AnonymousActuary
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User ID: 2163
AnonymousActuary
24d ago
I don't think you are thinking of this right - you aren't adequately considering the costs of a job vs being a stay at home parent.
Let's say you have two kids and are trying to send them to even a decent quality daycare. That's $2k a month easy (vast understatement in a lot of cities). Then there's gas and depreciation on the car you drive to work as well. And all of that is net dollars you are spending. So let's call it $24k plus $3k gas/depreciation a year to get to your job.
Now maybe you make ok money, $50k or something. Now that gets taxed, and if your spouse makes similar it's hitting the highest marginal rate of the two of you, but if you qualify for this it isn't getting taxed a whole lot, let's call it you net $42k a year. So even with all the daycare and everything you are making a bit of money, $15k a year, minimum wage ish. This is a pretty shit deal, but you are at least net positive.
Now if a $9k subsidy comes along, suddenly instead of netting 15k to have your kids sick all the time, get poor quality care particularly <1/2/3 (depending on the study), spend your days sitting in traffic and working a meh job, you can net 9k to do none of that. That's a pretty tempting offer.
obviously all numbers approximate, but hopefully it gets the idea.
Now in some ways this subsidy already exists, it's called "married men make more money than anyone else" for a variety of reasons and let their wives stay home".
then the tradeoff of federal dollars is even more direct?
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