give the economy their best

Surely parents should be giving their child(ren) the best, no?

Giving the economy your best only makes sense in Communism, and since that has never gone well, I'll assume that what was meant was "self-fulfillment via work" or "better standard of living". The first just seems like one of these modern lies. I'm neither a mother nor a woman, but I've never understood why women are so eager to go work. Work has never been particularly fulfilling, although I have generally more or less enjoyed it. I've met no father (or mother) who say they wished they had more time at work rather than their children. I have heard both fathers and mothers say that it is the most fulfilling part of their lives. The second is just prioritizing the self. I've never met a child who was excited that his/her parent(s) are working and/or making lots of money instead of being with them. I don't think a goal of career or comfort/wealth is compatible with flourishing children.

Second, are the children actually taken care of? Assuming everything is well-run, then sure, their physical needs and safety are taken care of. They aren't getting love from parents during that time. They aren't living in a loving community. Instead they are getting socialized into being atomized, like the rest of us, where loneliness is epidemic. I'm really thankful my mother stayed home with us. (She started teaching part-time once we all got into all-day school)

ksenzee7• 11 months ago

I’ve never understood why women are so eager to go work. Work has never been particularly fulfilling

Understandable, but the thing is, staying home with kids is work. It’s a vocation. Everyone should get to choose what work is fulfilling for them personally. In the absence of reliable child care, parents don’t get to make that choice freely. It sounds like in a perfect world, you might have enjoyed staying home with kids, if that seems more appealing than the work you ended up doing. I can tell you I tried it for 18 months and I just about went crazy. I am a much better software developer than I am a stay-at-home parent. I feel for women who don’t get to make choices the way I did.

are the children actually taken care of?

There is a lot of data by now comparing outcomes for children in childcare versus with stay-at-home parents. Both groups do fine.

I’m really thankful my mother stayed home with us

It sounds like she did a good job of it; it was probably a vocation for her. You do need to understand that not every woman is cut out for that.

habinero3• 11 months ago

I've never understood why women are so eager to go work

You're romanticizing it, that's why. Staying at home and not working makes you incredibly vulnerable. You're entirely reliant on the goodwill of someone else, and you can end up trapped, unable to leave a bad situation because you have no access to money. Or your husband just leaves you with kids to feed and no money to do it with.

It's fine if you choose to do it with a partner who treats you as an equal, but there's a reason why female suicides instantly dropped by 20%[0] when no-fault divorce was adopted by their state.

If you want another data point, ask your older female relatives what their mothers and grandmothers told them about money. Bet you more than a few will have a story where they were told to save money in a secret place and never, ever tell their husbands about it.

[0] https://www.nber.org/papers/w10175

Nifty3929• 11 months ago

It's easy to promise things, but hard to deliver them. How can the state "guarantee no-cost universal child?"

Will the state provide the child care itself? Or will the attempt to provide funding, relying on the private market to provide the service. Are there a bunch of underworked child care providers just waiting around for new customers? Or would they expect the child care industry to go on a hiring spree?

Regardless who provides it, more workers would be required to deliver the service, and new facilities as well. What industries will those workers come from, who will now see reduced services and higher prices as a result? What doesn't get built while the construction workers are building new child care facilities?

Child care tends to be highly regulated. Is the government doing anything (aside from funding) to make it easier to open and run a child-care facility?

It's so easy to spend money. The hard part is the real-world actions and tradeoffs required. Everything comes at the cost of something else we could have had instead.

What you will see is: The funding will go to the people who are already receiving child-care services today, along with big price increases immediately and over time as government money chases supply that is slow to grow.

toomuchtodo7• 11 months ago

I drive on roads, I use libraries, I have police and fire protection. My children go to school. My city and state provide services to me and fellow citizens. This is no different, and we pay for it with taxes.

I like taxes, with them I buy civilization (which I also am fond of).

(The evidence also shows economic benefits of enabling parents to work when they want to by providing childcare)

https://illumine.app/blog/how-much-childcare-costs-by-state-...

https://childcaredeserts.org/

https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064...

Isamu• 11 months ago

I’m also fond of civilization. I like your point that enabling parents to work helps drive the economy to everyone’s benefit.

defen3• 11 months ago

Portland OR is trying to do something similar ("Preschool for all") and is running into the exact problems OP identified, to the point that the Democratic governor is sending warning messages to the county: https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/26/kotek-multnomah-count...

They aren't just theoretical concerns.

evantbyrne4• 11 months ago

As someone who grew up homesteading and seeing the benefits of it, I find it wild that people want to not only send their kids away to school full-time but also institutionalize them afterwards just so they can spend seemingly excessive amounts of time at work. The economic machine demands sacrifices apparently.

qgin2• 11 months ago

I don't understand how many other developed countries are able to avoid the supposedly unavoidable perils of social services, but we act like this is a wild experiment that has never been tried anywhere in the world aside from the USSR or something.

monknomo2• 11 months ago

you could sub in universal k-12 schooling and your concern trolling points would not need to be change. I applaud the versatile argument.

sbrother• 11 months ago

+1. That being said, universal k-12 schooling works because it is publicly run. A subsidized private sector model has a lot of bad incentives and issues to work out. As an example, I've sent my kids to a private school for the past five years, and last year our state introduced a voucher program to help subsidize private education. The school responded by raising the prices by almost the amount of the voucher, just for the age groups that it covered.

See also: US healthcare.

marknutter2• 11 months ago

I would've thought we'd eventually move past the point of accusing people of "concern trolling" whenever they have a legitimate counterpoint, but here we are.

SilverElfin17• 11 months ago

Concern trolling? This isn’t 2015. You can leave out the insults.

holocenenough• 11 months ago

You could've answered 80% of these questions for yourself by just reading the linked press release.

