I’m asking that question over at PollieGraph, riffing off Paul Keating’s comments yesterday, and examining the choices Labor has made on childcare policy. The other question I want to pose is when did Labor forget “Social Democracy 101″?
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I think one of the questions on the Citizenship test should be:
Q. What was the Harvester judgement, who handed it down and when?
On the specific issue of childcare, it’s also the case that a failure to critique the commodification of childcare from the left creates a space big enough to drive a bus through which is all too often filled by family values conservatives who seize on the ills of profit-driven childcare as a stick with which to beat working mothers.
OTOH, some feminists critics point out that the institutional treadmill for many children, which starts within the first months of life, can have negative consequences, particularly for children under the age of two left in centres with poorly qualified, insufficent numbers of staff and characterised by sub-standard conditions – all of which a market-based system requires in order to continue increasing profits.
jinmaro,
Statements like “…all of which a market-based system requires in order to continue increasing profits” disclose such a bare-faced ignorance of markets that it really beggars belief.
Those sorts of conditions are much more likely to occur under State-directed systems where the money does not follow consumer demand than under any free market system, where businesses can (and should) fail if they do not attract customers.
“the profit motive places a disincentive in terms of price for providers to treat childcare as more of an educative function and to properly skill workers and equip centres.”
This is precisely what my partner and others like her have been arguing for quite a while now. I’m very pleased to see these issues being raised here. Assuming that 0-5 years is a critical period in terms of development, it may turn out to have been a huge mistake to let this pan out as it has.
Have a think for a while about how the childcare market actually operates, Andrew. You’ve got demand exceeding supply, and one cashed up player taking over smaller centres, with seemingly little interest in meeting the demand because it enables them to continue to make large profits as well as taking advantage of government subsidies to individuals to bid up its prices.
Exactly, Mark, it is about the way in which the market/government nexus is operating in this particular context to produce poor outcomes, and not about those larger and more abstract questions.
Agreed, Klaus, but it also points to the fact that abstract theory about the efficiency and operation of markets often has only a tendentious relationship with what goes on in real markets!
Mark, large profits encourage new entrants and as a result markets tend to meet demand better than governments. Of course, you are right that demand is currently outstripping supply, and we are seeing prices rise as a result. In this context, there may be a role for government in terms of expanding the supply side (which seems to be the focus of the ALP’s childcare policies).
Speaking more generally, markets are not magical systems that effortlessly deliver the best of everything to everyone at all times, but they simply do not function in the way that jinmaro apparently believes they function. The profit motive creates an incentive to reduce costs, but not so much that the good or service the subject of the transaction falls below the standard demanded by the consumer. And of course, to protect very vulnerable consumers, there may be a role for government to mandate minimum standards and provide state subsidies as compensation.
Cheers
BBB
It also signals a false (or at least misleading) dichotomy between state-directed and free market systems, which is especially irrelevant to discussing this situation, because it is already about the imbrication of private and government agents in a single system.
That’s right Mark & Klaus, which is why not-for-profit childcare can also be abysmal, quality-wise.
And Andrew, ever ridden in a private bus and compared it to a public bus? The private buses I’ve had the misfortune to use are of vastly inferior quality, people get bounced around in them dreadfully (wha, poor pensioners and the elderly go flying, they’re much more expensive than private buses and they’re driven (in my admittedly limited experience. almost universally by sociopaths). But they exist on routes not covered by public transport and so people have no choice but to use them.
BBB, jinmaro is broadly correct about this situation, and this is in line with Mark’s argument in the linked piece at New Matilda. What is the service being provided exactly? Are the parents or the children the consumers? These are important questions and do not have straightforward answers as they might in other industries. The drift is away from the treatment of childcare as an educative function, as Mark suggests. Parents may be complicit in this because their primary concern is care, not quality care or education. While demand for care and supervision will be met by the current market based arrangements, the quality of that care is profoundly important as well in terms of development as people, which is what the research that jinmaro alludes to suggests.
BBB, perhaps you’d care to explain why child care suppliers then have consistently under-invested both in the skills of their employees and in the facilities provided. Customers have little option when services are provided in a fixed geographical location which corresponds to their need and there is no competition available in that area (and usually long “waiting lists” for available places). It defeats the point of childcare, after all, if you have to drive across town to access the services of a “competitor”.
Crossed with Klaus, but I agree with his points.
Klaus K, the parents are the consumers. The notion that parents’ primary concern is not ‘quality’ care is absurd on its face. In any case, if parents value ‘care’ above ‘education’, then that is what childcare services should reflect. Parents cannot be ‘complicit’ in their own value judgments about the form of a service being delivered to them for the benefit of their own children.
Now I totally agree that the quality of childcare is of paramount importantance. Happily, this is precisely the attitude of Australian parents. No doubt this is why Australian parents seem to have no problem with state and federal governments overseeing quality standards in state-subsidised childcare centres.
BBB
andrew,
it’s your argument that flies in the face of surveys which show that children in corporate childcare are getting poorer outcomes than those children who are lucky enough to find places in community based and council run centres, where surpluses are used to pay for higher staff ratios, better qualified staff, better programming, better quality food, rather than these surpluses flowing into the pockets of shareholders.
in a survey of childcare workers – 1 in 5 of those employed in corporate centres would not even send their own children to these places!!
this government’s policy on childcare, at the very time this country desperately needed to expand this now essential service, was to subsidise parent’s fees – that’s it.
there was NO capital investment, there was NO money for local councils to build new centres – nothing!
that one private operator saw this opportunity, and starting buying up community based centres and small owner-operator centres, and using generous govt. subsidies to run down costs in their own centres, and going to market (promising to continue the same policy) – and has since expanded their share in this sector, which had limited supply and incredible demand – is a story, which in any civilised society, would be viewed with the scorn, it deserves.
that all taypayers are now forking out hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidise the profits of ABC Learning shareholders, rather than paying for training, higher wages, higher staff ratios is a national disgrace.
directors and shareholders of corporate childcare companies are short-changing the babies and children of this country with second rate services, and are right up there with James Hardie directors and shareholders as far as i’m concerned.
government regulations – quote that to the babies who are waiting to have their nappies changed & fed, put back to sleep – in a 5:1 babies room, with a 19 year old unqualified casual carer on an AWA, whose supposed to clean the centre, after her shift.
BBB, parents negotiate a hierarchy of needs for both themselves and their children. The imperative to work, and simultaneously for their children to be safe and secure, means that care and supervision tend to be prioritised over quality care and education. The way in which the system operates means that parents are often forced to accept this hierarchy, and become complicit in undermining the developmental needs of their children. This may be absurd, but it is the way in which the system currently operates.
actually, these buses double in the am and pm as school buses which is perhaps why they are fitted out with plastic and other lightweight materials. Are they also less safe than “normal” buses designed to more comfortably transport adults? And parents are entrusting children to these inferior forms of transport?
btw, the private bus company in Sydney I used to use to get to work, (before I got my motor scooter – never had a car licence) was constantly been complained about by passengers, according to the local press, and one driver recently ended up killing an elderly woman as she was trying to alight from the bus and another one killed another car driver after plowing through a red light.
These drivers were not well paid, probably less than public sector drivers, and they were angry people, man. People used to complain too that they would speed up when they saw them waiting at bus stops and refused to stop when passengers wanted to alight. Even happened to me a coupla times. Bastards! Many of these drivers just didn’t like passengers, it seems!
Mark, to respond to your last comment: a close reading of my comments here ought to lead you to draw the conclusion that we are in furious agreement about the role of government in areas experiencing unmet demand.
BBB
Apologies if I was reading on the run, BBB.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/editorial/reality-and-expectations-in-child-care/2006/04/02/1143916405170.html
If Krudd was serious about an “Education Revolution” he’d be doing something about turning childcare from barren recepticles into which children are placed out of sight and mind during work-hours into a place where they are actually learning during their peak period of neurological growth.
It is a shocking indictment of our society that childcare workers require the same qualifications and recieve the same minimum-wage pay as telemarketers, wait-staff and supermarket shelf-stackers. Is this all our children are worth?
Too right, yeti. And the logic of the market dictates the prioritisation of employers’ needs over quality childcare, good education and the needs of parents and children – as citizens, workers and dependents. A shorter working week with no loss of pay and extensive paid parental leave for the early years of a child’s life are not even considered as serious policy options today. Why?
How can children be properly cared for – at any age – if their parents are constantly exhausted, stressed as a result of either working ever longer hours, or being unemployed, or subjected to insecure, casualised employment and other negative neo-liberal policies? So long as social policy making remains fragmented and disjointed and labour market and public services issues are not also simultaneously addressed, any reforms will be piecemeal at best, wasted at worst. Nor will they provide real choice.
There is a lot of ignorance about economics being displayed on this thread.
Mark, if there is excess demand for child care places, why is it that the existing centres aren’t raising their prices further or new entrants coming into the market or a combination of both? If existing facilities are substandard, why isn’t someone offering higher quality service and charging a higher price if necessary to do so? Maybe people aren’t willing to pay any more for child care, in which case it is the consumers fault if there are substandard conditions and not enough places. Maybe there are restrictions on who can set up and run a child care centre, in which case it is the governmentss fault.
Jinmaro, who exactly is going to pay for the reduction in work hours and increase in paid leave entitlements if wages are to stay the same?
Interesting, Damien.
People versed in the theory of markets may continue to treat childcare centres as a market that could easily be entered, but they might like to pause to consider the way that existing regulations work to protect the market share of those who currently have power within the market. And they have been raising their prices further!
With respect, I’d suggest you talk to some parents who access the services or look at the existing studies into childcare provision rather than damn others for “ignorance” because the real world market doesn’t fit the prescriptions of economic theory.
Mark, I also suggested restrictions on entry into child care markets as a possible explanation in my previous comment.
My comment has nothing to do with differences between real world markets and the predictions of economic theory, although I wonder which predictions people mean when they make this claim. There is plenty of economic theory that relates to market failures and the like. Furthermore, it seems to me to be a perfectly sensible question to ask what it is that causes the apparently substandard outcomes in existing child care markets. I have not studied child care markets and I do not have children, so I do not know much about these outcomes. Does this mean that I should not pose questions on a blog thread about this topic? Does one need to be an expert to do so?
As an side, can I just note that when I use the term “fault” in my eatlier post, I was not making a moral statement. I recognise that some parents may not be able to afford quality child care for their children and I do think this is a serious problem. In the same way that an inability to afford proper food, housing, education and health care is a problem. These issues are distributional ones and I am more than happy to support redistributrional policies to deal with them.
Mark, when I say I wonder what “people” mean when they make a claim about differences in economic theory and the real world, the use of “people” in plural is probably inaccurate, since I think it is only you that has raised the point. I am guessing that you are referring to the first fundamental theorem of welfare economics, which is the formalisation of Adam Smih’s concept of the “invisible hand”. This theorem provides a useful benchmark result, but there are circumstances, even in theoretical models, in which it does not hold. As such, I think that the criticism of economic theory is unfounded.
