New Mexico becomes first state to offer universal child care

No. It’s not. Multiple states have tried this and stopped it.

Edit: misread it. Thought it was health care.

This will still have the same fate.

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first state to offer universal child care

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you mean before school age?

They can have at it - as long as it’s NM state taxpayer money only

Free to try as long as zero federal funding is used.

It was posted here last week.

I say it is good. This is what people here are supposed to be for: a state deciding what is best for the education of its children. If you don't like it, don't live in New Mexico. If you live in New Mexico and you don't like it, vote accordingly.

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Instead of creating an expensive new program, why not actually address the underlying cause of why childcare is so expensive?

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Out of curiosity... what IS the underlying cause of expensive childcare?

And, like anything else government gets its mitts on, it’ll be for shite with massive cost overruns.

But if that’s what the good people of New Mexico want and vote for, more power to them.

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The state will decide everything and it will be a shot show in the end

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My prediction: it will create an increase in child care costs. And when the state stops paying, the inflationary rate will remain.

Oil and gas surplus they set aside. $10B.

There’s 112k kids under 5. If half of them (and 0 kids over 5 get any benefits) at a cost to the government of $8000/child, that will be roughly 5% of the surplus that’s been allocated in year one. Considering they are also allocating millions for worker recruitment and new childcare facilities, I think year 3 might be about right for the program becoming insolvent. Might make it to year 5.

More likely, it’s turns into a sliding scale with the new scale being greatly inflated from the old scale.

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As of 2024 the going rate that the state pays the childcare centers is $500 full time for school age and $1,075 full time for a toddler.

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1) the government is worse than an 8 year old at predicting enrollment in free plans.

2) those rates of reimbursement aren’t sustainable for larger percentages of enrollees in a class. In other words, those paying full price are subsidizing the government rate kids (just like Medicaid).

So this will end up bankrupting childcare centers as their enrollment from the universal students increases as a percentage of their total enrollment.