Edit: other user called what you're doing here concern trolling and I agree. If you disagree on principle with government assistance for childcare you're free to make the case, but this gish-galloping faux-naive JAQing off adds no value.

gooeyblob• 11 months ago

Damn you're right, let's just not do anything good and useful for people

christhecaribou• 11 months ago

I’m so sick of seeing people justify why we cannot have nice things, as though it were a fact of nature.

afavour4• 11 months ago

How can the state "guarantee no-cost universal child?"

How can any state “guarantee no-cost schooling for all children”? Well, they do, so it’s clearly possible. Why would early childhood be any different?

everything comes at the cost of something we could have had instead

Of course. That’s the nature of spending money. Your talking points here don’t really amount to much beyond “better things aren’t possible”.

glenstein• 11 months ago

It's amazing how much of the opposition isn't a specific conceptual problem with the rightness or wrongness of the ideal behind the policy but re-litigating assumptions that are already accepted and baked into routine investments we already make to service and infrastructure.

The way that the Gell-Man Amnesia effect is the term for instantly forgetting what you know about the gulf between popular narrative and expert familiarity, there should be a name for the phenomenon of newly re-discovering and re-litigating the social compact that undergirds basic services as if it was being proposed for the first time.

9rx4• 11 months ago

What industries will those workers come from

Tech.

mythrwy4• 11 months ago

New Mexico government does things very very poorly compared to other states I've lived in. Corruption at various levels of government is very common.

I actually really like this idea (even though I'm red leaning) but hope they are able to effectively administrate it. I have my doubts they are.

toast02• 11 months ago

Regardless who provides it, more workers would be required to deliver the service, and new facilities as well. What industries will those workers come from, who will now see reduced services and higher prices as a result?

Paid for child care frees up some stay at home parents to enter the labor force; it's kind of circular, but some of those parents will work in child care. This won't fill the whole gap, but it will fill some of it.

timeon• 11 months ago

Outside of US there is whole world and maybe they are already doing something like that.

qgin2• 11 months ago

We're likely 5-10 years out from a world where tappy-tap computer keyboard jobs are in a death spiral and caregiving jobs are one of the only fields untouched by automation.

alchemical_piss3• 11 months ago

Enjoy living on $14/h for the rest of your life.

dpflan2• 11 months ago

Where is the money coming from to keep these services afloat? The federal funding environment seems less magnanimous these days, plus as other have pointed out, New Mexico is not an economic powerhouse.

pavon2• 11 months ago

The NM state government has had surplus revenue for a few decades due to taxes on natural gas and oil, first in the northwest, which has since dried up, and now in the southeast. Previous state governments had the foresight to structure things such that this money goes into a trust fund from which the state draws interest. Of course all that money is a very tempting source to fund programs, and every session there are debates about increasing the amount drawn from the fund, for something or another.

I have to admit that with everything else that has been going on politically, I haven't followed this latest push for universal child care, and don't know if the way they are funding it is sustainable. But previous pushes for preschool funding, etc weren't IMO; they were based on pretty optimistic estimates of both fund performance and economic returns from the preschool programs.

criddell2• 11 months ago

Oklahoma has had free pre-K for years now. If a red state like Oklahoma can figure out how to fund child care, it should be easy for New Mexico to do something similar.

dpflan2• 11 months ago

Perhaps this is one of those issues that gains momentum amongst enough states to become nation-wide phenomenon like other government-solutions/decision-for-social-issues do.

bertili• 11 months ago

It baffles me (as European) that any politician, or informed voter, would stand up for non free child healthcare. Let alone the moral aspect of denying a child healthcare because she happen to be born into a low income family, it can’t possibly be economically advantageous for any society to ignore child healthy issues and it’s future.

petcat2• 11 months ago

This is not child healthcare. That is already free in every US state. This is free babysitting.

The vast majority of the EU does not offer anything close to free universal early childhood care like this. None of Western Europe. I can think of only Latvia and Romania off the top of my head.

dannyr• 11 months ago

read the article or even the title of the post. it's childcare.

mynameisash• 11 months ago

That is already free in every US state.

What?

chimeracoder2• 11 months ago

This is not child healthcare. That is already free in every US state. This is free babysitting.

It's not quite free in every state, although it's closer to that than many people here probably realize.

At least until 2025 (unsure how the July budget cuts will affect this longer-term), Medicaid provides free or low-cost insurance to eligible children/families, which in theory should apply to everyone who isn't eligible for health insurance through other means. Emphasis on in theory, though - in practice, there are plenty of people who aren't covered.

It's probably more accurate to say that almost all children are eligible for healthcare coverage, and that coverage is free or low-cost for millions of people who meet various income thresholds. (People who are covered on private insurance almost always have copays or deductibles, so it's not truly free for them because there is some out-of-pocket cost).

Muromec9• 11 months ago

Is it really "universal"? Bottom of the sea has subsidies for childcare for certain income threshold when both parents are working. It's pretty close to free childcare practically speaking.

_petronius2• 11 months ago

In Berlin I enjoy exceedingly cheap daycare for my kids (80€ for 2 per month, would be lower if I didn't pay the optional extra costs), as well as generous parental leave in the year after a child is born, with salary subsidy from the state.

This is not an unusual policy situation at all in Europe, although indeed not universal.

insane_dreamer• 11 months ago

This is not child healthcare. That is already free in every US state.

Whaaat?

I have 2 kids and I can assure you healthcare is far from free unless you are low income; cutoff varies by state but it's not high -- around $80K/year household income[0], which is pretty middle-class. We're not at all wealthy, but a few years ago we started making more than threshold for our state's Medicaid/CHIP program, and we now spend >10K a year for our kids' healthcare (granted we have a child with a disability so he's the bulk of that).

