Other people become stay-at-home parents because their partner earns a six-figure salary, they've decided to have 4-6 kids which they can afford, and with that many kids a stay-at-home parent just makes economic sense for a few years. Their household income is substantially above the national median, despite being a single-earner household. Their children do not grow up in poverty - in fact quite the opposite.
Guess which type of person the average HN reader meets more often?
If people don't raise people, there soon won't be people to economy. You have to invest in people (education, welfare, etc.) before they invest into the economy. These black-and-white deductions only make sense for spherical cows in void.
> On the subject of policy, things like the expanded child tax credit and school lunches pay the government back incredibly well, so support for stuff like that isn't just helping your neighbor, it's helping yourself, too.
And that comment is downvoted because rich people (even on HN) don't want to support free lunches for kids.
on edit: looks like I'm getting downvoted now! How exciting!!
Well, the comment in question uses a lot of conservative tropes: a) ppl not earning = on welfare b) victim blaming c) GDP uber alles
> It's almost impossible for children who grow up in this situation to escape it themselves.
Understanding that people cannot escape poverty by 'themselves'
>On the subject of policy, things like the expanded child tax credit and school lunches pay the government back incredibly well, so support for stuff like that isn't just helping your neighbor, it's helping yourself, too.
seem to support paying more taxes to help less fortunate people.
These things taken together makes me think the parts that sound uncaring are maybe just poorly phrased.
> a) ppl not earning = on welfare
"probably on welfare" is what they say, which if you "can't afford child care" it might be that you need some government assistance of some sort when one of the partners drops out of the workforce to take care of the children.
This is of course different than "the benefit of the partner working in comparison to paying for child care is negligible", which would be another reason for one to drop out and take care of the children.
For some reason everybody came with the example of "the benefit of the partner working in comparison is negligible" examples in contrast to "can't afford child care", which would be understandable if they said well there's another reason than just not being able to afford why people drop - but they didn't make that comment.
So for these various reasons I think the comment was reasonable compassionate but did have a GDP viewpoint on why the system should be changed to allow people to continue working and afford childcare.
Just had to clarify what should be a simple concept, but sometimes I worry.
on edit: this is essentially the point michealt made earlier https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38111884 but they made it evidently as a reason why the original comment should be downvoted.
All the talk about "we need more kids" is completely moot, if you want people to have kids, give them a reason not to fear it. I am thankfully in a position where a phone call from the school means I'll work the rest of the day from home. My neighbor has limited options because she can't afford to work and childcare while her husband is at work. So her only options are: Don't work, work such that she never shares any off time with her husband, and thus is effectively living alone and basically that's it. And her job prospects aren't such that most jobs will cover daycare + more. In fact most jobs will barely pay above the cost of daycare.
They are not solving the problem, they are just pushing the problem onto people who's future will be destroyed. And it is causing many secondary catastrophes in our economy. And this article points out exactly one such. Healthcare is another. And food security is a third. There are others.
So perhaps resting our a bulk of taxation on income tax may not be a sustainable model. Especially when the corporate and high income wealth is so tax preferred (or evading taxes).
Refactoring our tax system to a less extraction model may be the better approach. Wealth taxes, financial transaction taxes, more effective property taxes (ie, land value tax) could result in a more livable country for the vast majority of people (numbers will go down a bit for the billionaires).
On the subject of policy, things like the expanded child tax credit and school lunches pay the government back incredibly well, so support for stuff like that isn't just helping your neighbor, it's helping yourself, too.