Damien, of course you’re entitled to raise questions, and you don’t need to be an expert to do so. I, and others on this thread, have outlined some of the huge problems with the childcare market. What I’m questioning is your willingness to make statements about how those markets do or should operate based purely on a theoretical premise.
Mark, I think a little bit of theory is quite useful. Especially when it is used as a framework for posing pertinant questions. Such as, if the child care market is not working, why might that be the case?
In any event, with the possible exception of developing a set of stylised facts that need explaining, theory-free empirical work in the social sciences is, for the most part, nonsense. The identification problem is an example of why you usually need theory in conjuction with statistical techniques when conducting empirical work. The Lucas critique is an example of what can potentially go wrong if you try to exploit an apparent statiscal relationship without paying attention to the processes that generate that relationship.
On top of that, you suggested that the cause of the problems might be regulations that restricted entry into the childcare industry, which is one of the possibilities I had already suggested. Apparently theory can be useful after all!!!
The current Federal arrangement for Long Day Care has always been about working parents. The current quality control system was brought in when commercial operators entered the system. Brough is now changing [Dumbing down] the quality control system and is vehemently sprouting the view that commercial centres are just as good as community based – Not what I have experienced myself in the mid-90′s or recently heard from many, many sources close to the ground – Not that all CB centres are fantastic either.
Long Day Care is useful, but should not be used for child warehousing by parents or for profit by commercial interests.
The battle lines are drawn in the upcoming review of the NSW children’s services regulation: Staff:child ratios for the under threes [1:5 or 1:4?] and the need for university qualified teachers [Or not]. I’ve supressed the thought that the commercials will lobby for self-regulation. But then again, the NSW Labor Government ….
Yes, sure, Damien, but I think my query is whether you weren’t jumping to conclusions based on theory in the face of empirical fact.
Also, I suggested that barriers to entry were one cause of the problems, not the sole cause.
Came across the savings ratio from the ABS which went negative in 2002 and has been negative ever since.
Damien, if we recognise the impact of poor preschool care and child development on teenage and adult life. And if we say there is social responsibility for providing good care for our children, the foundation of our future, then we must look at the ways in which that can be achieved, equitably. That is, if we aim to be a civilised society and a civilised people.
On the question of who will pay for policies such as the ones I mentioned well, I could be flip and say the same people who paid for our part of the invasion of Iraq its ongoing occupation and the WOT here at home.
But that is not the whole answer either, of course, because in fact the public purse desperately needs topping up with progressive, fairer, taxation, investment, fiscal and monetary policies, far greater restrictions on the massive waste of resources, e.g. in the pretty much useless and parasitic advertising industry and an rejigging of democracy itself which allows people to answer such questions as “should public transport be free”, should I be given a real choice between working fulltime when my child is under 4-5, or should the state, supported by the private sector develop supportive policies that enable me to receive a living income and care for my child myself during these crucial, precious, irreplaceable years.
If such questions and issues cannot and are not been widely debated now, in a pre-election period, then why not? And when will they ever be debated?
Ever so well said, jinmaro. I fear for a future of badly adjusted adults whose carer was thrust into the workforce as cheap labour because of new government ‘welfare to work’ provisions.
They are prepared to bully other people into placing their kids in sub standard childcare, to pull coffee for the lady of the manor, who is left to her own choice about parenting arrangements.
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=145&ContentID=29695
Let me get this straight, Jinmaro. You are saying that other people should pay for a family’s childcare in the form of higher (than otherwise necessary) taxes, higher (than otherwise necessary) prices of consumer goods, lower (than otherwise necessary) share prices and lower (than otherwise necessary) dividends? Despite the fact that these other people did not get any say in the familiy’s decision to have a child?
Would you be against “other people” paying for children’s education “in the form of higher (than otherwise necessary) taxes”, Damien?
I would not be against some level of subsidy. Both on the grounds that I think every child should have access to a sound education for equity purposes and because I think that primary and secondary education is much more likely to yield benefits to society as a whole, as opposed to individuals alone, than is child care. Child care, on the other hand, yields predominantly private benefits. As such, its cost should be borne entirely by the parents.
No, quality child care yields social benefits because it means that children’s development is being addressed at the most critical age range by those who are well informed and experienced. Primary and secondary education address children who are already substantially formed as people in terms of temperament and the desire to participate and learn.
Does that mean that mothers or fathers who stay home and mind their children until they are of primary school age are being socially irresponsible if they do not possess qualifications in early childhood education?
What Klaus said. There’s also the benefit of enabling female workforce participation which is clearly crucial to the economy as well as the developmental benefits to the children themselves.
So let me get this straight, Kim. You are saying that a mother who works in paid employment is being productive while a mother who looks after her children is not being productive? That is an absolute load of nonsense. If the parents can not earn enough from their two salaries to pay for child care, then it would be better if they worked less between the two of them and minded their own children.
As for your second point, see my previous comment.
That sounds mightily like a value judgement rather than an economic judgement, Damien – “it would be better”… You haven’t noticed that Australia has labour supply problems and that policy has been concerned to encourage the greatest possible labour market participation in order to overcome capacity constraints?
This is a difficult question. While I wouldn’t be arguing that it is socially irresponsible to take on a role of stay-at-home-parent – especially given the benefits of low child to carer ratios – I do think that for most parents there are real benefits to contact with quality care and with professionals. This does not reflect poorly on parents so much as on the fragmentation of other joint care arrangements, with extended family for example, that still take priority in many places in the world. It is simply the case that these traditional support systems don’t exist for most people in Australia, and quality care can fill this vacuum in knowledge and support.
The economic context that Kim outlines is probably more fundamental to any attempt to address these questions.
Kim, I am not sure how you can have a judgement about what improves an economy (presumably you mean society?) that does not involve a value judgement. But the logic is straightforward. From the parents point of view, the benefit of both parents working is equal to the additional salary they recieve in return for working. The cost is the childcare they now have to purchase. If, in the absence of a subsidy, that cost exceeds the benefit, they would be better off minding their own children. Of course, from societies point of view, there is an added complication. There may be producer surplus attached to the additional job. There may be consumer surplus attached to childcare. There may be producer and consumer surplus attached to minding your own children. There is likely to be a deadweight loss associated with the government raising revenue to fund child care subsidies. It is far from clear that child care subsidies will result in an improvement in social welfare.
As for your comment about capacity constraints and the like, I ask again: Are you saying that a mother who is in the workforce is productive but a mother who minds her own children is not productive?
As an aside, it would be better if, in my previous comment, I had said: There may be consumer and producer surplus associated with the job and paid childcare. There may be producer and consumer surplus associated with minding your own children. There may be a deadweight loss associated with raising revenue to fund a child care subsidy.
Of course I’m not, Damien. But it’s a silly question.
Society would cease to function tomorrow if, by some miracle, it no longer was able to rely on the unpaid labour of women (and to a lesser extent) men within the privatised individual household or family unit.
In relating to the caring and rearing of children, at whatever age, this unpaid labour and the associated enormous and largely privately borne financial outlays, over many years, represents an essential part of the social reproduction of labour which the economy, and society as a whole, relies on in a myriad of ways. Without adequate state subsidy of quality childcare, social inequality is deepened and exacerbated as is the economic and social inequality of women.
If there were no such thing as society, only individuals, then your argument about childcare reaping predominantly private benefits might be true, Damien. But that was always a ridiculous argument and doesn’t bear the least bit of reality testing.
How is it a silly question, Kim? It was prompted by one of your previous comments. In that comment you said:
“There’s also the benefit of enabling female workforce participation which is clearly crucial to the economy as well as the developmental benefits to the children themselves.”
This suggests that you might think that women working is crucial to economy but women minding children is not.
You reiterated this point in a subsequent comment. In that comment said:
“You haven’t noticed that Australia has labour supply problems and that policy has been concerned to encourage the greatest possible labour market participation in order to overcome capacity constraints?”
Now, given that some people seem to think there is a shortage of affordable childcare, it seems to me that women who mind their own children may well be relieving a capacity contraint in the economy. But your comments suggest that you might not agree with this.
No I don’t, Damien. I agree with jinmaro that women’s unpaid labour underpins the economy. But obviously there’s a difference between the sort of productivity that comes from working in the formal economy and unpaid caring.
Huh! Only if you presume that it’s better that women with children don’t work!
Jinmaro, where have I said there is no such thing as society? In fact, I explicitly recognised the existence of society when I mentioned that I believe there are significant external benefits to primary and secondary education. This is probably also rue of pre-school education.
That should be: This is probably also true of pre-school education.
Lets see. There is a shortage of child care facilities even though some mothers choose to stay at home. Suppose that the excess demand for childcare is XDZERO when YZERO mothers stay at home and mind their children. Suppose instead that these YZERO mothers choose to work. They will need to put their children in childcare. Since there is already excess demand, we know that something is preventing the price from rising to clear the market. In other words, there is effectively a price ceiling in place. Thus the ne excess demand will be at least XDZERO plus YZERO. If somne of the YZERO mothers have more than one child it will be even larger. It seems to me that by choosing to stay at home and mind their own children these mothers are relieving a child care capacity constraint.
Note that I have addressed your rather rude comment ( that said: “Huh! Only if you presume that it’s better that women don’t work!”) in a reasonable fashion.
It was more exasperated than rude.
But maybe you could do some reading about the actual childcare situation rather than dazzling us all with equations.
Kim says: “But obviously there’s a difference between the sort of productivity that comes from working in the formal economy and unpaid caring.”
Is there a difference between a mother minding her own children or hiring a nanny to do so? Possibly. But that difference might sometimes involve the mother providing a higher quality care than the nanny. The same situation is probably true of formal child care. Sometimes the mother would provide higher quality care. Sometimes she might not. The only other difference is that if the mother minds the chikldren, it does not appear in GDP, but if she hires someone to do it (either a nanny or a child care centre), it does. This is an essentially meaningless difference. After all, GDP is not a welfare measure.
There is also the issue of women choosing to maintain a level of independent financial security through keeping their workplace skills current rather than dropping off the workforce during their childcare years. If they leave the workforce entirely they become financially dependent upon their partner, which although it is the traditional pattern is often a detrimental choice in the long term if the relationship fails and the woman has to then rejoin the workplace with only outdated skills to offer.
Women working, even if it all goes on paying for childcare, is a rational and prudent choice in maintaining a stake in financial autonomy.
I agree that that may sometimes be the case Tigtog. But that is a private benefit from childcare, not a social benefit. As such, it is an argument for the parents paying for childcare rather than third parties subsidising it.
That should be: But that is a private benefit from childcare, not an external benefit. The social benefit is the sum of the private benefits and the external benefits.
I don’t get that you don’t get that having more people in the workforce provides a public benefit, Damien. I’m genuinely puzzled. I agree with Klaus’ point as well, and there’d be a good case that there are economic benefits to be gained from early childhood development.