[0] https://www.insurekidsnow.gov/coverage

chimeracoder2• 11 months ago

It baffles me (as European) that any politician, or informed voter, would stand up for non free child healthcare. Let alone the moral aspect of denying a child healthcare because she happen to be born into a low income family, it can’t possibly be economically advantageous for any society to ignore child healthy issues and it’s future.

This post is about childcare - ie daycare/preschool/babysitting - not child health care.

deadbabe• 11 months ago

You don’t understand the United States.

The point of the US has always been to make it easy for people to accumulate a lot of money, so that they can independently purchase things like child care if they need it, but if not, they can freely invest their money into other things.

Prioritizing cashflow over social safety nets results in a very liquid lifestyle, that can change quickly according to your own individual desires. Since you are not depending on any government handouts, you can simply take your money to wherever you see fit and live how you want. This appeals to many American individualist values.

If you live in a European society where you don’t earn a lot of money but you have most essential things provided by the government, you typically have to live a specific kind of lifestyle. Moving out of that country becomes infeasible, you can’t take government services with you. Your life will look very similar to people around you, everyone depends on the same government services and few have accumulated enough money to live an order of magnitude more comfortable than others. In a random sample of Americans, you will likely find a range of people from low-key millionaires to people up to their eyeballs in crushing debt.

Unfortunately though in the US, this entire concept collapses when people are no longer able to accumulate a lot of cash. They will live in the worst of both worlds: broke and the government isn’t helping them.

trinix912• 11 months ago

If you live in a European society where you don’t earn a lot of money but you have most essential things provided by the government, you typically have to live a specific kind of lifestyle. Moving out of that country becomes infeasible, you can’t take government services with you.

You don't have to live any specific kind of lifestyle, but it is true that a sizable portion of your income still goes to the public institutions. You can send your kids to private schools or (in some countries) homeschool them, but you're still paying for everyone else's public education.

Same with savings and pensions funds, a portion of your income goes to the state pension fund, no opting out of that, but you can also invest in private funds or whatever else.

Nobody's, for example, forcing you to work a 9-5 like everyone else, you're free to start a business, be unemployed, work and also run a business on the side etc.

As for moving countries, you can freely move around EU member states while keeping the benefits. You are also still entitled to the benefits of your country of origin even if you move across the globe as long as you keep your citizenship and tax residency there (which might be more impractical than just forgoing the benefits though).

Your life will look very similar to people around you, everyone depends on the same government services and few have accumulated enough money to live an order of magnitude more comfortable than others. In a random sample of Americans, you will likely find a range of people from low-key millionaires to people up to their eyeballs in crushing debt.

The wealth inequality varies quite vastly depending on which European country you're looking at. Also note that European does not automatically imply them being an EU member state. Overly general statements like these are totally pointless.

giancarlostoro• 11 months ago

New Mexico has expanded access to no-cost child care to families with incomes at or below 400% of the federal poverty level, reducing financial strain on tens of thousands of families.

This is confusing me, is this the same as "at or below the federal poverty level" or is there something I'm missing with that 400%? Do you have to be 400% below the federal poverty level to qualify?

nemomarx3• 11 months ago

I would assume take the poverty line and multiply by 4? if you earn less than that you get this program

lucozade• 11 months ago

It means that the current system provides free child care if your household income is less that 4x the federal poverty level. The new scheme doesn't restrict by income.

rafram• 11 months ago

The federal poverty level is unrealistically low ($20k for two people, which would be difficult to make rent and eat three meals on even in LCOL areas), so they set their own “poverty line” to 4x the federal one.

bombcar7• 11 months ago

The federal poverty level is defined by the feds.

Many programs use that, or variations on like (like this 400%) - to index. So if the poverty line for a family of four is 32,150$ - then this program is available to your family of four until you make over 128,600$.

Others will say "below 200% FPL OR qualifying condition" (think newborn, pregnant, etc). So some programs are open to baseball player families, as long as the qualifying condition is there.

namdnay• 11 months ago

at or below 400% of the poverty level. so if the povertly level is 1k/month for a family of 4, anyone making 4k or less with the same size of family is included

micromacrofoot4• 11 months ago

The federal poverty level is very low so typically means testing programs add multipliers that are appropriate for the incomes in their area.

SethMLarson• 11 months ago

This is really great!!!

lysace• 11 months ago

This is is honestly an economic nobrainer. Of course it needs to be tuned correctly for the context. I hope they they look at the long history of this in the Nordics. There's an insane amount of economic research readily available.

earlyriser• 11 months ago

We have something similar in Quebec, $7 CAD per day. It's one of the coolest societal things in the province. Yes we pay a lot in taxes, but we have stuff like this.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/24/quebec-unive...

defen3• 11 months ago

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20170603

We test the symmetry of this finding by studying the persistence of a sizeable negative shock to noncognitive outcomes arising with the introduction of universal child care in Quebec

oblio3• 11 months ago

Doesn't that study compare the results with basically keeping kids at home? That's not an option for a lot of people.

Muromec9• 11 months ago

What kind of childcare you can get for 7 CAD a day? Where I'm right now it's something like 10 enlightenment bucks per hour.

jeromegv• 11 months ago

The same or almost better than the privately funded one.

Workaccount22• 11 months ago

Every state should have universal childcare, however we should also be offering universal birth control as a compliment.

SamuelAdams• 11 months ago

Is there a mandated state ratio of workers to children? In Michigan, by law, it is 1:4.

