More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.
We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation. Now you advocate for them to have more control and say over education by recommending more of their services? Nah, way more efficient, empowering, and aligned with freedom & democracy if parents in a household just get direct cash every month rather than government-run facilities. No thanks. Way too many problems with more gov. Give cash instead, solve the problem. And foster good working environment so wages go up and people can choose to work less and still have a family.
Not rocket science
That's the European approach that children belong to whole community not only their parents and the authority and the burden is shared. I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?
Nah. That’s what people used to say abou WFH too. All this is purely due to capricious employers and institutions, not because of some natural law. If companies had their way, we’d be working 80h/week. That’s true for both low paying and high paying jobs.
I just don't buy this; it feels like a lack of imagination. Sure, today, very few firms that traditionally employ full-time, salaried employees would even consider the idea of hiring twice as many half-time workers, but there's no inherent reason why it couldn't work.
Certainly, there are hurdles: some per-employee costs are fixed regardless of how many hours they work. But this is just an argument to fix them (because they're stupid in general), not to avoid the situation. Most part-time and contract workers in the US don't get benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. But this is an argument to fix those broken programs, not throw our hands up and claim the status quo is the only option.
Corporate profits and executive pay growth is generally far outstripping the wages paid to mid- and low-level employees. There's no reason why most companies can't pay their employees more equitably, and stop with all the pay inequality garbage.
> That's the European approach that children belong to whole community not only their parents and the authority and the burden is shared. I don't get why are you so hell bent on having exclusive authority over your child?
I'm not a parent, but childhood education these days seems more about pushing government propaganda and training kids to be obedient little employees (not to mention providing much-needed free day-care for parents), than about nurturing creativity and curiosity, and giving kids the tools they need to be productive, yet critical-thinking, independent people. I look at stories of 12-year-old kids getting arrested at school for asinine reasons[0] and wonder what the hell is happening.
I don't think people need "exclusive authority" over their children in general, but I do think the current state of public (and even private, in many cases) education could easily drive parents to not want their kids to be a part of it.
[0] https://www.copblock.org/140900/stupid-reasons-police-arrest...
EDIT: apparently any kind of reduction is possible (even 2 hours per week) but the reduction needs to be sensible and the employer needs to agree. if they don't you can sue, and if the judges decide that your requested reduction is reasonable they must comply (i guess that means, you can ask for 2 hours a week and get it if the employer agrees, but if the employer doesn't agree you probably won't convince a judge either)
mothers wanting to send their children to kindergarten does not translate into needing to make it mandatory to do so. a better response would have been to make it a legal right (but not an obligation) combined with the necessary financial support or offer of government paid kindergarten spaces. the latter is lacking in germany for example.
Communities don't share the burden except to the extent that the parents need it and want it and share access to their household with members of their chosen communities and faiths. That is how it works in the entire massive United States and other Western Democracies, barring these irresponsible western European countries that seem to be possessed by increasingly idiotic ideas on how much control they want over our kids but how little responsibility they will show on serious urgent matters like nuclear reactor construction and adequate defense spending. The French should be absolutely ashamed and should repent.
When a state tries a state-sponsored approach to compulsively being responsible for teaching children with a monopoly on violence, especially contrary to what the parents may want to teach their child, that becomes a cause for jihad.
Obviously at the end of the day most of a child's upbringing is the parents' prerogative but at the same time if people want to pull the "it takes a village" bs, as a gay man who will not have children (and not use any of the resources that tax dollars goes into) I believe that certain things like a child's education _should_ be managed by the government.
If the village does not have a say in village matters, then it makes me wonder why the hell everyone was allowed a say when it came to things like gay marriage, etc.
Hmmm... let me look around my neighborhood...
School teacher - easy; Lawyer - doable; Doctor - already done; Auto mechanic - no problem; Bank teller - easy; Construction worker...
Ok. I can't come up with any. I'm sure there must be some, but they don't come to mind. Most people work the number of hours it takes to earn the standard of living they accept. Work is never done. There's always more to do. That is never the question.