I’m with Kim: how is having more people in the workforce not an external benefit of affordable and accessible childcare subsidised by the State?
In the cases of separated/divorced stay-at-home-parents, they are more likely to end up needing to access welfare payments than are separated/divorced working parents, so there is an external benefit there as well.
“they are more likely to end up needing to access welfare payments than are separated/divorced working parents, so there is an external benefit there as well.”
Tigtog, you sound a tad judgemental there. As if “welfare”, should be a last resort. Remember, that some lucky campers have income in the form of dividends from share ownership , for instance. You do not hear too much stuff about these parties gaining from environmental destruction at everybody elses expense, do you?
You say ….”Women working, even if it all goes on paying for childcare, is a rational and prudent choice in maintaining a stake in financial autonomy.” I would have agreed more if you had of added… “if that is that is what they choose”.
Choice is being lost under the new ‘welfare to work provisions’, for single mothers. Some women without flash jobs and good pay may prefer to stay at home and look after their kids rather than have some dubious company do the job for them. Welfare is no disgrace and for some a social wage.
hear, hear, Joe2, we’ve heard this condescending anti-welfarre middle class shite before here from women commenters. It stinks. A fundamental issue here is genuine choice. A woman’s right to choose.
There is already free 9:00-3:00 childcare in Australia – it is called “school” (including pre-school).
Problem is it isn’t available until the kid is already around 4 or 5 years old.
We all accept that every child in Australia has a right to a free primary and seconday school education and a heavily subsidized tertiary education (of which the part that is not subsidized is loaned at zero interest subject to repayment only at a certain level of income).
Even Damien Eldridge is not proposing that State schools be scrapped, even though state schools demand that other people should pay for a family’s education in the form of higher (than otherwise necessary) taxes, higher (than otherwise necessary) prices of consumer goods, lower (than otherwise necessary) share prices and lower (than otherwise necessary) dividends. Despite the fact that these other people did not get any say in the familiy’s decision to have a child.
Is it really so radical to propose that instead of this essential public service becoming available at the age of 4 or 5 that it becomes available a few years earlier? A kid is ready to start learning around the age of one. By the time kids reach the age of five, there is already a huge gap between those whose parents have been willing and able to teach them the basics and those whose parents haven’t – and this gap usually only widens after school begins.
Imagine the difference between a Grade One student whose mum/dad had stayed at home teaching them to read and spell and do math since they were a toddler verses a kid whose parents had dumped them in an understaffed childcare centre without anybody teaching them anything. The difference is effectively several years of primary school learning.
If kindy/pre-school was available from the age of one, when children are at the most critical stage of their neurological development, it would have an enormously positive effect on the outcome of the entirety of their education, indeed their whole lives, and thereby on the health of their society. What’s more, it would go a good way toward meeting the promise of gender equality, by removing the financial and career punishment that women usually face by having a child.
joe2 and jinmaro, I was arguing with Damien strictly in terms of economic external benefits to a society accruing from subsidising child care rather than just private benefits. In purely economic terms, women on welfare are not a social benefit.
That has nothing at all to do with what is beneficial for individuals in terms of balancing family life with whether to be in the workforce or on welfare, a decision which most people make without reference to what is good for the corporatised* national economy, and fair enough too.
* (edited to add)
It is probably true that in the second case they are less likely to become wholly dependent upon welfare but there are many, many women who were only part-time when partnered or who worked in very low paid jobs who access welfare after separation. I think at last count 70% of women who were able to claim some level of parenting payment were also employed. Complete dependence on welfare is the minority case.
This doesn’t detract at all from Kim’s points. The biggest deterrent to separated women becoming employed is access to appropriate childcare. Informal arrangements for care are the norm in my experience; friends, extended family or older children. Women who work in lower paid jobs often cannot afford formal childcare even if they can find a place. They also often work out of what are considered ‘normal’ working hours; in call centres, as domestics etc. If they cannot find informal care for their children, women in these circumstances are faced with a stark choice; work and leave your children at home alone for a marginal benefit, or remain wholly reliant on government benefits and the increasingly punitive requirements that go with them.
I think as a society we need to become more comfortable with the idea that a parent may take a hiatus from work for a few years. Five years out of the work force should not spell the death knell to a career and, given the aging population, perhaps society will become more comfortable with this, out of sheer necessity.
“In purely economic terms, women on welfare are not a social benefit.”
Private economic party without the ‘society bits’, tigtog?
Cheers
Engaging someone’s arguments directly is not the same thing as overlooking other factors generally, joe2.
Damien was arguing economics, so I argued economics back. I’m personally all about society, but that wouldn’t matter to what Damien was arguing, would it?
” I think at last count 70% of women who were able to claim some level of parenting payment were also employed. Complete dependence on welfare is the minority case.”
Indeed, su and and ‘welfare’ is never a bad thing, despite some peoples’ call to make them feel embarrassed, even humiliated by the experience. We are talking human rights here.
Su, these women would also be likely to need to front up to centrelink, every fortnight, to justify their existence as well , personally, i imagine?
Fortnightly is the rule now and six job applications per fortnight. I live in an electorate with an unemployment rate approx twice the national average and the lowest median family income in the country; Centrelin would have to be the largest employer here. I would describe the mood of the parents at the meeting I attended about Welfare to Work as desperate.
I loathe the whole concept of Welfare to Work. People either need financial assistance or they don’t, and punitive measures seem rooted in pure malice towards people who are already doing it tough enough.
su thanks and well done.
That stuff never hits the airwaves.
Around 20% unemployment/underemployment, in our area, according to industry insiders.
“Welfare to work” is mostly about cutting people out of the loop and we will all have to pay eventually.
Tigtog and Kim, unless there is a market failure then the provision of childcare should not need to be subsidised. Thus if you want to make a case for such a subsidy you need to identify the market failure that is present. Social benefit is the sum of private benefits. In the absence of market failures, markets typically maximise the sum of private benefits. The standard market failures involve asymmetric information, externalities and public goods and imperfect competition. However the presence of any of these factors is only a necessary and not a sufficient condition for market failure to occur. If you want to argue that childcare subsidies are needed to overcome a market failure that results in women not participating in the workforce enough then you need to identify the market failure that is causing the problems and explain why a childcare subsidy is the best way to deal with it. It is not in any sense obvious that greater participation by mothers or fathers in the workforce is an improvement in social welfare. Once again, what is the market failure that is resulting in lower participation than is socially optimal? Of course, it is possible that there is also government failure here. Perhaps there are regulations that are causing the problems? If so, maybe it would be better to alter or remove these regulations instead? Maybe it is the distrubution of wealth within society, rather than its maximisation, that you are worried about? In that case, the answer is more likely to involve income redistribution rather than childcare. After all, there are both rich and poor people with children. There are also both rich and poor people without children.
yeti, I’ve been very interested in your comments, although others have been on a different track.
I’m too tired to take up any of the points made, so I’ll just do a bit of a rant of my own.
Labor’s policy does seem to go well beyond a rebate on fees, but it is not clear how they regard commercialisation/commodification. I just want to point out that ABC Learning sits in the market as a growth company, but its return on equity is only 11% now. What this means, I think, is that it has squeezed staff and made most of the economies from centralising administration, streamlining brands etc and is expanding mainly by acquiring more centres and building some. It now has 2305 centres in four countries (Aust, NZ, US and UK) and is adding about 200 pa in Aust. In the US it currently operates under 5 brands and is looking at consolidating brands and operations.
It’s a bit of a juggernaut in world terms with a market capitilisation of about $3.4 billion. Profits after tax are forecast to be $200 million in 2008. I don’t think it’s going to go away.
Labor’s policy statement says:
Then there’s a slab about provisions for education and skilling of teachers etc. That’s all very fine, but my wife tells me the tertiary institutions have completely lost the plot in terms of early childhood education. For years now the young teachers emanate knowing little of child development, behaviour management and strategies to use imaginative play. Good lecturers have been moved on or out and the remaining ones have lost touch with reality.
Anyway Labor has a rationale document (pdf) which I’ll now go off and read. 15 hours per week of play for all 4-year olds is good in principle. But it just won’t happen unless they get the personnel resourcing right.
Forcing women to choose between sacrificing their incomes and career opportunities or subjecting their kids (at the most critical periods of their mental development) to under-resourced holding-pens makes a mockery of the concept of “equality of opportunity” that is supposed to exist regardless of gender or class.
The arguments against public childcare can be made equally well against public schooling and any other public service. Again, what would be so radical about extending pre-schooling down from the age of five to the age of one or even under?
Brian, yes it does seem like an improvement on Latham’s early childhood learning program – a free book for every parent to read to their kids! Still, I think “Revolution” is too strong a word for what they are proposing.
On an earlier comment of yours :
Just reinforcing Klaus K’s and Yeti’s points above that you are arguing against subsidisation from the basis of a false premise: Elsewhere in the world it is recognised that investment in early childhood education leads to later economic and social returns. Australia lags a long way behind the OECD in acknowledging this fact. Australia apportions 1.5% of its educational spending on early childhood compared with say Finland which spends close to six percent. Of all the OECD countries only Ireland spends less than we do on early childhood.
Sorry that last was addressed to Damien, nightowls.
No one is forcing women to do anything, Yeti. Parents choose to have children. Parents choose which partner, if any, will mind the children. They may choose to use child care. They may choose to share the child minding duties. Why should other people be forced to bear some of the costs of the choices of parents?
I remain unconvinced that children are better off in child care than at home with their parents during their formative years. If you take that argument to its extreme conclusion, you would take all children off their parents and give them to some supposed “experts” to raise. It is difficult to think of too many more frightening prospects than this.
I see where you are going here yeti. Why not extend pre-schooling to the pre-born.
It’s testimony to the philosophical degeneration of our culture under neo-liberalism when it’s seen as perfectly reasonable to discuss the merits of the provision of publicly funded childcare primarily in terms of individual and/or economic benefits.
It’s a long fall from the more culturally evolved, enlightened Roussean understanding of the link between free or heavily subsidised public education, including pre-school care as a pre-condition for the future empowerment and political engagement of active, adult citizens which is a necessary basis for meaningful democracy.
Tigtog and Kim, unless there is a market failure then the provision of childcare should not need to be subsidised.
Yes, there is a market failure. Child care and early learning is not suited to free market provision. See Fanny Robins above. For-profit child care disgusts me.
I think as a society we need to become more comfortable with the idea that a parent may take a hiatus from work for a few years. Five years out of the work force should not spell the death knell to a career and, given the aging population, perhaps society will become more comfortable with this, out of sheer necessity.
I certainly hope so, Su, but the reality at the moment is that women are relentlessly punished for their interrupted work history. Even some so-called feminists like Linda Hirshman are calling to penalise female students on the basis that there will be less “return” on their education “investment”, because of time out of the workforce.