It is great to offer free childcare to all citizens, but if those childcare facilities are inadequately resourced the quality of care will decline.

jonathanlb2• 11 months ago

A quick glance at https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/child-care-...

It looks like it's 1:6 until kids are 27 months, at which point the ratio becomes 1:10. When kids are 3-4 the ratio is 1:12, and when they're 5 and up, the ratio is 1:15. These are numbers from 2011, so not sure how that's changed over time.

resters2• 11 months ago

Imagine if we saw mostly headlines like this rather than things like "Trump threatens war on Chicago" or "Supreme Court approves racial profiling", or "Columbia students deported for protesting" or "Trump delays tariffs for 90 more days".

ciconia• 11 months ago

Chances are you'll soon see something like "Trump threatens nuclear war against communist New Mexico".

resters2• 11 months ago

It's off topic to mention this, but I've become convinced that the richest among us really don't care about improving the systems and institutions that would really elevate humanity and unlock tremendous human capital.

throwmeaway222• 11 months ago

what happened with socialization, friends and parents

pavel_lishin2• 11 months ago

Do you have a lot of friends who'd be willing to watch your children for 9 hours a day while you work, especially young infants?

tbirdny2• 11 months ago

No one does because everyone needs to have a job to survive in the US today. It used to be that many couples could survive on a single income. Not only did that allow them to better care for their kids, it also allowed them to help their siblings, parents, other family members, friends, neighbors, and community.

jonathanlb2• 11 months ago

socialization, friends

This still happen at daycare. If you have sent your kid to daycare/preschool, you'll know that kids become friends wit nother kids there, and parents can become friends withnother parents. A community forms because playdates are necessary when daycare/preschool is out.

parents

Sometimes economic realities are such that both parents have to work to make ends meet. There are single-family households that also exist. Childcare is a necessity in these and other situations.

rexpop2• 11 months ago

Daycare involves all of those things.

declan_roberts5• 11 months ago

I'm going to take the reverse position. I don't like this policy.

I think it would be much better to provide a one year paid stipend so that a parent can be home with the children during their tender years.

This entire structure is set up to keep the boss happy while a stranger raises your child during their most formative and vulnerable years.

MisterTea2• 11 months ago

This entire structure is set up to keep the boss happy while a stranger raises your child during their most formative and vulnerable years.

I can agree. I had grandparents to take are of me. During a family emergency I stayed with a friends family for a few weeks. We had a lot of people in our family and friends to step up who were all located in the same city.

Now everyone moves a thousand miles away from their existing support networks for a tech job.

pitpatagain• 11 months ago

Americans move significantly less today than they did in the mid 20th century, not more: https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/03/14/why-might-ameri...

Loudergood2• 11 months ago

Student loans can really force this.

Avshalom2• 11 months ago

This isn't just for babies. My coworker's 12yo is covered by this because he's got cancer and is too immunocompromised to go to school.

mrits• 11 months ago

I'm not sure we want to treat this as a related issue unless you want this kid to be sent to their death at 18

tripplyons• 11 months ago

How is your solution any different from the US student loan policies that have increased the price of college in the US? Won't subsidizing demand with a stipend significantly increase the price of what it can be spent on?

Muromec9• 11 months ago

I think it would be much better to provide a one year paid stipend so that a parent can be home with the children during their tender years.

Or just learn from the best proven strategy -- 3 years maternity leave, free childcare from the year of 3, early retirement for grandparents who can be bothered to stay with kids so parents can have some time off.

That of course would be totally haram and communism, so instead the policy is to have immigration from places, but that is also totally haram and communism.

Pick your poison.

abustamam3• 11 months ago

The western idea of individualism and the villification of the lower-class has really fucked American society. "I don't wanna pay taxes for [insert thing that doesn't benefit me]" or "if you're poor it's your fault" in a country where costs of basic necessities like medical care, insurance, food, housing, school, are skyrocketing is insane to me.

I thought everyone had the right to life, liberty, and property, but it seems like if one can't afford to live then they are just left by the wayside.

pavlov• 11 months ago

It's not one or the other. Scandinavian countries provide ample parental leave and also universal childcare.

smeeth4• 11 months ago

Hate to break it to you, but many kids actually do better away from their parents than with them.

It's extremely sad, but a consistent finding in early childhood education is that the children who thrive most in daycares tend to come from the least advantaged backgrounds.

So a policy of paying parents to stay home would mostly benefit kids who are already well off.

yardstick2• 11 months ago

Kids are social and like playing and learning from other kids. Daycare lets them do just that. It’s a great thing and every toddler I’ve met who wasn’t in daycare was behind in something. Especially verbal skills.

Plus daycare allows women to continue their career progression. It’s soo important. Not every woman wants to end their career as a mother to a young kid. Daycare enables successful women to thrive and still have families.

Minor49er2• 11 months ago

Hate to break it to you, but many kids actually do better away from their parents than with them.

How so?

xp845• 11 months ago

I'm just gonna throw this out here: Well-off kids who barely know their workaholic parents have different but equally bad issues for society, than the poor kids do.

Those poor kids have learning deficits. The "well-off" kids often have morality deficits.

A mom or dad raising them properly might help them more than being Student #642 in a government childcare facility.

This isn't an argument against childcare. My children attended preschool for 3 years before Kindergarten. But I'd rather that people got equal support to have a stay-at-home parent so that people can choose.

MisterTea2• 11 months ago

My daycare was called preschool. It allowed my mother to focus on my infant brother during the day while I was literally two blocks away running around, coloring and learning shapes. Show and tell was my favorite.

HatchedLake721• 11 months ago

Hate to break it to you, but many kids actually do better away from their parents than with them.

Is this based on something?

