9 Reasons Why America Is a Terrible Place to Raise Kids -- By Alex Henderson / AlterNet
The middle class is facing a full-fledged economic assault, making parenthood harder.
Below are 10 [sic – must be that modern math] major reasons why the U.S., more and more, has become a terrible place to raise a family unless you’re rich.
[Starting off with the type of class warfare rhetoric that is so popular among the progressives, they seem to always forget those progressive politicians and union bosses who became multi-millionaires on the backs of the middle class – although they produce little or nothing of actual value and act mainly as parasites living off the life-force of their chosen host.]
1. The High Cost of Childcare
American families are facing a variety of rising costs in 2015, from food to housing. But one of the biggest expenses of all is turning out to be childcare. A 2014 report by Child Care Aware of America found that daycare could be as high as $14,508 per year for an infant and $12,280 per year for a four-year-old. And that is, in a sense, more troubling for new parents than the high cost of college tuition: while that expense is 17 or 18 years in the future, daycare is an expense working parents face right away.
[After unions decimated the American industrial machine with their nonsensical work rules and continuous increases in wages, benefits, and pensions without a corresponding increase in productivity, they turned to the public sector – namely schools and the government itself. Unfortunately, we can see that union-influence on the schools and the government has mirrored what they have done with the industrial sector and they need someplace else to compensate for declining union influence.
What better way than to extend “education” into pre-schools or to offer unionized babysitting with costs being shifted from one pocket (the taxpayer’s direct payment) to another (the taxpayer’s taxes). No to mention it was the progressives with their social policies and sexual politics that created the largest cohort of single-parent families that necessitate the need for childcare. Progressive mismanagement of our economy has inflated the cost of all goods and services to the point where it has become less feasible for mothers to stay home to care for those children. Hence, the societal cost shifting.]
2. Stagnant Wages Combined With Ever-Increasing Cost of Living
A 2014 report by the Center for American Progress offered little reason to be optimistic about family life in the U.S. The Center found that “investing in the basic pillars of middle-class security—child care, housing and healthcare, as well as setting aside modest savings for retirement and college—cost an alarming $10,600 more in 2012 than it did in 2000.” To make matters worse, the Center reported, incomes for most Americans remained stagnant during that 12-year period.
[Beyond noting that Center for American Progress is a progressive think tank, it appears the progressives are willing to note the dysfunction, disparity, and disproportion in wages and the cost of living, but unwilling to assign the blame to the progressive politicians who are damaging our country with their wealth redistribution schemes which suck money out of the pockets of Americans to purchase political power, here and abroad. How many people notice that there is a disproportionate amount of economic pain applied to the private sector when the public sector is protected by contracts and funded by taxes?]
3. Public Education Is Struggling, and Private Schools Are Unaffordable
The economic meltdown of September 2008 has been bad news for American families on multiple levels. When families are struggling financially and have less money to spend, that harms a variety of businesses. And lower income also means less tax revenue, which harms public education because public education is funded with income taxes as well as sales and property taxes. In 2014, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that at least 35 states had less funding per student than they did before the Great Recession—and 14 of those states had cut per-student funding by over 10%. Some parents will send their kids to private schools, but only if they can afford to: in 2014, the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) found that annual tuition for private high schools in the U.S. ranged from an average of $13,500 in the southern states to $29,000 in the western states to over $30,000 in the northeastern states.
[Yes, public education is struggling, as a direct consequence of political intervention in the educational system. Money is being bled off from the classrooms to pay administrators, teachers, and other unionized workers when it isn’t being spent on the special interests who are busy selling high-priced goods and services to the educational sector. How can you justify a $50 textbook when the material hasn’t changed for centuries, publishing is relatively cheap, and that the only thing being copyrighted and sold is the “collection of factual items” owned by the textbook publisher. Of course, progressives treat history as a dynamic process, subject to change with the regime in power and the political agenda they are selling.
Has anybody noted that the unions are fighting private schools and their hybrid equivalent, the charter schools, tooth and nail – because the unions believe that the students belong to the public and their education should be paid for by taxpayers. The idea that some of the tax revenue computed using the ADA (Average Daily Attendance) should flow to non-union enterprises is an anathema. Of course private schools are costly, they charge more because they can be exclusive and provide a better education for fewer students.They are selective and this exclusivity translates into higher tuitions an “voluntary” donations.]