I suspect you're trolling, but in case you're not:
As a European, I do have a lot of community centric philosophy - but given the government (local and country) incompetence in virtually all matters of education and the universally awful opinion all teachers I know hold of the government and their interference and policies regarding education and child care - I do not think that wanting the best for your kids that you love and wanting to be able to raise them yourself with individual attention and perspective is really that strange.
If there are good schools, I have no problem with my kids going to them, as long as it doesn't interfere with their growth and education.
(My kids go to local state schools, fwiw).
If the village had a say in my matters, the village can sure as hell have a say in everyone else's matters, imo.
This really looks like trolling.
How does replacing one form of authoritarianism with another, perhaps preferable to some, form of authoritarianism make things better?
> More shitty government programs or opportunities for bad and dishonest people to indoctrinate the young from earlier ages, particularly now that some bureaucrats would want to use their responsibilities as if they constitute the power to subvert parental involvement, are a huge no from me.
As opposed to shitty private sector programs run by profiteers?
> We spent too much already and these politicians only gave us inflation.
What does this have to do with anything?
Also you complain about inflation but also want more direct cash infusions?
Direct cash infusions to households would not affect inflation. Giant bailouts for huge corporations and for huge corrupt political super pacs definitely does though. Read the book Utopia For Realists for the chapter on direct cash to households and the compiled evidence done over decades in the United States and even Canada.
He’s a $BAD. Otherwise he’d do $THING_I_WANT.
I mean, even if both parts turn out to be true I doubt this is how it works.
So no, it's not such a simple reductionist shit-take like you're offering. Be more mature and serious or be banned. There's no more time for bullshit. We can measure the consequences of his actions and ideas by seeing the struggle of the nuclear reactors, which wouldn't have been a problem if France leadership including Macron was truly wise and privy to what the people need at a basic level - which is cheap and reliable electricity for fuck's sake.
And NATO defense spending should've been 2% of GDP for a long time, but they failed even in times of great relative peace by comparison in 2014 when they were below where they are supposed to be. No serious person, in the face of rockets obliterating their nation, could resort to such a shitty reductionist take like yours unless they were just looking to troll rather than to understand that YES, it's possible to say that someone is bad and why and how.
https://phys.org/news/2018-11-france-nuclear-reactors-macron...
How is this working out for him and France now with energy costs skyrocketing and old pipelines and new pipelines from Russia no longer guaranteed because of immaturity across the board at all levels of leadership now culminating in barbarism in 2022 of all times? So yes, it's possible to prove that Macron made bad choices, because of what the consequences are.
Why the assumption that my criticism of your criticism of the French leadership has anything to do with the war in Ukraine?
I think, friendo, you are taking this too personally. It’s just an Internet forum and I only objected to your logic.
It's coming to an end by people advocating for the truth more aggressively in light of what's all over the news and readily accessible. You said something very immature to a serious topic and thus received a frank response. There was no personal attack though. I don't know you, so how can I attack you personally or as a person? I didn't attack you at all. Re-read the message. I told you to be more mature and to stop being immature. Because reductionist one-liners that disregard good-intentioned expositions for the sake of advocating for the truth...show immaturity. And that is much more of a personal attack, by the way, than anything I said. The entire context of the conversation was Macron and how his being a terrible leader means he should have no say in anything, let alone when a state can tear away a child from his or her parents. Ukraine was provided as an example of that, because it relates to France's defense spending as a share of GDP (which historically has not been adequate) and because of France's idiotic policies on nuclear reactors some recent years ago now coming to bite them in the ass because of, you guessed it, Macron and other "leaders" such as him. These things show awful leadership skills on their parent, and consequently are evidence for why they should not be trusted as leaders in general. Not just because his stance on education is wrong, boneheaded, and even evil. And these are urgent and important subjects on account of inaccessible energy and inadequate defense spending resulting in many lives being lost and society regressing if these things are not corrected swiftly.