There's research left and right shows that children under 36 months at group nurseries are linked to increased aggression, anxiety, lower emotional skills, elevated cortisol (stress hormone), which is associated with long-term health and developmental risks.

Infants and children do better with one-to-one care at home by their parents and familiar faces, rather than strangers in a group setting.

cvoss• 11 months ago

Perhaps there is something about the environment of an economically disadvantaged household that could be improved by a stipend which allows at least one parent the breathing room to dedicate full time attention to the child instead of a job (or multiple jobs). I don't think the findings you mentioned cut against that idea at all.

I hear you saying the benefit of dedicated caregiving for children mostly helps families with less economic advantage. I'd agree with that, and suggest that OP's proposal capitalizes on exactly that. I'm not convinced of what may be implied in your argument that low-earners make for bad parents and that children should be separated more from their parents for their own good. Let the internal dynamics of a family be solved first, before saying we need to separate parents from children more.

Moreover, those with more economic advantage are unlikely to take a stipend in exchange for staying home. That's not a good deal when keeping the job pays so much that they can afford to pay for childcare.

It is precisely those with less advantage who will take the deal.

So I don't agree with your prediction that such a stipend mostly benefits those who are already well off.

bko• 11 months ago

that the children who thrive most in daycares tend to come from the least advantaged backgrounds.

So the children that do well in daycare comes from poor homes? So kids from rich home don't do well in daycare?

Every interaction I've ever had says the opposite. The disruptive bully at school usually comes from a broken home.

TomasBM• 11 months ago

So, maternity/paternity leave in line with European systems?

Or did you have something else in mind?

rexpop2• 11 months ago

Capitalism historically depends on the unpaid reproductive labor of women in the domestic sphere, work that is socially undervalued and made invisible, which supports capitalist systems rather than liberates women. Instituting a paid stipend for home parenting, while superficially supportive, risks reinforcing this systemic isolation by formalizing the separation of caregivers (mainly women) from the workforce and political arenas where power is exercised and negotiated.

Women confined to domesticity become disconnected from their own potential and larger societal participation.

wetoastfood• 11 months ago

Childcare doesn't end at 1 year though. If you look at public schools as child care, most don't start until kindergarten (about 5 years old). What do you do for the remaining 4 years? And during summer break? And after-school care? This program covers all of those.

Forcing parents back into the workforce early is unfortunate and does need to be addressed. However, this program seems to be addressing a different and still vital issue.

kenjackson• 11 months ago

6 years paid stipend would fix this problem.

afavour4• 11 months ago

As a parent I’m going to disagree with your disagreement.

I was lucky enough to get months of parental leave initially. I am glad I got it but at the same time I don't buy the tender, formative, vulnerable stuff too deeply. They're poop and vomit machines that nap and have very, very little interaction with the world around them. The primary benefit was for me to not have to work while deeply sleep deprived.

As my first got a little older I felt incredibly guilty dropping them off so I could go to work but that feeling very quickly subsided when I realised just how much they were thriving with the company of knowledgable teachers and bunch of peers their own age to interact with.

I still get plenty of time with my kids and we enjoy our time together immensely. And they also enjoy their time with their friends at nursery/preschool. “Stay at home with parent” isn’t actually that common when you look back historically. Childrearing has almost always taken a village.

savagej• 11 months ago

You're an idiot.

I have a toddler.

They are absorbing everything and gaining a personality from day one.

You are not the one doing it.

abustamam3• 11 months ago

I wonder if there is room for disruption here. Like, a NextDoor for childcare. I guess that's just group chats with your neighbors who have kids, but many people don't even know their neighbors. Maybe this is something that needs to be solved organically, not with an app.

foxyv3• 11 months ago

It's a pretty nice consolation prize considering the almost total lack of parental leave in the United States. When someone throws me a lifeline I'm not going to complain that it isn't a certified life preserver.

gcheong• 11 months ago

I think you're talking about parental leave which is a different thing and another area where the US falls short compared to other developed countries. This is to provide care for your kids after you would have gone back to work in any regular scenario until the kids are old enough to start school.

potato37328424• 11 months ago

Worse. Not just a "stranger" but a subset of strangers running "real businesses".

I would rather my kid be raised by a) spouse b) grandparents c) no-habla cash only daycare (who are catering to customers who's average values are much closer to mine than an above the table business). Only after all those options are exhausted do I look toward a "real business".

So basically this is a subsidy of the 4th place option.

lagniappe• 11 months ago

no-habla cash only daycare

Yo, what the fuck HN?

afavour4• 11 months ago

Worse. Not just a "stranger" but a subset of strangers running "real businesses".

Real businesses subject to real inspections and real assessments, you mean? With "strangers" who need to have qualifications and background checks?

To each their own of course but I'd prefer somewhere I know is actually judged to be a safe environment than some under the table option.

janalsncm3• 11 months ago

Those are still options? The state isn’t going to force parents to use public daycare. However you might keep in mind that not everyone has an available spouse, and grandparents might not always be available either.

janalsncm3• 11 months ago

provide a one year paid stipend so that a parent can be home

That is also several times more expensive. With child care, you can divide one worker’s salary over multiple kids. You are talking about paying a salary for each kid.

jordanpg• 11 months ago

This sounds like something I would have written before I was a parent.

And please remember: not everyone's family situation is the same. There are single parents, all kinds of employment scenarios, chronic illnesses or disabilities, sick parents, income differentials, and on and on and on.

Your single data point about what worked for your situation does not necessarily apply to everyone else's situation.

