because it's assuming that a family that can't afford child care is on welfare.

Some people become stay-at-home parents because they can't afford childcare, have to get welfare, maybe can't make rent, and maybe their children grow up in poverty.

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 the economy wanted to extract anything from these people, it would make sure they were working.

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.

Because rich idiots don't want to feed poor kids.

Did you even read the comment you are replying to?

> 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.

I replied to: > Why is this downvoted?

And that comment is downvoted because rich people (even on HN) don't want to support free lunches for kids.

it looks like some people have interpreted it as being written from a conservative point of view blaming the poor for their own problems, and definitely some phrasing suggests this but there is other phrasing that suggests otherwise so I would say it is probably downvoted because people have decided to take the least forgiving interpretation of the comment.

on edit: looks like I'm getting downvoted now! How exciting!!

> some people have interpreted it as being written from a conservative point of view

Well, the comment in question uses a lot of conservative tropes: a) ppl not earning = on welfare b) victim blaming c) GDP uber alles

things that are not particular conservative tropes.

> 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.

to clarify "the benefit of the partner working is negligible" this of course hits those cases in which one partner basically earns for a full time employment something close to what child care costs anyway. They CAN afford child care but child care is NOT WORTH IT.

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.