Many of the dewy-eyed advocates of staying home forget the old ladies of yesteryear (and now) surreptitiously buying extra cat food at the supermarket to feed themselves. And I condemn the slippery slope argument of some here, that there is nothing in between home care and neglectful “dumping”, “warehousing”, etc. False dichotomy, also, the guilt card again. Bullshit. Where were these people when the community child care centres were being taken over by ABC Learning?
If it can’t be monetised it largely isn’t discussed in the political arena, thanks to the insidious framing of the entire debate in the terms of the Chicago School’s view of economics. Friedman’s “neo-liberalism” is better termed “neo-conservatism” in its practice, and arguably “neo-feudalism” in its goals. The whole point of neoliberalism is that it is inherently anti-democratic in its individualist chauvinism and that its political proponents can never be seen to publicly admit this as they use the rhetoric of “personal choice” to seduce citizens to vote against their best democratic interests.
Neoliberalist acolytes have facilitated over the last few decades a vast redistribution of wealth away from the masses in countries which used to have strong social democracies, by cynically exploiting crisis situations to persuade nations to dismantle their social services and sell off their national assets “for the good of the economy”, pretending to be surprised when these policies end up pushing the working poor further into poverty . Naomi Klein’s latest book is meant to be a very interesting analysis of how the agenda of neoliberalism has advanced through a deceptive “shock doctrine” over the last few decades.
Me too. What Helen, Fanny Robin and yeti have been saying. Glen Milne today says that child care costs have gone up by 84% since 2001. It seems to be operating close to the limit of what the client group can afford to pay. There seems to be a clear conflict of interest between the provision of quality care and profits. At the very least the fiduciary responsibility of the corporation is to prioritise shareholder benefit above all else.
As I suggested in the post, these debates get fundamentally distorted when childcare and other things which ought to be seen as public goods are viewed instead as individual choices for which individuals may or may not “deserve” some subsidy from the taxpayers.
So then why not just scrap public schools and hospitals? I don’t have kids – why should I pay for some other parents choice to have a kid? Why should I subsidize someone else’s kid’s education/hospital treatment etc. etc.
The current state of most childcare centres is that day in day out there is practially no learning taking place, overworked staff on minimum wage with no training or qualifications whatsoever, and parents (mums) having to pay ever rising costs to keep their kids in these sterile storage facilies (where resources are competing with profits) during work hours just so that they don’t terminate their careers. Of course, for a mother to sacrifice her career also has a negative financial effect on their kids in the longer term. But the choice would not be so stark if quality childcare was accessible to all working parents.
I am not saying that parents should have to put their kids into public childcare, just that the option should exist in a civilized, economically developed country .Many children are probably better off at home with their parents they are spending their time teaching their kids useful knowledge. My mum did this and it has advantaged my education all my life (although our family was much worse-off financially for it). By the time kids begin Grade One some are already able to read, write, add, subtract and multiply and others can hardly tell a b from a d let alone know their times tables. The real ‘brain drain’ is occuring before kids enter school.
Of course the arguments about staying at home looking after the kids can be extended above the age of schooling as well: I think that depending on what type of parent a kid has, home-schooling can be vastly superior for the child’s education than the mediocrity factories that pass for schools in this country.
Problem is that if you accept that a parent should stay at home and look after the kids you’re essentially saying that having kids means that one of the parents (assuming that there are two in the first place) should forego and income and a career. This of course usually means the mother – so it becomes essentially an issue of sexual equality above and beyond the crucial issue of early childhood education. Of course if you don’t believe that men and women should have equal opportunities in life then this argument will not sway you.
GregM: judging from the quality of your contribution you obviously missed out on some early childhood learning. If it’s not too late, maybe you should go back to kindergarden where your great and imaginative wit might be appreciated.
On Friday I regretfully accepted the resignation of one of my staff. She’s got 3 kids – 2 of whom are pre-schoolers. She’d returned to work 6 months ago and we’d negotiated a flexible, part-time, 3 dpw role that allows her to work from home 1 of those days.
It’s increasingly difficult to recruit people in my industry so I was pleased to get her. But her mum has told she can’t mind the kids next year and her husband works full-time in a sales-based unpredictable hours kind of job. Childcare was going to become a nightmare.
She is on a good professional wage with us, but the cost of childcare for 3 days a week would be more than she earns. That’s even assuming she can get childcare where she lives. She wants to be part of the workforce, I’ll have lots of trouble replacing her and we’ve invested alot in on-the-job training.
I’d call that market failure and a net loss to society. Especially when you work, as I do, in a female dominated industry.
The first kindergartens, according to the French historian Jacques Barzain were set up by two 18th century Roussean-influenced men: the first by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1798), a Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer, and then a little later, around the 1820s, by the man who coined the term kindergarten, the German Friedrich Froebel.
Like all good Romanticists, Froebel was a nature lover, hence the name he adopted for what were schools specifically designed for the poor and which aimed, above all, to nurture and develop their powers of creative self-expression through the practice of arts and crafts, the enjoyment of music and words, and physical activity.
sorry, Jacques Barzun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Barzun
I never went to kindergarten, or any sort of pre-school, but I do remember, I guess I might have been about two, being left for a few hours once at a day care centre located in the basement (I think) of Brisbane Town Hall, while my mother did a few chores. I remember it being a fabulous art deco-ish place, a huge open area, with high ceilings, full of colour and movement and interesting other children and kindly adults, and above all, it was not home and I was away from family. Terribly exciting. I now remember the feeling vividly.
Though, I was glad when Mum came back to collect me. I’d got a bit anxious, too.
It also raises the lovely spectre of determining for each individual whether or not they “chose” to have a kid in the first place. Until we have consistent, affordable, accessible, perfect reproductive choice in all situations for all people at all times and in all places, the argument falls down on that false premise alone (before tackling all the others).
This is the crux of the discussion – I would contend that the view that childcare and other things ought to be seen as public goods is open to debate. I havn’t thought about childcare or the chlidcare markets and can’t talk about them in particular, but it’s always good to question your assumptions as these frame your state of mind. Perhaps having these things as public goods is beneficial, perhaps it isn’t. I think that it’s a bit romantic to think that the state is naturally better at providing services or goods than non-state providers. Maybe it’s true for childcare, maybe not.
Sacha – the existence of high quality childcare can be a public good. Doesn’t mean the state actually has to run it. I don’t think too many were arguing that the state should. Some of the best run childcare centres have been managed by community based organisations. But it’s always required a subsidy.
well, nihilism has its democratic place, I guess, Sacha. It was never and still isn’t either very philosophically interesting or intellectually persuasive and usually ends up being, to the extent it holds to any discernible position or opinion, other than bored (and boring) passivity and obstruction, on the side of reaction.
Next.
jinmaro, Wikipedia has a good article on kindergarten. The term is now used differently in different places, including within Australia. But this statement about Queensland is wrong:
Kindergarten in Queensland prior to the introduction of preschools in the early 70s was for 3 and 4-year olds. It was offered by state and private schools, was part of the schooling context, was 12.5 hours per week and though not compulsory was taken up by about 90% of people. Preschool creamed off the 4-year olds, but from this tear it is history and is now fully replaced Prep as a 5-day compulsory part of schooling. The entry age has been raised by eight months so it’s mostly about 5-year olds. So kindergarten has reclaimed the 4-year olds and the state is out of that sector.
What is offered by Labor is “a universal right to [15 hours per week of] play-based learning and development programs delivered by degree-qualified teachers [for 4-year olds].”
Labor expects states to contribute and sees this program as their third highest priority in cooperation with the states.
There are two things that are quite striking about the rationale (pdf). First the emphasis is on cognitive learning, especially pre-reading and pre-numeracy skills.
Secondly, the purpose is almost entirely instrumental – so that as a country we will become more economically successful and productive and kids will be better prepared for a flying start at school.
The Preschool philosophy in Qld was that this sector of education should have integrity in its own right and focussed on four domains of child development – intellectual, social, emotional and physical. This program seems obsessed with the first of these domains.
Lauredhel says:
“It also raises the lovely spectre of determining for each individual whether or not they â??choseâ?? to have a kid in the first place. Until we have consistent, affordable, accessible, perfect reproductive choice in all situations for all people at all times and in all places, the argument falls down on that false premise alone (before tackling all the others).”
So people don’t choose to have sex? So people don’t choose to participate in IVF programs? So people don’t choose to adopt children?
Mark, in economics a public good has a very precise meaning. A pure public good is both non-rival in consumption and non-excudible. Such goods may potentially result in market failure. However, goods that have some degree of non-rivalry or some degeee of non-exculdability or some degree of both may also potentially result in market failure. Childcare does not seem to possess either of these qualities in any pervasive sense. Clearly, iyt is excludible. Childcare centres can refuse to mind your children. Sim ilarly, if it is true that there are too few childcare places, then any degree of non-rivalry seems to be relatively minor. Maybe a childcare worker can deal with a small number of children at once, but beyond a point this is not possible.
Yeti, there are two reasons for subsidising other peoples use of education, hospital, charity or other services. One is to overcome a market failure. The other is because you think it is the right thing to do. Call it chrity. Call it there but for the grace of God go I. One might ask why we don’t leave charity up to private philanthropy. In my view, the reason for this is that there is likely to be a free-rider problem. As such, I am quite happy to have the Government intervene for both market failure and charity reasons. But there does come a point where such intervention needs to stop. Resources are scarce. Every dollar the government spends must be raised by taxes. For the most part, taxes distort the allocation of resources and therefore involve a deadweight loss. Thus every dollar that the government spends costs society more than one dollar. Now, it seems clear to me that there are obviously lots external benefits everyone attending primary school and secondary school. I would extend tis to includse a year of pre-school. Furthermore, I think it is only fair that all children have access to a decent education. I am unconvinced that there are lots of external benefits to be had from subsidising childcare. There probably are benefits from early childhood education, but does this require subsidised childcare? What form does this education take?
These sorts of free-for-all discussions can be very educational, because they cough up so many different points of view (and so many different platforms for the points of view). But they can sometimes become bewildering because people start to talk past other people’s definitions of terms, and often the definitions seem to vary.
For instance, although a strict economic view (consideration of the ‘market aspect’) of childcare is critical to such a discussion, because it gets to examining the technical feasibility of different options, still I don’t think this is primarily an economic or market issue at its heart. Children are people, not widgets, and their care and development is not strictly analogous to the production of widgets, or market choices concerning widgets. Besides, children are the literal future of a given society (well, assuming you don’t plan to permanently replenish your entire society with immigrants*, which the Left doesn’t seem to have ruled out); they are the people in it. And an economy exists to serve the people, not the other way round.
There are at least two, and maybe more, different ways that people are using the word “childcare,” and I think this is both intellectually confusing and polemically misleading. There is “childcare” in the sense of a deliberate interventionist strategy for early educational development, and there is “childcare” in the sense of organized group child-minding while parents are unavailable, for whatever reason. (This second use may also involve educational stuff, but that’s not its primary purpose.) I think that two different phrases should be used for these two things, because they have two very different polemical uses, and lead to two very different structural assumptions about policy in this matter. The first use seems to be primarily about the ostensible social good of having children become well educated citizens; the second use seems to be primarily about the ostensible social good of expanding choices and opportunities for adults.