Nothing personal intended friendo, it's the internet - but notice that I'm the one who in the last handful of messages has made arguments, whereas that other comment you made was not an argument. You did not contest or object to the logic.
>> Be more mature and serious or be banned
I don’t buy your good intentions. Have a lovely day!
If you want people generally to work less and earn more, how are you going to reduce the amount of work there is for them to do? Also how are you going to provide the additional goods and services these people will be able to afford (inflation? What dat?) if less work is being done to provide them? Sounds fascinating.
We could start manufacturing those more expensive but better quality goods, which most of people could not afford. There is no problem with manufacturing enough goods. There is problem that many people only have money for the cheapest shit which breaks easily and needs to be replaced soon which costs even more money and destroys environment.
It’s all very well saying “we could just”, but how would you bring about this change? How do you persuade people to want different things and make different choices? That’s the interesting question.
Production is expanding elsewhere in SE Asia but those countries are much smaller and taking time and a lot of capital to ramp up.
Where are all these new workers going to come from, and if they could work productively already why aren’t they?
None of this makes a lick of sense.
Why would they work more productively if that is not needed? They would have to make more things, which people wouldn't buy because there is overproduction. If you have order for 1000 items every week, you make 1000 items every week, even when you could make 5000 items every week. You can slow your production line, this way workers are more relaxed and you have time for maintenance. It's not like every employee out there is used at 100% utilisation, that would not be sustainable. Many times you employ as many people as you can just because it's cheaper than using more automation. If you need to produce more and can't find employes, you can pay them more. If you can't find enough employes at all, that means price per employee is so high that you can now employ some robots. Yeah, it takes time, but global change in time of employment is also not going to happen overnight.
So, we provided more products to people who now have money. And now you are asking "Who will pay". Well, the people who now have the money to pay for it? That was the reason for increased production in the first place?
Or increase taxes on capital and redistribute the gains, rather than relying on wages.
Preschool in my district is 4 days a week, 2.5hrs / day.
That's a JOKE. Meant only for people who don't work.
But they also got another levy on taxes for "technology" and "new buildings".
They don't need more money, they just need to better spend the money they have.
Private daycare costs around $2000/month. That's more than tuition on the university ($1000/month or so).
So I just wish that once kids are in preschool age the preschool offered something reasonable
Also, have i mentioned that public preschool is not free? On top of taxes, we pay $400/month or so for 4 days a week, 2.5hrs/day preschool. It's nuts.
Oh, and they insert a random "teacher development days" where preschool is closed. Can't they do development in summer, when the school is closed anyway?
Being a parent sux.
I don’t even see that much early retirement, instead of getting our mountains of things.
Or is this advice only for the proletariat, who for some reason will behave differently?
Plus, proper retirement saving is hard. Saving 10% in a method that negates inflation only nets you 4.5 years of income at retirement age. You’ll need to drop your living costs by over 3x to live to a median age, unless you don’t retire in the traditional sense.
Ok. How?
Getting "direct cash" that a young family could use for daycare doesn't make any difference if there's nowhere for them to spend it.
Direct cash to households with kids during almost two years of pandemi has lifted many children out of poverty and given parents more freedom and flexibility. Plenty of evidence of this.
When you’re getting direct cash and wages are good and bureaucrats aren’t inflating their way to Power, you can even afford to work less so one of the parents is always around if they want. That’s how it should be and can be and will be.
There’s a bit more to the story than you may think here... you also aren’t allowed to be homeschooled. It’s illegal. They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).
Some people are took that as directed at Muslim community — https://m.timesofindia.com/world/europe/france-passes-anti-r...
Also giving you children to the state to be taught is somewhat disturbing.
EDIT: By deferring to others to teach your children, they won’t learn your culture, traditions and will (statistically) be worse off than if you teach them yourself.
My wife and I settled on making less money (still more than enough), but raising our kids ourselves. It’s hard, but easily the most rewarding thing. Plus our kids are WAY ahead in most areas. Imagine, your children are learning from other children all day at school... is that better than learning from adults all day? No.
