A simple question on child care should have elicited a boilerplate response. Instead, it further revealed delusion.
Conservative opposition to social safety nets is nothing new. But, as daycare costs continue to soar and the US Surgeon General warns that parents are dangerously overwhelmed, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle appear to agree that at least something needs to be done to help address the crisis.
Yet when faced with a simple question on the issue this week, Donald Trump and JD Vance stumbled profoundly, prompting many to wonder whether the Republican ticket had even bothered to think about child care affordability—again, one of the most acute problems facing the US economy—at all.
Just take a look. Here was Trump at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, rambling through an incomprehensible, half-baked theory that foreign tariffs will solve the problem, easy-peasy—all while dodging the question of specific pieces of legislation he’d push to help make child care more affordable. Meanwhile, economists widely agree that sweeping tariffs would severely hurt world trade.
Their plan is the free market will fix it. What they as the government have to do is nothing, get out of the way, let the problem fester, and that way the free market will come up with a solution. That's their ideology.
Yes but the only problem with that is the reason we have regulation was the free market. It's like the economic liberals that call themselves libertarians. Claiming that all our economic problems are because of regulations. And don't get me wrong there absolutely are regulations that are bad that need to be changed. But the horrors of even the worst regulation. Are nothing compared to the horrors of unregulated unfettered capitalism.
Unfortunately though for too many Americans are completely brainwashed to the point where. You could make a series of unintelligible grunts, shout MERICA! Free market! Yeeeeeehaaaaw! And have just made a convincing policy platform.
They'd have to care that there are crises to bother trying to fix them. Trump only cares about his personal problems and I'm pretty sure Vance is some kind of robot with bad AI who will just stop charging himself if things get too bad.
“One of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare is to make it so that grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more,” Vance said at a Turning Point Action event in Mesa, Arizona, on Wednesday. “Or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more. If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending in daycare.”
Yeah, good luck with that. My parents dumped me on their parents, then were conveniently absentee when I struggled with child care. It's just another reason I'm so vocal about certain things needing to be socialized, like housing, medical, water, utilities, food, decent basic clothing, etc, and funding it by returning to 1950's era tax policies.
Also, these days, a lot of grandparents can't afford to retire.
On top of that, it would be ridiculous to expect them to take over childcare duties rather than enjoy their retirement. If they wanted to, fine. If they wanted to go travel the world or whatever they can afford to do, they've earned it.
Grandma and grandpa won't be able to, they're not retiring because pensions effectively no longer exist, we've had 40 years of declining real wages, and they didn't know what a 401k was or save in it for much of their careers.
They one a single plan. To (re)gain power, no matter what damage is done. These issues that the press and voters keep talking about are just inconvenient sidelines.
Their plan for any given crisis will be: "pay corporations more money".
These are business people pushing the same old trickle-down agenda. Why they continue to be able to convince so many poverty-stricken people to vote against their own best interests is beyond me, but there is no magic in the platform.
Corporations > people, and if the people just gave them a little bit more, all the problems will go away. They promise.
Vance explicitly said it in his "let grandpa and grandma help out" speech.
He suggested that "you should not need a 6 year degree to open a daycare"... Which you dont. He also referred to "resources wasted on childcare".
So his message to parents is "we will lower the quality" and thinks people in childcare "jobs" could serve the economy better if they do other things while the retired post menstrual women should watch the kids.
But as the Ohio senator has oft proven to do, it was his suggestion that grandparents pitch in that, once again, gave the impression of being wildly out of touch.
I'll just dig up their corpses, three of whom were dead before my birth. That's gonna be great for a child's development.
“One of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare is to make it so that grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more,” Vance said at a Turning Point Action event in Mesa, Arizona, on Wednesday. “Or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more. If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all the resources that we’re spending in daycare.”
My family lives 1600 miles from me. I'm sure they won't mind making a trip to watch the kids for the afternoon so I can take a nap.
Repubs have no plans for the future outside of targeting their perceived enemies. This has been obvious for quite some time. Their constituents are completely misinformed and incapable of critical thought.
That is less than a week of daycare in our area. Ignoring thinking about college, daycare is the only cost that matters in terms of our kid. Everything else is pocket change, comparatively speaking. And the $5k dependent FSA amount is a total joke.
Yeah, Drumpf is too old for office and can't understand how money works imo. It's not even the Dictatorship On Day One deal. Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte could, at least, solve a great many of their people's problems. Drumpf and Vance aren't even doing that. It's a bit exhausting having almost every U.S. politician cramming into the D-Party, but after this whole fiasco, it'll split up.