Also, although first principles are very useful in trying to sort out a coherent point of view in this, one shouldn’t let oneself be hamstrung by them, because modern societies are simply too complex to conform to any one rigid principle. For instance (at least this is how it is in the US, maybe it’s different in Australia) it’s misleading to speak of an inherent ‘right’ to either childcare or education. Instead what happens here is, a certain amount of education is mandated by law and publicly provided, not because it is an inherent ‘right,’ but because the lawmakers just thought that society would be far better that way, and their wisdom in the matter seems generally proven. Insofar as it is a ‘right,’ this only goes to equal protection under the law, viz. it means nobody can take away your legally-mandated education on arbitrary grounds. ‘Rights’ is one of those radioactive words that should be handled sort of carefully.
Personally I don’t have a clear or strict view on how to handle this complicated issue, but I think being flexible, being open to examination of one’s goals, and being intellectually as clear as possible about what one is saying (75% of the time, when people say “we need,” what they really mean is, “I want”) are helpful things.
[* - without ongoing large-scale immigration, who will staff our abortion clinics?]
D.E., you accept that there are enough social benefits to make public provision of state school and “a year” of pre-school. I would argue that one of the most important social benefits of this public service (beyond simply ‘education’) is the ‘free childcare’ role that schools provide, which gives parents (of children above the age of four/five) the option of participating in the workforce. The argument is whether there are enough social benefits to make the (fairly marginal I would argue) extension of this down by a few years. I know that you are unconvinced (and probably unconvincable, so I won’t keep trying), but I would say that the social benefits are huge – in greatly expanded educational outcomes for children as well as greatly expanded choices and opportunities for their parents (especially women, who in a non-sexist society should not be forced to choose between a career and a child). The opportunity cost to families and to society of so many parents being forced to drop out of employment due to sprialing childcare costs is obviously greater IMO than the opportunity cost of increased public spending in this area. The unaffordability of childcare and the restrictions that it places on workforce participation and on the opportunities of women is a market failure in the same sense that the general unaffordability of quality medical treatment demands a state provision.
Yeti, the free child care role is not something that I think needs subsidising (no surprises there!!!). It is a private benefit not an externalality. I would not subsidise education if this was the only benefit oof education. My reasons for subsidising education are related to external benefits from an educated population and the desire for a fair go for all children.
I am actually quite convinced that early childhood learning is important. I am not convinced that this needs to take place outside of the home or play groups and the like. Nor am I convinced that subsidised childcare is important. Childcare and early childhood learning are two dfifferent things. (This is the difference that j-p-z mentioned.) I am all for subsidising educational programs like play school and the like.
It is not enough to assert that there is a market failure in the chgildcare market. It is necessary to identify it. If there is a market failure, then it is much easier to solve if it can be precisely identified.
If I have a publicly funded CAT scan is that a “private benefit” or an “externality”? Should it be subsidized?
Your reasons for subsidising education are related to external benefits from an educated population and the desire for a fair go for all children. My reasons for subsidizing childcare/kindergarten are related to external benefits from a much higher level of (intellectual, social and emotional) pre-school education as well as the external benefits of massively increased work and career opportunities for women and the desire for a fair go for all children and parents, especially mothers. So there’s not that great a difference between our opinions.
I like what Damien has been saying on this thread. Contra his detractors, he has not been foisting any value judgments into the debate but asking, quite reasonably, what the justification is for consumers of childcare to reach into the public purse to pay for it. Those who see public funding as the sine qua non of childcare must make a case for it. To say “women need publicly funded childcare services ” is surely begging the question.
By far the most value-laden comment on this thread is to say “for-profit child care disgusts me.” Where and when? If my wife and I want to go out for dinner, we have a choice. We could get our baby’s grandmother to baby-sit for free. We could hire our 17-year-old neighbour to do it. Or we could stay at home. Grandma is a good option, but we are conscious that it places demands on her that we do not wish to over-use. Apparently inculcating the profit motive in the 17-year-old is disgusting. So, do we stay at home and risk our mental welfare or should we have access to a council-funded babysitting service funded by an increase in our (and all of our neighbours’) rates, but staffed by complete strangers? I’d prefer to pay the baby-sitter. The baby-sitter and her parents would probably endorse that, as would my neighbours.
My example is simplistic, but the fact is, as Damien has said, that as the parents we derive the benefit of the childcare services. There are no doubt good cases that can be made for low-income and single-parent families to have access to subsidised childcare to enable economic participation that is otherwise constrained. But if my wife and I decide that we would prefer one of us to take time off to look after the baby, or for one or both of us to work part-time, or to book the child in to a for-profit full-bells-and-whistles childcare centre paid for by our additional earnings, what is wrong with any of that? All of which decisions can be made without recourse to public funds and without a public authority deciding who looks after our kids.
Damien, I’m aware “public good” has a technical meaning in economics. But I must have missed the memo where it’s only permissible to discuss favoured policy positions in technical economic terms.
What strikes me about this discussion is that you’ve not taken into account any of the discussion about the actual problems in childcare, signalled in the original post, and elaborated on in this thread.
Mark, in the absence of either a market failure or distributional concerns, markets allocate resources very well. As such, if people want to convince me that child care needs to be subsidised, they need to convince me that their is either a market failure or a distributional concern that is best addressed by a child care subsidy. The main market failures are asymmetric information, externalities and public goods and imperfect competition. Some appeal to some general “public good” in a non-technical sense doesn’t wash it. Why not? Because in the absence of market failures the market outcome will be Pareto optimal, so that you cannot make one person better off without making another worse off. If there are no distributional concerns, then on what basis do you propose a child care subsidy is warranted? Thus, if anyone wants to make a case to raise taxes above what they would otherwise need to be to fund a childcare subsidy, it is incumbent upon them to explain why the market allocation is not appropriate and how the childcare subsidy will fix it.
You keep saying that people “need to convince you”, Damien, but you don’t take into account the evidence that’s been presented to you on this thread about the actual failings of childcare, and links to more.
In any case, philosophically, I don’t believe childcare should be commodified and sold as a good on the market. I know it’s really radical to be a social democrat these days, but there you have it…
What evidence Mark? You keep claiming that there is evidence, but I have not seen any. People arguing that it is too expensive or too hard to get into doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. If that is the case, why is it the case? I suggested some possibilities very early on in this thread. Are they correct? You seemed to agree with one of them that related to regulation. If that is the case, alter or remove the regulation rather than subsidise child care.
I am more than happy for childcare not to be comodified. Parents have the choice of minding the children themselves or asking freinds or relatives to do so occassionally. However, I don’t see why they should be denied the option of paying for child care if they so wish. I just don’t think it should be subsidised by the taxpayer.
If being a social democrat means believing that markets are always evil and government intervention is always good, then I certainly don’t want to be one.
Read the whole thing, as they say. It’s lucky Ken’s splenectomy doesn’t seem to have affected his writing (not that it was ever very spleen-ish, just good sense really.)
Damien, please read the original post:
These points have also been made:
(1) There is no genuine ability for parents to “shop around” for childcare as there are long waiting lists and it’s a geographically limited service – it makes no sense to have to drive an hour across town to find a “better” centre.
(2) Brian argued, correctly, that the company which dominates the market, invests little in facilities and staff skills. Again because it’s a seller’s market, they can get away with it.
(3) The providers just up their prices whenever the subsidy is increased.
(4) Current regulatory policy protects the market position of the existing players.
There’s more, and Helen’s link goes to the human capital argument. It’s really not up to me to find the evidence about the operation of childcare and translate it into your economic theory terms. There’s a heap of it out there, and I’d find the latter a rather futile exercise.
Why do child care centres have market power Mark? Is it because of entry restrictions? It must be if there is unmet demand that could profitably be met at prevailing prices. I have already mentioned this.
As for the education argument, I am quite happy to agree that early childhood education is valuable and that there might be a justification for subsidising it to some extent. But that is a different issue from childcare. Subsidsising childcare seems like a very blunt way to attempt to provide early childhood education. It is biased towards parents who both choose to work fulltime. Parents who choose to mind their own children during their formative years are unlikely to use childcare on a regular basis. It would be far better to target early childhood education in a more direct fashion than to provide childcare subsidies. The main beneficiaries of childcare are the parents. Why should taxpayers subsidise parents who choose to both work full-time when the main beneficiaries of that decision are the parents? If both parents want to keep their work experience current then they should incur the cost, not the taxpayer. After all, they are the ones that chose to have children.
And I’ve already answered that question, Damien. Several times!
Yep, this is getting rather tedious.
(a) You can’t just establish a childcare centre like you might a fish and chips shop (though there are significantly higher entry barriers to most markets than sometimes recognised). You need regulatory approval, not to mention an appropriate site (and that brings in zoning) and obviously a fair amount of capital.
(b) If you do, then you’re caught by the fact that the big players scrimp on facilities and skills so you won’t have a price advantage. They can live without a bit of profit gouging in one area because their size enables them to do this. Just as it’s very hard to go into competition with Coles and Woollies.
Barriers to entry in childcare are low. The skills and training required to operate them are not highly specialised, the plant and property required is not hard to secure, the capital requirements (not of itself a barrier to entry in any event) are minimal, there is substantial unmet demand and the largest incumbent competitor apparently shows little inclination to engage in deep price discounting in response to new entry. If barriers to entry are low, how can the incumbent have market power?
The only factual link that points to any market failure is the Australia Institue survey of 578 childcare workers that indicates:
(1) Community childcare workers and employees of independent (gasp – private!) operators think their services are pretty good; and
(2) A minority of employees of larger private providers think their services could be better.
All the problems Mark has identified are in fact the conditions that should encourage new entry. The only aspect of which I am aware that might act as a barrier is the difficulty in attracting staff (which I can understand – I wouldn’t like to do it). My wife took a call last month from a childcare centre – it was a wrong number – looking for an employee who hadn’t shown up. When she explained it was a wrong number she was given a recruitment pitch – “we’re desperate.”
And therein lies the rub. Under the Keating government, there was a regulatory requirement for qualified early childhood teachers and nurses in community childcare centres. Now it’s any old minimum wage worker without any qualifications.
If all that you say is so true, Bismarck, why then is childcare so bloody expensive? And why isn’t there a rush of new market entrants?
As for the education argument, I am quite happy to agree that early childhood education is valuable and that there might be a justification for subsidising it to some extent. But that is a different issue from childcare. Subsidsising childcare seems like a very blunt way to attempt to provide early childhood education. It is biased towards parents who both choose to work fulltime.