When they get older we will probably consider a “pod” or one teacher for 6-8 kids with a family we know. You can pay the teacher far more and the parents can be more involved (we can effectively dictate the curriculum). I’m also planning on having my kids help me with work by 8-10. They can learn to participate and be productive far earlier.
I believe this isn't correct. Homeschooling is legal in France, although restricted. You need to be able to prove your kids are receiving a proper education.
https://www.parentconcept.com/french-home-education-law
> They ban religious practices for minors (wearing hijabs, for instance).
I also think this is incorrect. Religious signs are forbidden in public school for students and teachers alike (as France is a secular country), but there's no law preventing minors practicing religion.
If you call a religiously important piece of clothing a "religious sign" then technically that's true, but not really
secular mean No religion in politics that doesn't mean forcing your views how to wear your clothes on everyone.
This has not been determined. Homeschooling is correlated with better outcomes, but I'm quite certain causality has not been established here.
I also suspect the more a teacher cares the better the scores.
As mentioned, from the evidence, there’s already a solid correlation.
I think with the additional details the causation is likely also there (less students per teacher, highly motivated and engaged teacher). Anyone debating that point IMO is intentionally misleading. There is a clear causation between homeschooling and better outcomes. The only “question” I’ve seen in articles (none in reality) has to do with socioeconomic status. However, if you control for that, you’ll still see better outcomes (aka homeschooled kids in socioeconomic category Y will still out perform public school kids in socioeconomic category Y)
No need to poison the well with unfounded accusations of bad faith.
> There is a clear causation between homeschooling and better outcomes.
As I've said, causality has not been established. Even if we stipulate that smaller class sizes have a causal positive effect, it's nowhere near enough to account for the improvement in scores when home schooling. Selection effects are most likely to dominate, as they do in almost all education research.
https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/the-homeschool-math-gap...
Many Romanians who moved to places like Norway were shocked to see how children are treated there. In Sweden they have banks of the blood of all the babies since 1975 in storage forever ( https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/PKU-registret ). Scary stuff.
> Den enskilde kan begära att begränsa hur provet får användas eller få sitt blodprov kasserat. Kassering innebär enligt biobankslagen att provet kastas eller anonymiseras
> The individual can ask to restrict how the sample may be used or have it discarded. According to the biobank law, discarding a sample involves either destroying or anonymizing it.
I mean, there is no justification. You're actually harming your child. Sure, maybe you're a better maths teacher than the one in the school, but school isn't really about learning such nonsense..
It was normal I think even 200 years ago.
So your argument is, random american parents know more than society in general who define educational standards because... that's how it always was?
LOL. But I mean, yeah. 80% of Americans believe in Angels and 15% of you have passports so why am I even trying.
I completely agree that families should get more support. I’m just not so sure it’s necessarily that straightforward.
Not to sound snide, but I also don't think it's as straightforward as linking two correlative effects. High grades in school is also often predictive of economic background, race, gender etc... that themselves are correlated to birth rates. I don't see here much reason to believe that providing early childhood care would decrease birth rates.
As a new parent of a 14 month year old boy - kindergartens have very low impact on our decision to have more children. We're lucky enough that we can afford to rent an apartment for my in-laws and that they are retired so they can take care of our son. Putting him in to kindergarten at this age would be traumatic to him and to us (parents) - he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel. Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).
The thing that would actually impact our decision to have more children (early-mid 30s) :
- fully paid maternity leave - right now it's 100% for first 6 months and after that it's capped at national average - which is >70% pay cut for both of us
- despite both of us earning significantly above average - there's 0 decent opportunities to buy a family home right now - everything that's worth something is long gone off the market, and if something comes up people with cash to buy upfront show up faster than you can dial the ad
The rest is outside of governments control, biggest thing being wife has to give up career for a non-trivial ammount of time (even if I took out some maternity leave realistically she has to take at least 6 months off).
I suspect that retirement age plays a non-trivial part in this as well - having retired parents to fall back on as support when having multiple children while having active careers is very valuable.
