Conservatives and non - Child Care

The usual mantra that comes out of the Reform/Alliance/Conservative pseudo-Republican crowd is "let the market decide". More or less, the half-baked thinking that they were applying when they announced their "child care allowance" of $1200 / child boiled down to handing the money to parents and assuming that magically businesses would step to the plate to grab their share of that money by putting place child care spaces.

Unsurprisingly, here we find ourselves coming to the end of the first year of the Conservative government, and no new child care spaces appear to have been created by the much vaunted "marketplace".

The CPC has argued that by handing the money directly to parents they have created "choice" for parents. What kind of choice is $100/month for most urban parents? Especially if they are already near the edge by the time they pay for food, shelter and clothing - in markets where the baseline for childcare in a month is running $600+ / month. Unless the parents have a spare $500 or so to fill in the gap, they're screwed.

I'm not saying that the individual parents involved have "frittered the money away", or anything else like that. The simple reality is that on an individual level, $100 is a pittance. Those who could already afford the child care costs can defray them somewhat, and those who cannot are still stuck in the same old rut, with no way out.

As with the mantra of Bush's "compassionate conservatism", we find our bunch of neo-Rethuglicans saying "a hand up not a hand out", and "the market will provide". Well, the market sure as hell isn't providing, and they've put forward a hand-out whether they want to admit it or not. The only difference is that the only people who really benefit from the "intended" use of this handout are those who could already afford the child care costs in the first place.

Yep, that's PMSH for ya - "Gettin' things done" ... just nobody can ever figure out what "things" is!