_petronius2• 11 months ago

These are complementary, not opposing policies. You can have funded childcare and longer parental leave funded by the state. I live somewhere that has both (not in the US, perhaps obviously).

seizethecheese• 11 months ago

The most formative year is not 0-1. My daughter is 2 and it’s just now starting to be formative.

coffeemug• 11 months ago

More importantly it would give parents options: - stay home with your child and take the income - hire a babysitter - hire a better babysitter by adding a little cash - take your child to daycare - take your child to better daycare by adding a little cash

If the government also runs daycare centers that adds another option of taking your child to gov daycare. It also forces the gov and private daycares to compete.

The current policy penalizes people on the margin-- maybe an extra $500/mo would get your child much better daycare, but you're stuck between (likely) low quality government care, or losing a huge chunk of income to solve the problem yourself.

MandieD2• 11 months ago

We kind of do both in Germany. I say "kind of" becaue that year of parental leave (14 months total, shared between parents as desired) is capped at the lower of 1800 EUR/mo, or 2/3 of previous year's net monthly salary - that was significantly lower than either of our net pay, but we did it anyway.

And once the little guy was a year old, daycare for not quite enough hours to work full time (7am - 4pm) was a mere 500 EUR/mo, and would have been less had we not been a 1.5 engineer couple. It drops to 200 EUR/mo when the kids turn three. For awhile, Bavaria was considering giving a rebate to families who didn't use preschool, but then I think they realized that the people whose minds would be changed by an extra couple hundred Euro per month in their pockets were a lot of the people who this rather conservative state really, really wanted to have send their kids to preschool as soon as possible.

This goes hand in hand with very strong protections for parents choosing to work part time. My employer had to allow me to drop to part time for up to three years (prorated salary, of course), with an option to extend it until my kid is eight.

Result? I'm still working in the same department and position I was before the kid, but spend several hours a day with him.

He took to daycare like a duck to water and still loves preschool; it turns out that my little guy is way more social than either of his parents.

em-bee2• 11 months ago

strong protections for parents choosing to work part time

how long ago was that? i thought i read that the right to work part time is now universal, that is after some time in a job you can just request it, and it can't be denied, unless there are some special circumstances (and i think small companies are exempt too), children or not.

jp422• 11 months ago

Slightly tangent. At some point in future I can imagine humanoid robots will be doing this job. Of course, the robots need to be super reliable before we hand over the our kids

yoyohello132• 11 months ago

What a disturbing dystopia where the robots are at home taking care of the kids so the parents can go work in the factory.

jp422• 11 months ago

May be when robots truly arrived. We don't have to work and we get to spend more time with our kids.

zackmorris• 11 months ago

I just want to +1 this post before it gets flagged for being "political" or whatever.

I grew up in the 1980s and have watched America slide from being a civilization that was the envy of the world into something resembling empire or feudalism or I-don't-know-what. The US literally declared its independence from England to shrug off authoritarianism/aristocracy. Yet we've reproduced that wealth inequality here.

We're going to have to draw a line in the sand that says that we believe that we can build a dignified society together. That means that we've got to stop worshipping rugged individualism when our billionaires got rich on government contracts and let children starve in poverty. The hypocrisy has reached self-destructive proportions.

If free childcare is gonna sink the country, then we're already sunk. Same with free healthcare and free education. You want to know what sinks a country? When grocery prices triple and (waves hand at everything).

scarface_743• 11 months ago

What’s frustrating about this is that conservatives are always warning about the decreasing child birth rate. But fight against policies that would help support families who have children.

Universal healthcare is similar. You want to support small businesses? Lack of affordable healthcare stops a lot of people from leaving corporate America to start their own business.

Muromec9• 11 months ago

What’s frustrating about this is that conservatives are always warning about the decreasing child birth rate. But fight against policies that would help support families who have children.

That's what happens when party doesn't have an actual policy stance and min-maxes their pooling numbers based on target audience instead.

Another more cynical take is "childbirths" is just a code for racism and "pro-life" a code for religious types.

jimt12342• 11 months ago

What’s frustrating about this is that conservatives are always warning about the decreasing child birth rate. But fight against policies that would help support families who have children.

Didn't the Big Beautiful Bill include $5K for newborn babies? I thought I saw a headline that said that. But anyway, yeah, 5-grand is gonna solve everything. /s

arduanika• 11 months ago

I don't think that's an accurate recounting of the reasons for the American Revolution. That '/' is doing a lot of work, and "wealth inequality" was not a topical notion at the time.

That said, this is a fine thing for a state to experiment with. From other comments, it sounds like NM's ability to try this out is related to a recent oil and gas boom. We'll see how it goes.

mythrwy4• 11 months ago

New Mexico has some serious generational social issues. Extreme poverty, lack of education, lack of work (or most anything else) ethic are very common. Drugs and alcoholism are endemic.

I wonder if some of the intent behind this is to reduce some of the generational effects by exposing children early to at least some semblance of order and sobriety? Then when they enter school they have more of a chance.

I'm not by any means "socialist inclined" but I can't say I'm against this program because the situation is dire enough something must be done.

travisgriggs• 11 months ago

As I read the back and forth here…

When I lived in Norway 35 years ago, I’m pretty sure they had this. Little kids went to barnehagen. I think as early as 1. Can anyone from the Nordic states chime in? Is that still the case? Does it work? I would guess Sweden and Denmark were similar.

xp845• 11 months ago

Apparently until now they've been providing this only to families below 400% of the Federal Poverty Level. FPL is $32,150 for a 4-person family, so $128,600 combined family income (2 people working for $64,300 each -- and that's before fed and state taxes are deducted). Since that is far from being wealthy enough to "just" spring for expensive care, I'm glad to see this.