So you agree that having someone extra to watch over your kids is something that's needed? For most people, that is kindergarten.
>he's only starting to figure things out and abandoning him to a stranger who have to split their time/attention between 10 other children at this stage seems cruel.
Almost every kid does this. I have, so have all other kids. It's really not that bad, your kid needs to learn to socialize eventually. It's a bit insulting to call it 'cruel' to bring your kid to kindergarten.
>Not to mention kindergartens are disease incubators and we would probably spend first few months getting him adjusted and treating him at home while he's sick (+ catching stuff from him).
Yes, that's how the human immune system is supposed to work.
If you decide to have children, care for them.
I hate this "the society as a whole has to care for the children" attitude and putting them in someone else's care as soon as possible.
Note that I do not hate children, nor parents and I don't mind spending money on education and care for children.
I just think the solution should be to work less and be able to live a meaningful life.
Later in life, children should care for their elderly parents.
This system is far superior to the "go die in a house full of old people" approach.
Mind again: I am not talking about taking care of someone with special needs like Alzheimer's etc.
How is compulsory use easier access?
If the government mandates kindergarten attendance, well, now it's much more important to put funding for kindergartens in your next bill.
If every parent of a three-year-old has to think about finding a kindergarten, that's a lot more political clout behind getting better kindergartens.
And so on and so forth.
I have no numbers but as a French, I know literally nobody who have not been to school/kindergarten at 3.
Starting school at 3, while not mandatory before the law, was just the norm for barely everyone.
I’d even go as far as parental leave should be completely covered until there is government provided daycare, so as the decision to have kids doesn’t carry too much of an economic burden.
It is interesting to watch parents burn out and get divorced so their children can have a better life than the one social pressures dictate.
If you want more of something, subsidize it, either explicitly or by reducing its relative costs. Here's an off the cuff list of suggestions which would reduce the cost of children:
* Accessible free or low cost daycare/childcare
* Accessible low cost health care
* Cheaper housing near job centers
I'm sure there are more.
But how are we going to pay for all that? Consider it an investment allowing a country to continue to have a growing tax base.
It may have the opposite effect and then we'll come up with a different verbal logic to justify why it decreased the birth rate.
Verbal logic was given to justify the war against poverty in the sixties and sixty years and trillions of dollars later USA has a higher poverty rate than then. I'm not saying it was a bad idea, just that forecasters were wrong en masse.
So this may work or not, but honestly nobody knows, and those giving verbal logic for why it will succeed are purely speculating.
I agree education of a child is very important. Not necessarily public education, although that can be quite good in some respects.
But if a government wants to make it easier to have children wouldn't it make more sense to come up with policies that allow a couple to afford to raise children on a single income? That way, one parent is always able to spend time with the children when needed.
Life itself is pretty hard for most people, most just don't accept truth and make up a reason to cope. Copium. It's heartbreaking seeing children fleeing their home, losing everyone they know like in Syrian and now Ukraine just in last decade.
Then there is climate change, which will be devastating in near future. Even IPCC report is manipulated by lobbying.
https://twitter.com/MrMatthewTodd/status/1490987272044703752
You turned my quote in "I'm having kids because of Idiocracy"
You are using Reductio Ad Absurdum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
He and the brave employees of Space X will guide life to the stars.
He didn't do that.
Governments should help families by providing easier access to daycares and kindergartens. Helping young parents get some rest with their first child(ren) will encourage them having more children.
I'm a parent of two young children, a 3 years old and a 6 months old. This is the hardest period of my life since high school. I'm 34 and in our circles I'm the youngest dad. Most of other dads' are in their late 30s all the way to early 50s.
Yet I do feel I'm making a difference, especially considering that I'm Italian (high longevity + few children). I've been also inspired by my choices of parenthood by the movie IDIOCRACY:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk I was delighted when I red in the Elon Musk biography that he had also saw the movie and that was also one of the reasons for being a parent of multiple kids.