This is another argument for excellent, subsidised, community-based child care (like my kids were lucky enough to have, before the ABC Larnin’ came on the scene.) It’s important to realise that without some kind of melding of the child care and kindergarten systems, the children of working parents will miss out because of the inability of the parents to drop them off and pick up at the impossible hours – 11 AM to 2 pm, or something like that. I’m not addressing the whole child care versus at-home debate (except that there is obviously a prejudice in favour of the latter among some commenters), except to say that even if you don’t want it, many parents will need it because they are on the lower end of the pay scale and cannot afford to give up one pay packet. In other words, you’re stuck with it, now decide whether to do it well or badly (and if you do it badly, you can live with the consequences – children eventually grow up.)
My children’s centre solved the kinder-child care equation elegantly by having a kindergarten and a childcare centre in the same building, communicating via a corridor. Thus the Big Kids in the four year old room could just be shepherded to kinder and back each day without any drama. I could imagine other similar solutions, like the room with the eldest children being more of a play/learning centre and taking over some of the kinder roles.
I also think that stimulation and play are what kids need, not hothousing for the workforce and I agree that the Labor emphasis on priming kids for school is a bit sad and off the mark. We don’t want to go down the high-stress Japanese road.
I can’t work out whether the thread ended for me here:
or here:
or here:
But I suspect it was the latter. Damien, if you genuinely don’t understand that (a) yes, some people don’t choose to have sex, but end up pregnant anyway, and that (b) engaging in sex doesn’t constitute a choice to become and stay pregnant, I can suggest some reading for you.
Your choice-based subsidy ideas, taken to the obvious conclusion, would mean sitting down each and every “welfare mum” and interrogating her on her sexual history. And wouldn’t our Government just love to do that.
Sorry, I did not address the last sentence- the parents without child care would simply roll up for Kinder hours and depart afterwards. So there was no bias there one way or the other, but a standalone kindergarten *is* biased towards the stay at homes, cos the working mums/dads simply can’t get their kids to them.
Hey Helen, you said: “This is another argument for excellent, subsidised, community-based child care (like my kids were lucky enough to have, before the ABC Larnin’ came on the scene.)”
Did ABC Learning buy the centre? Or set up shop next door? How did ABC Learning affect your childs’ centre? There are still community-based centres in my area. What happened to yours? Serious question.
Cheers
BBB
Does this vary from state to state? Our childcare accreditation requires that there be, I think, at least one fully qualified early childhood educator in each room, that the centre director have certain qualifications, and so on. Some minimum wage workers are allowed, but the maximum ratios are set.
And in our community-based non-profit low-staff-turnover centre (and the campus-based one we used when the lad was a young ‘un), some of the non-qualified workers are just plain wonderful. In the two local corporate for-profit centres I’ve scrutinised, and in one case, briefly used? Not so much. Count me in as a firm vote for community non-profit care.
Kim
No-one on this thread has linked to any hard data, other than the synopsis of the Australia Institute survey of childcare workers that I referred to above. So, I can’t really say. There is a perception that places are hard to find, and my own limited experience of making some exploratory inquiries indicates that getting exactly what you want is difficult. What data there is suggests that new entry is occurring despite community perceptions.
There is what appears to be a comprehensive industry report by IBISWorld, but it costs $535, which does not match my level of interest in the subject. Perhaps someone might be able to ferret out a copy and elucidate everyone here.
FWIW I am not convinced that a childcare centre needs to be stuffed to the gills with heavily qualified staff. By far the majority of childcare is performed perfectly well by people with no qualifications at all, namely parents, grandparents and babysitters. An unduly heavy layer of regulation can only increase the cost to parents/taxpayers and increase the barriers to entry.
I’m not sure, lauredhel. Maybe it does.
Save your $535 and google harder, Bismarck!
http://melbourneinstitute.com/hilda/Biblio/cp/problems%20with%20child%20care.pdf
That’s from NATSEM.
There’s more around. I’ve got some work to do though so no more googling for me.
Mark, I am quite happy to admit that I didn’t read the post at polliegraph (online opinion?) to which you linked. I apologise for that, but unless your arguments are subtantially different to the ones presented in the comments thread to this post, they are unlikely to change my mind.
Lauredhel, what percentage of children are born as a result of rape? I suspect that it is incredibly small. Miniscule even. Is that what you mean by people not always having voluntarily chosen to have their children? If so, then your earlier claim that my arguments are based on a false premise (reproduced below) seems like a major overstatement.
Specifically, you said in an earlier comment on this thread:
“Until we have consistent, affordable, accessible, perfect reproductive choice in all situations for all people at all times and in all places, the argument falls down on that false premise alone (before tackling all the others).”
Damien, I think it’s increasingly obvious that there is a philosophical/ideological difference of opinion here, as Lauredhel says. Rather than asking everyone else to argue in terms of micro-economic theory, it might be more productive if you argue the case philosophically. Otherwise I think we’re going round in circles and there are not adding much to the quantum of utility or to *productivity*!
Boom boom!
Lauredhel says:
“I can’t work out whether the thread ended for me here:
If being a social democrat means believing that markets are always evil and government intervention is always good, then I certainly don’t want to be one.
or here:
One might ask why we don’t leave charity up to private philanthropy.
or here:
So people don’t choose to have sex?
But I suspect it was the latter.”
If you are going to quote me, Lauredhel, you could at least have the common decency to do so in context. I am referring to your quoting of my comment on philanthropy. Lets actually look at the next couple of sentences of my earlier comment that you chose to selectively quote:
“One might ask why we don’t leave charity up to private philanthropy. In my view, the reason for this is that there is likely to be a free-rider problem. As such, I am quite happy to have the Government intervene for both market failure and charity reasons.”
Looks to me like I am suggesting that you can’t always rely on private philanthropy to achieve charitable objectives.
As for your decision to lecture me on the question about whether or not a couple who engage in sex are choosing to become ans stay pregnant or not, it is completely irrelevant to the topic of this post. It is also has nothing to do with the arguments that I am making. Nonetheless, since you have decided to thrust your views on this onto centre stage, let me make mine clear as well. As far as I am concerned, if a couple engage in sexual intewrcourse they are accepting the possibility that a child might result, even if they are not actively seeking to have a child. Indeed, this is so even if they would prefer not to have a child. As such, they are still making a choice. Furthermore, I believe that life begins at conception. As such, I am opposed to abortion unless the mothers life or health are in danger. These views are not relevant to this post, but neither were yours. I would not have raised themn excep[t for the fact that you very rudely decided to lecture me about your own views on this topic.
Kim, I agree that this is not getting anywhere. And I appreciate the levity of your comment. I don’t think I have anything more to add, so lets just agfree to disagree!!!
My main contact with childcare at present is through my wife, who teaches the graduates in her Prep class. The results in human terms are often not pretty.
Kids with short concentration spans, who avoid eye contact with adults and generally are not amenable to direct instructions. Kids who a self-centred and disruptive at group sessions. Kids who lack empathy for the feelings of other kids. Etc, etc.
This is not all childcare graduates, but a significant proportion. Kenneth Davidson is right in saying that chid care on the cheap is bad policy.
I see Labor’s initiative as riffing off the OECD study Davidson mentions about the social (and economic) worth of quality human resource development through initiatives in this area,to do them credit, they seem to be trying to upgrade the quality as well as the quantity of what goes on. Thgey are aware, and it has been well-established since the 1970s for Chrissake, that early childhoos education based on guided imaginative role play enhances life chances in terms of education success, earning capacity and personal satisfacton – less likely to end up in jail, have unwanted pregnancies, attend special education services etc etc.
So Damien, this is about a public as well as a private good. Reading the document they want to cast all child care in an educational rather than a care (warehousing) frame, but the priority is with 4 year olds.
Bismarck, there aren’t any value free positions. And I thought it was manifestly clear that the disgust was for the corporate involvement rather than a teenager making a few bob.
In my view corporate involvement is not always bad, but there is something about the mix in this one that makes a nasty brew. But Mark and others have covered that aspect.
j_p_z, the policy is cast in terms of rights, and I think that’s appropriate. We are dealing with an age-level where participation in what is seen as a valuable educational activity is not mandated and I don’t see anyone suggesting that it should be. They are merely saying that the experience should be accessible to all, it shouldn’t depend on how well you have chosen your parents.
Bismarck, on entry levels, you assert that it is a low entry business. About 15 years ago quite a few idealistic preschool teachers, and others (I’m thinking of an architect I used to work for, or more precisely his wife) borrowed money and built child care centres, or refurbished old buildings, or whatever. The ones I knew ran good centres and sold out to chains because they weren’t making any money. Those chains cut costs and standards and ended up selling to ABC, who have added a PR gloss, but cut standards even further. As I indicated above the return on equity for ABC as a company is poor, so the prospect of them improving standards is unlikely. They’ll take any subsidy, but prices are likely to go up. The only improvements will be to their PR and their bottom line.
So, you’re against abortion, but you think that every child is the result of a positive decision to have one? How does that work?
It’s not just rape, it’s a lot of situations which lead to unexpected children. Don’t you know any real-life couples who have had accidental pregnancies after being told point-blank they had no chance of conceiving? I know two such (one had twins!) What about the wife in a religious family who’d like one or two kids but whose family railroads her into having four? Life’s a funny thing. If only it were more like microeconomics, it might be more controllable.
You may have a stern opinion on subsidising others’ “choices” (as you see them, but what you are really doing is limiting the life chances of the resulting children, who have had no say in it at all (as the birthday song goes).
I’ve strayed off topic. Sorry.
Lauredhel, I aplogise for getting annoyed. I much prefer it when debate is calm and reasoned. I overreacted to what at first seemed to me like a lecture on reproductive morality. While I have views on this, as I indicated in my previous comment, I usually try to keep them to myself. I find that debates over this issue tend to shed more heat than light. Sorry!!!
Helen, I do not like getting into this debate because people views are typically very firmly held and the debate sheds lots of heat and almost no light. I respect other peoples right to have different views on the topic. It is unlikely that they wiull change my view. It is unlikely that I will change their view. I believe that most of you are poeople of good faith. I would hope that belief is reciprocated. (Even if I am an economist!!!
)
My view is that people should no that no contraceptive is perfect. Even vasectomies and tubal ligations have been known to fail. As such, when they choose to have sex, theuy are accepting the possibility og pregnancy. In any event, abortion is currently legal in Australia. While I might not like it (although even I would make exceptions if the mother’s life or health is in danger), the availability of abortion would seem to strengthen the argument that parents choose whether or nort to have children.
Did ABC Learning buy the centre? Or set up shop next door? How did ABC Learning affect your childs’ centre? There are still community-based centres in my area. What happened to yours? Serious
No, it is still going, but the government has put the price of these child care centres beyond most peoples’ reach by using the de facto voucher system, which has pushed up the price (also the scarcity factor, as people really do prefer these community based centres. Really.) In the meantime, ABC has been using its money to dominate the child care industry in Australia. Although our local centre hasn’t closed, that is not true of all of them.
ABC learning will slowly push the old system out, if we don’t return to those values and demand better than the commercial operators.