My only question is who the heck is going to be working in these childcare centers?? Right now (granted, I don't live in NM so this is in California) most places that are decent have waiting lists - indicating that they could expand but are unable to, instead they're already leaving money on the table. I don't think there are enough people willing to work a very grueling job for a wage that the current costs are enough to support. So, if this is a new entitlement program the state may find its costs doubling soon as they try to force the market to provide, or are forced to directly provide, care.

hedora8• 11 months ago

Not sure where in California you are, but the SF Bay Area’s economy is heavily distorted by intentionally bad roads and artificial housing shortages.

Pretty much any blue collar or service worker is either living in a prop 13 house, has roommates, or is driving well over an hour to get to work.

That’s not true in many other places on earth. California could fix it, but the politicians keep actively making the problem worse.

For instance, there’s a statewide mandate to reduce commute miles (not carbon, and not time). If towns don’t comply, they get in trouble with the state government.

Similarly, construction permit departments are adversarial, and “affordable housing” initiatives routinely block market rate housing from being built.

On top of all that, the ‘08 housing crisis put a bunch of contractors out of business, and so did covid. Those people largely moved out of state. The result is that there’s no one to train new workers, and even if there were, there’s no reason for those new workers to locate here, since the pay scale doesn’t make up for housing costs. (This would be a huge opportunity if we fixed the roads so they could drive to work sites quickly, or allowed new housing construction, but we don’t.)

SilverElfin17• 11 months ago

Providing such benefits to those below poverty level doesn’t make sense to me. People are that level of economic value need to improve their situation before taking on the burden of children. Taxpayers should not be subsidizing the poorest to have large families they can’t take care of. The opposite should be happening - we should subsidize households with demonstrated capability to be successful (which in our society does mean economically) to have more children.

xp845• 11 months ago

That might sound attractive at first[1], but when we consider that there isn't a practical way to stop those poor people from having children anyway, what such a policy amounts to is that we punish such kids[2] for their parents' "sins" -- which is a great way to breed a generation of sociopathic miscreants bent on destroying your society.

[1] (if you can avoid thinking of the class-based eugenics that such a policy would amount to, if it were actually obeyed)

[2] punish by impoverishing them further, or by making it more likely they'll be neglected by those parents that you already suspect aren't responsible

dreamcompiler• 11 months ago

New Mexico also issued an order removing barriers to pharmacies giving COVID boosters.

https://www.nmhealth.org/news/vaccine/2025/8/

The states are stepping up.

cushychicken• 11 months ago

This is awesome.

I suspect that for every one job the government would subsidize for a daycare professional, that we’d see three women enter the workforce.

That’s a net of four people employed.

I have no proof of this aside from my own experience watching parents struggle to find care for their kids. Even well off ones where I live. In Massachusetts!

Good for you, New Mexico. I’m rooting for you.

foxyv3• 11 months ago

What's even better is this isn't costing New Mexico that much and it removes income restrictions for daycare. I think the total budget is something like $36 million extra with about $20 million of that being capex to build new facilities.

rgbrgb• 11 months ago

Programs that commit to paying entry-level staff a minimum of $18 per hour and offer 10 hours of care per day, five days a week, will receive an incentive rate. New Mexico estimates an additional 5,000 early childhood professionals are needed to fully achieve a universal system.

Is this a reasonable wage in New Mexico? Here in Southern California you could not find qualified candidates for that but I know general cost of living is higher.

johng• 11 months ago

$18/hour is a really good wage in New Mexico for every city except the richest ones... mainly Santa Fe. It's really high for smaller towns and villages.

jandrewrogers• 11 months ago

That's really good pay for most parts of New Mexico.

trentnix• 11 months ago

Despite being 31st in educational funding, New Mexico has ranked 50th in juvenile education for 8 years in a row per the Annie E. Casey foundation:

https://www.aecf.org/interactive/databook?l=35

You can research for yourself and see other evidence that the educational outcomes for children in New Mexico is generally very, very poor.

Expect similar results with New Mexico's "universal" child care.

OsrsNeedsf2P• 11 months ago

Maybe they're trying to fix it?

seanmcdirmid5• 11 months ago

New Mexico is filled with poor people, news at 11. But seriously, a lot of things go into your state's education outcomes: state of the kids coming into the system is actually very important, as is parent participation, before we even get to funding by the state. As the only poor blue state, New Mexico has a lot to make up for, and it can't just magic its problems away.

onlyrealcuzzo• 11 months ago

Why should we all go off of one ranking?

Quartz ranked New Mexico 5th: https://qz.com/early-childhood-education-by-state-ranking-20...

If I look hard enough, I can find a study that ranks New Mexico at every single ranking from 50th to 1st.

In particular, the study you linked ranks on a lot of factors outside the control of the school - which is largely affected by the huge number of poor people in New Mexico (#1 in the country... Which is why they got the rating they did).

surfmike2• 11 months ago

If AI does actually lead to large economic gains but also high unemployment, then we should be able to invest most in social programs like this and let people make a good living providing them. (as well as all other workers, through wage subsidies)

That said, if you don’t have a job… do you need childcare? But I’m assuming there will still be enough demand from those employed

yencabulator2• 11 months ago

If you don't have childcare, how will you get a job?

surfmike2• 11 months ago

I think I muddled my point, I think with abundance we should offer childcare to people who have jobs. Even maybe some hours for those that don’t too.

sparrish• 11 months ago

"child care available to all New Mexicans"

Does this mean a stay-at-home mom or dad can get a daycare license and get paid by the state to take care of their own children?

CGMthrowaway2• 11 months ago

Sounds great.

average annual family savings of $12,000 per child.

