New York Times Just Asking: If Universal Child Care Helps Rich People, Should We Have It At All?
Should rich people be able to check out books from the library when they can afford to buy them?
Better watch out for pigs flying around, because the New York Times has discovered class consciousness, or at least is pretending to, as long as it can also snipe at New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani is already delivering on one of his central campaign promises: Bring down the high cost of child care by expanding the city’s universal pre-Kindergarten programs to serve younger children. He plans to make universal daycare available to all the city’s two- and three-year olds by the end of his first term.
But wait, asked the Times this week (gift link): If “universal” really means universal, and free child care will be available not only to minimum wage workers but also to people in well-off neighborhoods like Manhattan’s Upper East Side, doesn’t that mean that rich people will benefit, too? And if everyone benefits, how can that be democratic socialism, huh?
Maybe the Times should have asked upper-middle-class people in Denmark how much they pay out of pocket for the same social services other Danes do. It’s possible that the Times simply can’t reckon with the difficult concept of a “universal” benefit that’s provided to everyone, but also paid for by progressive taxation, so the rich pay more into the system up front.
When the story first went up Tuesday, the headline was plenty bad enough: “Should Rich New Yorkers Get Free Stuff Too? Mamdani Says Yes.” At some point after that, some editor must have decided that a specific “rich people thing” should stand in for all the grotesque excesses of the rich, so the headline was revised to “They Pay $34 for Burgers. Should Their Child Care Be Free?” That’s some spicy class-war synecdoche, New York Times!
Again and again, the story tries to make readers worry that it’s somehow a bad thing that city services for everyone actually reach everyone, because if you’re really a socialist, Mr. Mamdani, aren’t you supposed to make everyone drive a Trabant? Hey, let’s talk about your wife’s nice boots again, too!
Again and again, the story reminds us, the Upper East Side is one of the city’s “wealthiest ZIP codes,” a place where people buy and enjoy expensive things! But it’s also where a new child care center will be opening this fall, with an initial enrollment of 130 three- and four-year-olds, some of whom may even be from families that are well off enough to afford pricey private daycare, and how is that fair to poorer families who will also qualify for the service, but might not be able to access it when it first opens?
You need to read all the way to the 11th paragraph to learn that while the Upper East Side has a lot of rich people, it’s also “more socioeconomically diverse than its stereotype. It is home to many renters and city workers, and it contains the gradations of wealth that make the city’s current affordability crisis so complex.”
And that really is the point of Mamdani’s plan for universal daycare: Make it available to anyone, and it will be broadly supported. It’s the very same logic as any social program that’s designed to be universal. Available to all, and paid for by taxation, so even if rich folks aren’t paying tuition for their kids, they are paying their fair share.
But the Times just can’t help suggesting we should resent that, noting that it’s pretty darn funny that the new socialist mayor of New York “would end up being the mayor to answer the Upper East Side’s pleas for more child care.” In fact, we’re supposed to be astonished to learn a supposedly uncomfortable fact:
If he is able to deliver on his promise to make New York City more affordable for struggling New Yorkers by adding a slew of new, free services available to all, he may end up making it easier for the wealthy to live here, too.
It’s not exactly the stuff of populist campaign slogans.
Heaven forbid: Making life better for everyone? Is that even legal?
Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec tries to explain the idea of “public” to the Times with an analogy, but we aren’t sure she made any impression.
“We already treat essential services as public goods: The F.D.N.Y. answers emergencies, the city collects trash and every child has access to a safe, rigorous education. Child care should be no different,” she said in a statement.
Hold on, you say the rich, who could probably afford to subscribe to concierge fire suppression services, can look forward to FDNY rescuing them from a fire at their ornate mansions, just like the humblest drinker of domestic beer in Staten Island? Maybe we should rethink that, too! And hey, why aren’t we charging middle- and upper-class people to use the library, too?
You’ll need to read fairly far into the story to reach this paragraph, which explains why new public services are most successful when, like Social Security or Medicare, they really do have support from nearly everyone. Yes, plutocrats like David Brooks can afford $34 burgers (plus multiple double Scotches), but the whole point is that they can also afford to pay higher taxes that will spread the benefits farther:
For Mr. Mamdani, the ideal scenario would create a kind of feedback loop: He hopes that broadening the child care services available to all New Yorkers will help him generate support and momentum for his proposed tax hike on those making more than $1 million a year. Those tax dollars would then help to pay for a citywide child care expansion.
Why yes, it’s the same reason that Joe Biden’s expanded Child Tax Credit was available to nearly all parents: Sharply reducing child poverty is a good thing, and if the credits help the middle class — especially if they had lasted beyond the initial few months before the Biden version expired — the benefits will build a constituency that will sustain them politically. Give EVERYBODY eat!
The Times pretends that all sounds terribly suspicious, and notes that some places that are aiming for universal childcare, like California, have made it free for low-income people while letting middle-class folks access it on a discounted basis. In other words, means-testing, which is the surest way to limit a universal service, reduce its constituency, and make it ripe for cutting, since now it’s welfare, a benefit that’s wasted on “those” people. And, of course, means testing requires a level of bureaucracy that will use funds that could better be used to provide the service to more people.
So hell yes, let the people who eat expensive hamburgers have free child care, because they’ll keep the system funded for all the parents who need Hamburger Helper. While we’re at it, let’s also make sure the latter parents have options to get fresh veggies, too!
[NYT (gift link) / America Prospect]
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They assume those rich people will want to use the free service.
Some of them might consider it more prestigious to have nannies, etc.
Also, too, who is the "they" paying $34 for a burger?
Because, and I cannot stress this point enough, IT IS PROBABLY NOT THE TODDLER. You know, the actual human getting the actual "care" part of the "child care."
Show me a toddler with $60 in lunch money and I'll show that toddler a particularly attractive piece of bark dust the tyke might want to trade for.
Fucking NYTimes.