British Columbia Politicians Day Care Crisis: Necessity or Luxury?

Barry Artiste, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Yep Barry very intersting story. What I can't figure is if they have that much money, why is there a problem in finding daycare, or a babysitter? Yes in China Grandparents are a big factor in watching the little ones, but here in China they also have boarding schools, where they are looked after all the time, so parents can work. There are not many old folks nursing homes, but the ones they have are big, spacious, new and quite comfortable. I have seen them. they put USA ones to shame.

I always hated seeing them put Grandma Evans in the Nursing Home. My Grandma died before my Great Grandmother so perhaps the health issues and the stress are the blame. Granted its nice to have children take care of you when older, but who is to say whether care is better or worse? I have no way to guage that factor. People seem to think family is better, but I have seen where it is not...And besides if you really consider the truth we are all but one big family really anyway.

My story is different Barry. I married my chinese wife who already had two children. They were quite destitute when I found them. No father, who was killed in a Coal Mine Accident in North China. And Chinese men will not marry a widow with children. So my dear wife was in tough shape when I met her. I got the kids in school and pay their way, even though they are not really mine. The tough thing is we can't have our own. Why because the Chinese Government turned my wife off so to speak so she couldn't have anymore children.It is because of the One Child policy. The one child policy is really for parents in the city, but in the country you can have more than one child because the government thinks they will work on the farms growing food. The more the better they think. So although I can't have my own....perhaps it is a blessing. I don't have to go through the crying, and the wiping and changing diapers....My kids are good kids. I am happy and proud of them. If in the USA I think I would be one sorry unhappy camper with kids getting into trouble.

As far as BC daycare a luxury or necessity.....it depends on who it helps. It may help a person who needs a job to watch the kids, forget about junior for awhile. If it is a luxury then the parents should be able to afford it without Governement footing the bill. On the other hand it depends on how they may manage it. If a lot of parents request and they say they will pay for it, without have saying single people or people who already raised their kids pay for it, I think it would be OK.  It's like in New York when Gov. Pataki said old people and people who already raised their kids, need not pay school taxes anymore. It is how they handle the managing of  it. And who knows if it is successful they could turn it into a DayCare Management Program giving classes and intelligent ways to take care of kids, without making tax payers pay for it. Things like that are possible.

Take Care Barry....nice story and thought here.... God Bless.

Rev. Jermano

Barry Artiste, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Barry Artiste, I like this story. "Day Care Crisis", your proposal a new family generation model to avoid day care crises and senior homes isolation.

[Wanna know something else, the reason why East Asians and First Nations Elderly are not frequent residents of Seniors homes? Cause their Friggin Kids take care of their parents who raised them with love and caring, a love and caring which carried over to the children, who in return would be horrified to leave their elderly parents in a Seniors home." ]

My comment will be not very popular, I accept. Dare care was invented during high industrialisation to get the women into work for manufacturing cars etc. Today this work has gone to India-China. The day care centers are a horror for intelligent children adapting to the stupidity of the mass, all sort of diseases are mass transmitted back into the families, as lice, scabbies and so on. The day care centers in the South of France remember me more a prison, but everybody wants it, Appartments are to expensive, to small for children, so outsource them, as later they will us outsource as worthless industrial junk parents. Could we change it, yes we can this article is a base for it:; I am also referring to Hopenow's recent article about FabLabs to replace consumerism by Invention thinking. FabLabs from MIT is a factory laboratory to make out of ideas products with home manufacturing. No bad Idea. I accept almost all women will hate me for my comment, saying this guy has no idea what children mean. I can understand  this point too.

Let's just mention the Prad Pit family,  living with 5 children in Southern france, they get Euro 1500 / $ 2000 per month from the french government for child care. To be rich allows you to have children, isn't that also true?

Barry Artiste, I like this story. It's good stuff. yes, true, in South Asia by and large we still have the joint family system - which is not without its own problems - but children of working women are taken care of at home by some family member or the other or (like in my case, although my in-laws live in the same house but both times they were away for long periods when my children were young) the mother wont start working (if it is affordable to do that) until the children are old enough to start school. it is quite common for low-income poor families for an older sibling to look after the younger ones.

Barry Artiste, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Barry Artiste, I like this story. It's good stuff.

I guess a complete reversal of cultural decay isn't impossible. Well, it's right next to impossible.

When you have a confluence of events like government provided care for children, care for the elderly, care for the poor, care for the out of work, care for everyone, really, you get a bunch of people who don't have to worry about the boring intricacies of life.

Intricacies like caring for your children or your parents because, hell, why should you spend time caring for people the government can care for? And you don't have to save and live a frugal life because if you have hit the genetic lottery and live to be 101 the government gets the tab! It's completely awesome DUDE! You don't have to save for your golden years because the government is already hard at work preparing nice digs for you and the Mrs.

Unfortunately for all of us who live in these completely unsustainable countries (i.e. the West) our chickens, to borrow a phrase from a pastor I've heard on TV, will come home to roost. Eventually our governments are going to have so many obligations (health care, child care, elderly care, welfare, etc.) that they are going to fail. And guess what the knee jerk reaction is going to be - Yup, higher taxes.

Right as we need growth the most our governments are going to jack our taxes off and scare away every businessman in the world. Frick, I live in California and this is already happening. Businesses are leaving and our state government continues to spend money like it grows on trees.

The only solution that has a shot in hell at working is drastically cutting the size of the government and by that I mean our welfare state. No more of this schools raising kids from 7am to 7pm, no more of this having gran'pa 'n' gran'ma living on the government's dime, no more of any of this crap.

I'm serious about this. Just take a look at Wikipedia's page on the US Budget, it's a shocking read. Or you could just look at the charts. Within the next couple of decades the party is going to end. Mandatory spending (spending on welfare programs) is going to outstrip government revenues sometime in the '30s.

It makes me cringe whenever I hear a politician say that our biggest problem is climate change because it is now basically just code for "we must kill growth." Has anyone thought about what will happen to our economy if we dramatically curb CO2? How can we possibly have a country with little to no growth, thanks to draconian cuts on growth from global warming legislation, pay for exploding costs attributable to the welfare system?

I know that your story here is just one story but, as you may have figured out, I feel passionately about this. It is nice to have the government care for those who cannot care for themselves (although that is debatable and I would rather leave that up to community organizations like churches or those groups Obama used to work for).

But we've gone way beyond that at this point and the growth of our welfare state is far greater than our country's economic growth. Unless something drastic happens we're all going to be in for a heaping of pain not too far off into the future.

Barry Artiste, I like this story. It's good stuff. Interesting read ! Our system and traditions are so different. Generally our old people are not sent to senior homes , it is considered ungrateful and shameful. We don't have subsidized anything, oh yes gas, and health care if you pay the social security fee, no welfare or anything of that kind.