Sure, Damien, I’m very happy to accept you’re arguing in good faith. I was just getting a little frustrated at the abstract level of your arguments and the fact that you’re not admitting they’re value laden (see Brian’s comment). Maybe I need to go buy that “How to argue with an economist” book?
Thanks Kim!!! It’d be a boring world if everyone agreed on everything!!!
Oh, what’s all the fuss, after all. Just give the little darlings a stack of Tex Avery cartoons to watch, and they’ll get edu-ma-cated about the world soon enough, I promise. And if that don’t work, just kick ‘em out into the street to play, where they can get roughed up by the bigger kids and knocked into various parked cars whilst playing proper sports (none of this footy nonsense). Worked just fine for me, and I turned out okay. Sort of. Maybe. I think.
Damien Eldridge’s views are based on a fundamental disrespect for human beings, especially the most disadvantaged and vulnerable, and a concomitant desire to humiliate and punish same. To that extent, they should be condemned on humanitarian and equity grounds- as I think they have been very well on this thread.
Fortunately, the extreme sadism of the logic of his arguments and their policy implications have, to date, been rebuffed in this country and this too is a major reason why the Libs are going to be shown the door very shortly by enough working class people, women, Aborigines, immigrants, who patently are saying to DE’s neo-liberal masters: “You’ve gone too far”.
Hey, now that I’m on the subject of getting smeared in the street, just out of curiosity, is there an Australian version (I mean, besides rugby of course) of the old completely anarchic ball game known in my own local circles as “Kill the Guy”? (there’s another, rather less polite name for it, which I won’t mention here.) How about “Idaho,” or that piece of insane Dada-ist violence called “Buck-Buck”? And you people are worried about child care? Well, just don’t let the kids read any Artaud in their classes, is all I’m sayin’. Maybe you’ve never played an honest game of tackle football on plain concrete.
It was not to be so easily charmed,
That we sent you to school, to be harmed.
(F. O’Hara)
“Maybe I need to go buy that â??How to argue with an economistâ?? book?”
I would not bother Kim, unless the author is Quiggin. Let’s just hope that he has a strong breeding program, coz his thoughtful and fair minded economic views seem largely endangered.
Most of the time I agree with Quiggin, joe2!
Thing is, Kim, he has the capacity to argue with himself.
Open minded?
The perfect author for such a book.
Well of course, we had it tough. Why if we disagreed with Quiggin in even the least aspect of economic analysis, our dads would grill us mercilessly about our grasp of game theory and Pareto optimalities and Nash equilibria and NYC street games, and if we got anything wrong in the slightest, our dads would slit our throats open, pull out our tonsils and our vocal cords, then ship us (ground rate) to the Soviet Union to be surgically transformed into chimpanzees — and then the Russkies would blast us into orbit aboard a faulty un-heated Sputnik rocket with only one bathroom out in the corridor that we had to share with the stinking Greeks, and then we’d orbit the sun at close range for three long centuries, soaking up deadly heat and solar radiation before we crashed back into the North Sea and drowned in the sub-zero freezing waters, long before the CIA spy teams could find us, only to skin us alive and sell us for our monkey-skin pelts. If we were lucky!
True, true, joe2.
Brilliant, Four Yorkshire-brooklynites.
I am sorry that you feel that way Jinmaro. It was not my intention to offend people. In fact, while I sometimes get annoyed, in general, I hope that I don’t offend anyone. When I think I may have done so, I try to apologise. However, having said that, I do not think that my arguments were offensive. Nor do I think they warranted the rather nasty criticism that is levelled at me in your comment. However, I’ll let readers decide for themselves on this score.
Please note that I have already posted a copy of your comment along with an apology and statement similar to this one on my own blog. I had previously posted copies of all of my comments on this thread prior to this one in a separate post over there as well. I guess people are free to make up there own minds. But nonetheless, no offence was intended and I am sorry that you feel that way.
The relevant posts can be found at:
http://economicsgeek.blogspot.com/2007/10/apology-if-one-is-necessary.html ; and
http://economicsgeek.blogspot.com/2007/10/should-governments-subsidise-childcare.html .
â??Maybe I need to go buy that â??How to argue with an economistâ?? book?â??
That book is quite weak, I’d forget it book and read the somewhat more technical Debunking Economics by Steve Keen.
D.E. (like more than a few young conservatives) is quite good at pretentious regurgitation of basic keywords from an undergrad microeconomics textbook, confident that most people won’t know what he’s on about and expecting that they’ll therefore defer to his ‘expertise’.
Let’s try not to be rude, folks. I don’t agree with Damien either but there’s no need for the snark.
Thanks.
Yeti, you clearly doesn’t know me or you wouldn’t make such ridiculous claims about my political leanings. As for whether or not I understand economics, well I guess that is a matter of opinion. I certainly think I understand economics, at least to some extent!!!. (I have ammended one of the posts at my own blog to reflect the substance of this latest exchange: http://economicsgeek.blogspot.com/2007/10/apology-if-one-is-necessary.html .)
Just a quick comment to mention that the links to my blog mentioned in some of my recent comments will no longer work as I have deleted my blog. I am not a natural blogger and can’t say I really enjoy it very much!!! Maybe I’ll drop in and comment occassionally, although I really don’t have any desire to get into a debate like this one very often. In fact, I’d rather avoid this type of debate altogether!!!
I’m sorry to hear that, Damien, as I’ve often enjoyed your contributions.
And this stoush is pretty lame as far as they go! I thought it was almost entirely well mannered.
Its not only the stoush Mark. Thats just the thing thats pushed it over the line. I agree it was more tedious than heated!!! I don’t enjoy concerted blogging and am just feeling a bit jaded with it. I don’t mind making the occassional comment!!! So you’ll probably still hear from me now and again. I have really been enjoying my academic research recently and I think the difference between my enjoyment of that and my lack of enjoyment of blogging is telling me something!!!
Fair enough, Damien! Still sorry to lose you though. But blogging’s not worth it if it’s not fun…
Besides which, how else am I going to find out when Chanel 10 have moved Torchwood to if they do som ething like that again?!!! Thanks once agaion for that very important piece of information, by the way!!!
No probs! I just bought the first disc of Torchwood and I’m looking forward to watching it in better definition and without ads… Btw, if you’re on Facebook, friend me. That’s the other web 2.0 way you’ll get updated about such vital news!
All arguments that bodily autonomy should only apply to the privileged half of the species are inherently offensive. You can avoid taboo words and use the third person till you’re blue in the face; that won’t polish a forced-birth argument into anything inoffensive, “polite”, or “reasonable”.
Lauredhel,
I am both a decent person and opposed to abortion unless the mothers life or health are at risk. I am sorry if my views on this topic offend you. Clearly this a topic about which you have strong views. However, there are many people who have strong views on both sides of this issue. This is an area in which I think people need to be tolerant about the views of others even if they disagree with them.
Jinmaro,
I have a great deal of respect for people and I would be very happy if poverty in Australia and elsewhere could be alleviated.
Jinmaro and Yeti,
I am neither a neo-liberal nor a young conservative. If anything, my political philosophy is probably a relatively mild form of classical liberalism.
Mark,
If I ever get around to setting up a facebook account and I remember the offer I will “freind” you!!! But I am a bit of a luddite when it comnes to these things, so who knows if and when this will occur!!! Enjoy Torchwood. I am eagerly awaiting the release of the box sewt for the third season of the new series of Dr Who. I wonder if there will be a box set for the first season of Torchwood?
lauredhel: “All arguments that bodily autonomy should only apply to the privileged half of the species are inherently offensive.”
Well think about that for a second. Don’t you see how quickly and easily it reduces to “all arguments that [disagree with any of my own arguments, or the Party's arguments, whoever the Party may be at the moment] are inherently offensive”? Do you see how that is a recipe for madness on a scale much greater than, and well beyond the scope of, your immediate concerns?
I hope you’ll take a moment to reconsider, not necessarily your political position (though I disagree with that one also), but your intellectual one.
Dammit, after having just constructed a perfectly good fort in my living room out of sofa cushions, blankets, and a bookcase, I am nevertheless roused in annoyance and have now had to stomp back to the computer room in wrath.
Sorry to natter on about this sort of thing, but evidently it can’t be said often enough; and besides, it makes my blood boil.
lauredhel: “All arguments that… [assume any X you don't like] are inherently offensive.”
Jaysus. Get this straight in 2008. It is manners, not arguments, that are offensive, or that are capable of being ‘offensive’. Arguments by their very nature cannot be offensive, they can merely be right or wrong, strong or weak, persuasive or unpersuasive, substantiated or not so much.
Damien Eldridge, as far as I can see, you have nothing to apologize for, to anybody. Granted I could not understand many of your arguments because I lack a technical grasp of economics. Still, you made your arguments with poise and civility, and so there was nothing remotely offensive about anything you had to say. It was either persuasive or unpersuasive, which I am not qualified to judge. People who lightly call your views “offensive” are trying to silence you on non-intellectual or anti-intellectual grounds, presumably for interested reasons. And THAT, good gentlepersonss one and all, is what is truly “offensive.”
Were you offended then, or did you just shoot yourself in the foot with your BB gun?
Even in your universe there doesn’t seem to be such a strict separation between argument and emotion.
There was nothing “light” about it, I am deadly serious. Feminism isn’t my dalliance-of-the-week. “Interested”? I have a uterus and ovaries, so yes, I don’t get to revel in the privilege of emotional distance when someone else is attempting to assert ownership over my body. I’m not going to go into the details of my reproductive history, but yes, I’m “interested” in this subject.
Are you trying to argue that anyone with a uterus and ovaries aren’t adequately qualified to make political arguments or decisions about reproductive choice policy? Or only the ones who get het up about it?
This is bullshit (no offence). Read “A Modest Proposal” lately?
su: “were you offended then”
English being a rather rich language (the richest in human history by sheer word count, according to some authorities), we have somehow, surprisingly, managed to eke out two separate words, to denote the two separate ontological instances of being “irritated,” and being “offended.” Note also that my emotional state was added for color and stylistic purposes, (remember style? it’s a song about style) and was not an essential part of my argument.
I can teach you to write in English, someday, if you like, and if I have the time; we would simply have to agree on a price, and a lesson schedule. Millions have learned to do it before you, so don’t be daunted by the prospect. It’s a difficult language to master, but worth the effort.
This of yours,
“or did you just shoot yourself in the foot with your BB gun?”
shows basic grammatical competence but little flair, and its easiness betrays a want of imagination. Better is Joyce’s “Do you think you impress me, when you flourish your wooden sword?” Note how he scores two rhetorical points for the price of one, whereas you have barely placed anything at all on the board with your effort.
What, if I may ask, is your first language? It would be helpful to know, from an educational standpoint.
lauredhel: “Are you trying to argue that anyone with a uterus and ovaries aren’t adequately qualified to make political arguments or decisions about reproductive choice policy?”