4. Astronomical College Tuition
During the Fathers Knows Best/Leave It to Beaver era Republicans romanticize, a college degree practically guaranteed a middle-class income for families. College was much more affordable in those days, but now, a college education is more expensive than ever—tuition costs have more than doubled since the 1980s, and there is no guarantee that a four-year degree or even a masters will lead to the type of job one needs to support a family. A college degree costs more now but delivers less. In the 1950s and 1960s, college graduates working in low-paying, dead-end service jobs was unheard of; now, it’s common. And someone making $8 or $9 an hour is going to have a very hard time paying off a six-figure student loan debt and starting a family.
[Forgetting politics and the romanticization of life in the 50s and 60s, the cold, hard truth is that college-educated teachers always looked down their noses at the industrial arts and trades. They mostly believed everyone should have a college education regardless of their ability or dislike for formalized learning environment.
And, let us not forget, colleges are big business. UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) is a five billion dollar enterprise. Continually building new facilities. Continually expanding their government research grants to support salaries and infrastructure, even if some of that research is bogus – turning up the frequency knob from 2.0 to 2.5 and leaving 2.5 to 3.0 for the next funded study
How many people consider that the proximate cause of this expansion in tuitions and costs is due to the political interference in education and educational financing. Whereas student loans were offered to almost anybody until each institution was selling loans along with their curricula. How many people know that the progressives “nationalized” the student loan business and now control over $1 trillion in slowly defaulting debt?
Not everybody needs college. I went to a junior high school in that era – when we had a print shop (Mr. Helsley), an electric shop (Mr. Paden), a wood shop (Mr. Silvera, a metal shop (Mr. Barber), and drafting (Mr. Cavanaugh) and I learned more advanced mathematics (algebra and calculus) from Mr. Paden then in my academic track science and mathematics classes. Where students who were not stellar academicians, knew how to work electrical formulas to design a circuit. Could this been part of the dropout problem?
Of course, now we replace rather than repair and the entire industrial nature of our economy has been impacted by expert systems, robotics, an outsourcing. What I am saying is the educational system created much of the original drop out problem itself. You will notice that all of my shop teachers were men – men who administered discipline with a paddle when necessary. No running to lawyers with lawsuits. Teachers did not fear students, students obeyed teachers.]
5. The High Cost of Healthcare
Healthcare is a colossal expense for families in the U.S. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 has brought about some desperately needed improvements: for example, health insurance companies can no longer deny health insurance to a child who has a preexisting condition, such as Type 1 diabetes. But the ACA, which was greatly influenced by health insurance lobbyists, needs to be expanded considerably before it offers families the types of protections that are the norm in France or Sweden—and Republicans in Congress continue to fight Obamacare every step of the way. Raising a healthy child is still much easier in Europe than in the U.S.
[Healthcare costs are a scam made more so by the government’s intervention into the healthcare system. Setting reimbursement rates arbitrarily low so physicians need to be creative with their coding to earn a decent return on their time. Refusing to do bulk purchases of pharmaceuticals lest it dry up campaign contributions from industry lobbyists. There were not GOP members present when the Affordable Care Act was created by progressives, their progressive foundations, and industry lobbyists. Nor were amendments allowed to influence the legislation. This was the progressives nationalizing one-sixth of the American economy and insuring it would be administered with the same effectiveness and efficiency as other governmental projects.
The progressives said that we would see efficiencies and the elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse that would result in lower healthcare costs. They lied. If they wanted to control waste, fraud, and abuse, it could have been done decades ago with a simple computer program. And, it was the progressive socialist democrats that colluded with the industry lobbyists they now cite – not the GOP.
The socialists and communists that participate in the healthcare system want a single-payer system under the compete control of the government; with a government dossier on every citizen and the ability to control their daily activities.These disingenuous progressives mention France and Sweden, but fail to mention England and Canada where socialized medicine is a failing nightmare.]