How is NM paying for this? They currently have a 'D' grade from Truth in Accounting[1] with a $9.8 billion debt burden driven by unfunded obligations of pension and retiree health care

[1]https://www.truthinaccounting.org/library/doclib/NM-2020-2pa...

anothermathbozo2• 11 months ago

child care policy frees labor capacity for work that is more likely to earn a slice of the national income. It’s almost certainly going to result in greater economic activity for the state. In the immediate it is funded from two existing funds.

CGMthrowaway2• 11 months ago

State + local tax burden in NM is 10.2%[1]. Revenue neutral would mean those taking the child care would instead take a job with average salary $120,000. But as another comment points out this policy attracts new jobs to the state, which complicates the math

[1]https://taxfoundation.org/location/new-mexico/

jcrawfordor• 11 months ago

I wouldn't take these Truth in Accounting reports too seriously. They're linked to ALEC and take a very hard-right stance on fiscal issues, and in particular, this report on NM (which is also nearly five years old) seems to ignore the permanent funds---as best I can tell they are lumping them all under "restricted" and ignoring them, even though the land grant permanent fund, the largest of them, is totally at the discretion of the legislature and the others are very broad. The permanent funds are also now significantly larger than that report shows.

While NM has debt it has been servicing it fine and state revenue has increased year over year pretty much since that report was produced in 2020 (either 2020 or 2021 were the worst years for the state's financial position). It's projected that 2025 will close out with nearly $3.5 billion in unspent revenue, and the state has about $50 billion saved in various permanent funds. The state's financial situation is currently so good that it has allowed things like universal free college tuition in a largely revenue-neutral way due to the significant balance of the invested funds.

One of the main criticisms you will hear of the NM legislative on the fiscal front is that they are too hesitant to spend money, since NM has serious issues with underperformance in areas like education while also having billions of savings that could be spent down in an effort to address those issues (and in fact the state supreme court more or less mandated the state to start doing so several years ago). However, since NM's revenue is so tied to the oil and gas industry and its boom-and-bust nature, the legislature likes to keep a substantial cash reserve to manage the bust years. That may be particularly important right now as the Trump administration is radically reducing the amount of federal funding that NM receives, which has always been a critical revenue source due to the state's high level of poverty (third highest in the US or so, depending on year and how you measure).

seanmcdirmid5• 11 months ago

This is actually kind of smart: any other kind of social welfare like free housing or free healthcare could be gamed by people moving in state to exploit it without providing much in return. But free child care...this could genuinely attract jobs and people to work them for the benefit of the state as a whole.

foxyv3• 11 months ago

They already have an income limited program. This is just going to cover the remaining kids. Honestly, programs like this are usually a net benefit for the entire state. Just like public schooling, housing, and transportation programs.

thelastgallon2• 11 months ago

Most people are forgetting the sine qua non: No billionaires were harmed in the making of this law.

I wonder what other laws like this can be passed that do not harm billionaires.

tbirdny2• 11 months ago

The reason we need this is because both parents need to work because wages are so low families cannot live on a single income. I wish we could fix that rather than allowing even more people to work putting more downward pressure on wages.

LightBug1• 11 months ago

Excellent, it's a start ... anyone else predicting this will be get cancelled by the dumpling for being too Communist. It's on my bingo card.

jimt12342• 11 months ago

New Mexico is too small for Orange Julius to care about. If it was California, the story would be completely different.

bilsbie• 11 months ago

Im probably in the minority on this opinion but I think its crazy to entrust your children to low paid strangers with no stake in their development during critical times in their lives.

Ancalagon• 11 months ago

Cool - then you can pay for daycare

onlypassingthru2• 11 months ago

Just as a general aside - The amount of hubris when it comes to Early Childhood Education is always astounding to me. So many people assume they are experts because they were a toddler once or can become an expert just by reading a couple books. How many people on HN are even aware there is an entire specialty in Education devoted to preschoolers for very good reason? ANY program that attempts to put kids in a good daycare with trained professionals is a win for everyone.

johnbellone2• 11 months ago

I support my tax dollars going to pay for universal child care. This is likely the second or third largest expense for young families. To be honest, I do not know how people can afford to have multiple children in daycare in any major metropolitan area.

robohoe• 11 months ago

Nice! Illinois had something similar called AllKids but that was for lower income families [0]. More states need this in US.

[0] https://hfs.illinois.gov/medicalprograms/allkids.html

hopelite• 11 months ago

“No cost universal child care” Also: “savings of $12,000 per year”

So this will be financed by a voluntary election by those who support it, i.e., voluntary increase in the various taxes people pay in NM?

showerst• 11 months ago

I think DC has the start of a really good system here. There's universal Pre-K 3 and 4. Most elementary schools offer it, but you can also get a large subsidy to go towards a private daycare. I'd love to see that expanded to all ages. Day cares here are super heavily regulated (and thus expensive) and apparently the paperwork is a nightmare for the day care, but in practice it's super easy for parents.

I see all these comments in the vein of 'why should you force people to work in the mines and not get to love their child' and I wonder if any of these people have ever had toddlers. I love my kid, and love spending time with her. But she really likes daycare (and now school). Not only does she get better socialization than me taking her to the park for 2 hours, but she learns skills that I wouldn't be consistent about teaching. It turns out, being taught by people who have years of practice and degrees in childcare is a pretty good idea!

We did Prek-4 at our public school and you could immediately tell the difference between the daycare kids, the nanny kids, and the home-parent kids. The daycare kids were much more prepared and able to cope, and this is at a school where parental involvement was quite high. I don't think the different approaches are universally better or worse, but it's clear to me that the quality of the daycare and the parent matters a lot more than which one you choose.

arathis2• 11 months ago

Everything about this thread sums up how brutal America is. It’s wild.

New Mexico is first state in US to offer universal child care

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