Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Child Care

  • Dutch Child Care Would Pay Price for Government’s Failure

    Amsterdam Netherlands daycare center
    Daycare center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Klein & Co)

    Dutch child-care providers would pay the price for the government’s failed child-care policy.

    The last Dutch government resigned over a scandal in child-care benefits. Thousands of parents were wrongly accused of fraud.

    The current government, a coalition of the same four parties (including my own), would replace the benefits to parents with subsidies to child-care providers. Child care would be almost entirely subsidized with parents paying just 4 percent of the costs.

    Industry groups expect an increase in demand while the sector is already understaffed.

    Experts fear a loss in competition and innovation. All but the most expensive child-care providers would be forced to standardize their programs and their rates in order to qualify for subsidies. (more…)

  • Overregulation Makes Child Care More Expensive in DC

    Washington DC
    View of Washington DC with the United States Capitol in the distance, February 17, 2015 (Matt Popovich)

    Child-care workers without a college education will have to give up their profession in Washington DC.

    Regulations that were meant to go into effect in 2020, applying to all daycare centers and some home-based child-care businesses, were challenged by two child-care workers and a parent, but a federal court ruled for the district this week. Reason has the story.

    The two workers, Altagracia Sanchez and Dale Sorcher, have 49 years of child-care experience between them. Both have Bachelor’s degrees — but not in early-childhood education, making them ineligible under DC’s new rules. (more…)

  • Why Congress Let Biden’s Child Benefits Lapse

    Washington DC
    Skyline of Washington DC with the United States Capitol in the distance, September 28, 2017 (Ted Eytan)

    A year ago, I wrote that the child benefits Joe Biden snuck into his $1.9 trillion coronavirus recovery program might outlive the pandemic. Once American parents had accustomed to receiving monthly cheques of $250 or $300 per child, I figured it would be hard for Congress to let the program lapse.

    But that’s what they did. (more…)

  • Democrats Would Make American Child Care More Expensive

    Joe Biden
    American president Joe Biden walks down the colonnade of the White House in Washington DC, August 20 (White House/Erin Scott)

    Over the summer, I wrote here that President Joe Biden’s child benefits — $300 per month for children under the age of 6 and $250 for kids up to the age of 17 — help American parents pay for child care, but don’t make child care less expensive.

    Now Democrats propose to make it more expensive. (more…)

  • Biden’s Child Benefits Don’t Make Child Care Cheaper

    Joe Biden
    American president Joe Biden meets with staff in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington DC, June 2 (White House/Adam Schultz)

    Last week, American parents received their first monthly child benefits worth $300 for children under the age of 6 and $250 for kids up to the age of 17.

    Couples making under $250,000 per year, or single parents earning less than $112,500, qualify.

    President Joe Biden described the cheques, worth $15 billion, as “the largest ever one-year decrease in child poverty in the history of the United States of America.”

    That’s probably true, and the hope is that the benefits, introduced as part a COVID-19 rescue plan, will become permanent.

    But they don’t lower the price of child care. (more…)

  • Child Benefits Could Outlive Biden’s COVID-19 Stimulus

    Joe Biden
    Former American vice president Joe Biden campaigns in Des Moines, Iowa, August 8, 2019 (Gage Skidmore)

    The United States Senate has approved President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus recovery plan, more than twice the size of Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus.

    With the exception of a $15 hourly minimum wage, the soon-to-be-law includes nearly all the provisions Biden had called for, including additional spending on health care, extended unemployment insurance (if cut by $100 per week from the original version) and rental assistance. For detail, check out my post about the bill from January.

    The part I want to focus on here is a child allowance that ranges from $250 to $300 per month per child. (more…)

  • Dutch Government Falls Over Child Benefits Scandal

    Mark Rutte
    Prime Minister Mark Rutte answers questions from Dutch lawmakers in The Hague, September 17, 2020 (Tweede Kamer)

    Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte has tendered his government’s resignation to King Willem-Alexander.

    With only two months to go before elections, and the government remaining in a caretaker capacity to manage the coronavirus crisis, the resignation is largely symbolic.

    But smaller parties in Rutte’s coalition felt they had to take responsibility for what an inquiry described as an “unprecedented injustice” in the tax service, which wrongly accused more than 20,000 families of fraud.

    Lodewijk Asscher, who was the responsible minister in charge of social affairs in the last government, stepped down as leader of the now-opposition Labor Party on Thursday. (more…)

  • The American Dream Could Use Some European Inspiration

    Copenhagen Denmark
    Cyclists in Copenhagen, Denmark (iStock/Leo Patrizi)

    One can tell two very different stories about the American economy.

    In one, growth is robust, unemployment is at its lowest in half a century and the stock market is booming. This is the story President Donald Trump likes to tell.

    In the other, two in five Americans would struggle (PDF) to come up with $400 in an emergency. One in three households are classified as “financially fragile“. Annie Lowrey writes in The Atlantic that American families are being “bled dry by landlords, hospital administrators, university bursars and child-care centers.” This is the story Bernie Sanders and the Democrats tell: for millions of Americans on seemingly decent middle incomes, life has become too hard.

    Sanders’ solution is to bring “democratic socialism” to America. He cites European countries like Denmark and Sweden as inspiration. They’re not bad places to imitate — but they have actually moved away from socialism and toward a mix of free markets and the welfare state. It is why they rank among the freest and most competitive (PDF) economies in the world.

    Americans can learn from the Scandinavian experience, if they get the balance right. (more…)