6. The Decline of Organized Labor
In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has been calling for a 20-week abortion ban in his state and reminding anti-abortion groups that he has a history of defunding Planned Parenthood. But if Walker is really concerned about families, he should reconsider his opposition to organized labor. It is no coincidence that when roughly 35% of American private-sector workers belonged to unions in the mid-1950s, it was much easier to start a family: collective bargaining promoted economic stability for the middle class. But in 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the unionization rate in the U.S. was a mere 6.6% for private-sector workers and 11.1% when private-sector and public-sector workers were combined. The BLS also reported that non-union workers were only earning 79% of what unionized workers were earning. At a time when union membership in the U.S. is the lowest it has been in almost 100 years, Walker just made Wisconsin a right-to-work state, which will bring union membership down even more.
[Organized labor is part organized crime and part socialism/communism. Unions are about power, money and control. They use thuggery to discourage dissent. And, it is these unions that are continuing to corrupt politics to the point where the consumer/taxpayer no longer is represented by their union-selected, union-financed politician – beholden to nobody except the union and the fat cats that finance elections and deliver voter turnout.
Look at the history of Planned Parenthood and see their involvement with eugenics and selectively eliminating the “undesirables” through birth control and abortion. The unions are afraid of Scott Walker – especially when he might be the next President of the United States. Walker made union dues voluntary. He made his state competitive with the surrounding states by forcing the unions to prove to their membership they provide value or suffer a membership loss. The real truth is that unions promote mediocrity and stifle competitiveness.]
7. U.S. Still Lags Behind in Paid Maternity Leave
The U.S. is the only country in the developed world that still lacks mandatory paid maternity leave. That is quite a contrast to Europe, where government-mandated paid maternity leave ranges from 81 weeks in Austria to 47 weeks in Italy to 42 weeks in France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the Republic of Ireland. Meanwhile, in the Pacific region, paid maternity leave ranges from 18 weeks in Australia to 58 weeks in Japan. Paid maternity leave is strictly optional in the U.S., where according to the organization Moms Rising, 51% of new mothers have no paid maternity leave at all.
[This is pure socialism/communism. If a company wants to offer perks to employees to attract and/or retain workers, they may offer maternity leave. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that allows the government to impose conditions on workers other than those necessary for safety and welfare. And, how many people consider that the disparity between the wages of a man and a women may include the fact that women are more expensive to retain as employees and that they can have significant gaps in attendance that result in additional costs or inefficiencies.]
8. Stagnant Minimum Wage
If the U.S.’ national minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be much higher than its current rate of $7.25 an hour. President Barack Obama has proposed raising it to $10.10 per hour, while economist Robert Reich favors raising it to $15 an hour nationally. Raising the minimum wage would hardly be a panacea for American families, but it would be a step in the right direction. However, even Obama’s proposed $10.10 per hour is unlikely to come about as long as far-right Republicans are dominating both houses of Congress.
[Another bogus issue. Minimum wage was designed for people in entry-level and temporary jobs. The idea that burger-flippers and French-fry dippers were careers that demanded a living wage to support a family of four is ludicrous. Wages are determined by supply and demand, not government fiat. Imagine a world where someone does get 15/hour to flip-burgers – are you willing to pay $10 for that hamburger ($40 for a family of four) or are you going to visit the fast food place less? Is the employer going to reduce staffing and increase the workload – you bet.
Minimum wages are a progressive campaign device for the illegal aliens and minorities who seem to gravitate towards these jobs due to low skill levels or the lack of local opportunity. People in California can see progressive idiocy in action. Where community activists are fighting big-box stores that bring jobs and wages into a community – for the sole reason they are not unionized. Cutting off your nose to spite your face is an appropriate analogy because the stores move to the neighboring community and suck needed tax revenue out of the community; thus necessitating increasing taxes.]
9. Outsourcing and the Loss of American Manufacturing Jobs
Thanks to globalization, neoliberal economics and disastrous trade deals such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the U.S. has been steadily losing manufacturing jobs for decades. A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that in 2011, globalization had depressed wages for non-college-educated Americans by 5.5%. And now, both Republicans and the Obama administration are pushing for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free-trade deal that opponents have been calling “NAFTA on steroids.” Resulting in more manufacturing jobs being outsourced, TPP will make life even worse for blue-collar families in the U.S.
[Who forced industries to move offshore: the corrupt unions. Who made these bad trade deals: progressive politicians. Neoliberal = new progressives.]
Source: 9 Reasons Why America Is a Terrible Place to Raise Kids | Alternet