With respect, I’m trying to argue that people who wish to make arguments should be allowed to make them, and they should be able to be heard, clearly and peaceably, without being shut down by extraneous claims that said arguments are “inherently offensive,” which has nothing to do with anyone’s point. You pays your dime, you takes your choice. As it happens, I don’t seem to agree with you about ‘reproductive choice policy,’ but at no point have I tried to short-circuit your own contrary arguments, or shout them down, and in fact, I would never do that. That was my general point, not any specific point about a particular policy claim, be it about reproductive issues, or whether the moose should be the national emblem of Canada (yes vote over here!).
“This is bullshit (no offence).”
No offence, but it isn’t. And Swift was writing satire, not arguing actual policy. And yes, I’ve read around a wee bit, and even practiced the art of satire myself from time to time. Some people have even told me they thought it was a decent enough job.
For those that are interested in some background to this debate ( sorry mark for the length!!)
Firstly, it seems incredible that some men in 2007, still equate â??childcareâ?? with teenage babysitters or or indeed, a market failure.
It was the McMahon Govt. who introduced legislation to support not-for-profit childcare centres with recurrent funding in 1972, originally overseen by the Dept of Labour. Due to the amount of women in the workforce back then.
It was Keating who extended subsidies to privately operated centres & it was from this time, that the first lot of â??dodgy brothersâ?? moved in. That is – a centre could apply for funding without oversight of the actual kids attending. I remember talking to an auditor of the scheme back in 1997, who said the rorts were unbelievable, but in his opinion, could have been sorted with more inspections etc.
In 1996, after two reports into the sector â?? Howard chose to do away with direct subsidies and subsidise parent fees.
In answer to BBBâ??s question up the thread â?? many community based centres which had operated on recurrent funding much like schools, were totally unprepared for this fundamental change â?? at the time, in some areas, there was actually surplus places â?? the mini-baby boom was a few years around the corner (and the economy was still coming out of recession. ie high unemployment) â?? so many closed their doors â?? as did privately operated centres.
For those centres which didnâ??t close, the rest immediately increased their fees (!!) and started a longish period of transition. This change of funding model, also coincided with enormous changes in the practice of administration across all industries, including the formalisation of workplaces, as a result of the unfair dismissal laws and the farily recent introduction of National Standards in Childcare in ’93 (?)
Before going into that â?? it would be good to put the “good stay at home mum” vs “neglectful working mum” argument to bed – for the record – there are tons of women who are â??stay at homeâ?? mums who use formal childcare (pre-preschool age) to have a break from their children. They are lucky enough to have the income not to work, if they choose, and pay for some “mummy time” away from the kids. Service Access regs. in relation to the CCB mean that working parents are supposed to have first access, but there is no oversight by Govt in relation to this, and people go in and out of the workforce etc.
It is also the case that not all young children attend Long Day Care five days a week â?? many attend 1 or 2 days a week and for short days (and all variations thereof). Some children are however, in long day care from opening to closing, five days a week, which is very stressful for the children, and their parents. Decent maternity/paternity leave and more friendly workplace policies would go along way to helping this situation.
Childcare is now an essential service â?? if childcare workers went on strike for a week â?? the disruption to the economy would be significant.
Back to BBBâ??s question:
â?? fyi – community based means they are managed by boards of management of volunteers, other not-for-profit centres are run by churches and local councils etc.
The paid coordinators of most childcare centres & OOSH’s (out of school hours centres â?? which are the other biggest community based childcare providers) were nearly always senior childcare workers themselves, and most did not have any background in administration. Parent fees were almost always collected and receipted manually and in cash, and most accounts were on a ‘cash book’ system with the Hon. Treasurer putting together basic accounts etc.
Within a few short years these are sort of administration changes that all centres had to undertake:
Computers needed to be purchased.
Staff needed to be trained to use a computer, (as mentioned staff had very few administration skills beyond simple recording of cash receipts and writing of cheques etc â?? and many had never used computers in 1996 etc.)
Very user-unfriendly industry based fee and receipting software packages needed to be purchased – which the coordinator and other staff – needed to be trained on.
All parents needed to register with Centrelink and their CCBâ??s percentage need(ed) to input-ed and updated regularly into the fees package.
Returns to Centrelink needed to be reconciled monthly for the gap funding to be paid in arrears and reconciled against parent accounts (& with casual bookings on the day and absences etc – it’s a job.)
Accounting packages needed to be purchased and all other accounting digitalised and often a bookkeeper employed or contract bookkeeping.
Employment contracts needed to be written for the first time, as did job descriptions etc. (this was happening across the entire economy of course.)
Probation periods needed to be overseen and a formalised complaints system introduced. Other staff recruitment procedures had to be updated including introducing â??Working with Childrenâ?? checks etc.
Updating of policies around food, OH&S, safety, anti-bias, service access, behaviour management and so on, needed to be developed and implemented by the Boards.
Quality Assurance and Accreditation processes also needed to be developed & managed.
With sometimes yearly turnover of volunteer Board of Management personnel, and dependent on the level of competence of the actual Board members, in conjunction with the paid Coordinators â?? many community centres were unable to successfully manage this transition, and many found it easier to â??wind upâ?? operations, in the face of a greatly increased level of â??admin expertise expectationâ?? by both govt and the public.
That there was very little help from the Federal Govt. to help manage this transition isnâ??t very surprising, as this Govt was not interested in supporting community-based organisations, when corporate childcare operators whose main focus is ENTIRELY administratively based, and centralised, were stepping in and taking over these â??apparently failing community centresâ??.
The intimate involvement of Liberal Party players like Peacock, Kroger, Atkinson, Anthony in the big emerging corporate childcare providers, speaks volumes.
There was even a small pool of money earmarked for â??consultantsâ?? provided in the 1996 legislation which was supposed to help in this transition.
But while all these administration changes were being introduced â?? the actual business of childcare â?? the programming, playing, feeding, resting, and providing a nurturing, caring, safe place carried on exactly as before.
And non-profit centres, whose focus has always been on providing the best quality care, were then, and still are preferred by parents – who immediately, and instinctively recognise the differences between a centre run for profit, in contrast to those whose entire mission is to provide quality care.
There is no doubt that many small private owner-operated centres also provide(d) high levels of care, but for the record – private childcare operators resisted the introduction of National Standards in the early 90â??s â?? these were the standards which took â??childcareâ?? out of â??amateur child-mindingâ?? into professional qualified staffing & staff ratios, parent involvement, programming, safety, etc.
Long Day Care, OOSHs, and Family Day Care are regulated by State Governments, I used to remember the NSW Regs. off the top off my head, but will go and refresh in relation to ratios/qualified staff.
btw. Long Day Care Centres must provide a ‘pre-school’ program for 4 year olds & up.
On a personal note – from long experience on Boards of Management of community based centres and Out of School Hours (OOSH) centres – the greatest satisfaction besides implementing all the above changes, was and still is, using the surpluses from a well managed centre to pay for extra staff, paying higher wages across the board, spending more on food & resources and on capital works.
This is straying a bit from the topic, but it seems to me that in debates over abortion, discussions about practical issues are likely to be more fruitful than discussions about the moral philosophy of different people. As I have indicated, I am opposed to abortion unless the mother’s life or health are at risk. It is unlikely that anyone will be able to change my view on this topic. My view is based on two fundamental beliefs. These are the sanctity of human life and the fact that a human life begins at conception. (I suspect that most, and probably almost all, of the debates about this issue relate to the latter of these two beliefs.) However, it might be possible to convince me that the dangers of backyard abortions are significant enough to justify the availability of legal abortion.
Thanks very much for the informative comment, jo!
If you are not already convinced then you are either sadly ignorant of history or this is just a rhetorical device and your stance has nothing to do with the available evidence.
That’s right and if someone points out that they find all manifestations of the forced birth argument offensive or even enraging that is not “shutting down” anyone else’s argument, it is merely describing a state of mind. Nor is broadcasting your intent to leave the field of play any indication that that person has been ‘shut down’. It is more likely to be an oblique appeal for people to go easy. But you pays your dime etc.
Thanks for the offer JPZ, but there is the niggling matter of your qualifications. You are in a competitive market here and there is more to admire in the briefest paragraph from Dr Cat or Kim than there is in these longwinded and selfcongratulatory posts of yours.
Get this straight in 2008. It is manners, not arguments, that are offensive, or that are capable of being ‘offensive’. Arguments by their very nature cannot be offensive…
David Irving? Stormfront? Pastor Peter Curtis on homosexuality… etc… I can think of many “arguments” that are by their very nature offensive, because they manipulate quasi-scientific points to argue for the inherent inferiority or badness of others.
[/Off topic]
Oops, forgot to remove nom de plume from Quah thread
Jo,
thank you, thank you, thank you.
I second that; thanks for that Jo.
I’ll just add in relation to this:
That one of the other priorities of childcare centres was to give places to children with disabilities, to begin the long process of integration. Both of my children, the youngest of whom is profoundly affected by his disability went to a childcare centre for a couple of days a week as a result of this priority. This was undertaken by the centre despite having no specialist qualifications in special needs and they received no additional resources for their efforts. I will always be inordinately grateful that they were prepared to do this.
Wow, that was pretty informative jo. Thanks.
BBB
And yet another example of government regulation being ultimately counter-productive, I would have thought. Rules imposed by the state end up favouring the larger commercial operators who have the administrative wherewithal to cope. Who woulda thunk it? I mean, it’s not as if large commercial firms (in any industry) are often banging on about licensing and quality control. Err…
No doubt there were all manner of well-meaning hangers-on coming up with lines like “We need to mandate high childcare standards!”, “We must protect the vulnerable!”. Worthy sentiments, but often the starting point of very bad public policy.
Thanks again, jo.
Cheers
BBB
Su, I am not aware of exact history of this, although I am aware that is was probably a problem in the past. But things are not as straightforward as you claim. There are a number of reasons for this. First, there is the question about whether or not the people who would otherwise have sought backyard abortions are picked up by the “unless the mother’s life or health are in danger” clause. Second, there is the question about counselling services which I suspect are much more prevalent now than they were previously. Third, there is the issue of effective birth control which I suspect is in much more common use now than it was previously.
Helen: “David Irving? Stormfront? Pastor Peter Curtis on homosexualityâ?¦ etcâ?¦ I can think of many â??argumentsâ?? that are by their very nature offensive, because they manipulate quasi-scientific points…”
Well I know what you mean, but what I’m saying is that arguments like the ones you cite are, (at least for the purposes of arguing) primarily wrong or inaccurate or badly supported, often baldly so, which tends to run them out of the serious marketplace of ideas more efficiently than stopping one’s ears and declaring the topic(s) off-limits because they are “offensive,” which has a nasty tendency of backfiring. Every era has its own particular plagues to deal with, and this zoning of ideas happens to be one in ours, which is why I mentioned it. It’s a matter of making distinctions, but I’ve already gone on too long about this, so I don’t want to become even more of a nuisance. I’m sure you see the difference.
su — [ZAP! POW! BIFF!]
*ooof…*