Opinion: Cutting Pentagon pork could fund free childcare in U.S.
By C. Robert Gibson, Al Jazeera America
The cost of childcare is bankrupting America’s parents. But providing free, universal childcare for all parents is easily affordable by simply cutting a small handful of military programs whose absence almost nobody would notice.
Joy Richmond-Smith is a full-time social worker and mother of two small children. Her husband also works full-time, so daily childcare is essential to the couple. In the Boston area, where she lives, Richmond-Smith pays $400 for four days of childcare per week just for her 3-year-old son. If she were to put her 1-year-old daughter in childcare for two of those days, the cost would jump to $500 per week. And if she were to pay for both children to have full-time daycare at that same facility, the cost balloons to $700 per week. Richmond-Smith says her household’s childcare costs are more than double the amount she pays for her mortgage.
“These early years of life and brain development are so important,” she says. “I’m not skimping on childcare, so I’ll pay whatever I need to pay.”
But what about those poor, poor defense contractors that make planes no one wants.
how bout cash incentives for sterilization. get population under control and all other problems become manageable.
Sorry parents and breeders, your kids, your problem! You wanted them, it’s your responsibility to take care of them, it’s called sacrifice. Maybe you should have thought of this before you got knocked up, you know, discuss, do a little planning, check your finances and budget for 18 years of family costs…. Or were you just so “baby crazy” that you couldn’t wait to start spitting them out, regardless of the consequences? Well guess what? Kids cost a lot of money! And you know what’s cheaper than day care? Downsizing so you can stay home and actually raise YOUR kids yourself! Hey, kids are beautiful and amazing, if you want a family, that’s your choice but PLEASE plan carefully and prepare so you can do right by those children and the rest of the planet!!!
fromform and ifiwereincharge should re-read(or read for the first time) ‘a modest proposal’ by jonathan swift. Bon appetite’
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut-government-waste-8-5-trillion-pentagon-142321339.html
Of course Al Jazeera would advocate further decreasing our military capability! That aside, I agree with If I Were In Charge. If you decide to have kids, YOU are responsible for them. Not the government, YOU. I’m so fed up with people behaving irresponsibly & then expecting the government (us taxpayers) to bail them out.