Funded Childcare Promises Freedom but it will Bind us to Industry
Canada wants both spouses to work in order to increase GDP since our economy requires continual growth. This also creates a third job because one spouse leaves the home and hires a nanny / day care to watch the kids.
At one point, the spouse who left the home (usually the wife) will realize: I am leaving the home to work outside the home because caring for my children is not adequate work; while at the same I am employing someone to watch my kids.
This realization should lead to the following conclusion: our society exploits the idea of freedom to work away from home in order to grow GDP and deny the biological urge to care for our children. At the same time, it creates jobs of non-parent caretakers of kids, lauding the goodness of this career.
If caring for other people's kids is good, why not ours?
Additionally, offering a $10 a day daycare will require taxes to fund the salaries of non-parents caretakers. This means that the additional GDP growth from a double-income family will eventually create the need for taxes to support this structure, further cementing the need to work.
Work to produce capital does not equal freedom per se. It might in some circumstances. But in the situation I described above, the "goodwilled" enticements to work outside the home uses "freedom" to exploit our desire for it, while at the same time tying us to industry—even if our biology desires to be present with our children.
For some, I grant that cheaper childcare will change their life. Single parents in particular will benefit. However, why not simply fund parents who use childcare through a targeted application? Or increase child benefits? That sort of action would strengthen families directly and in effect fund a stay-at-home parent.
The answer is clear: no GDP growth. The reason why we have raised the bar on immigration levels is because we need more people to work in order to grow GDP. That runs society. And so our leaders feel pressured to find ways to make the economy better; and better means bigger.
And bigger is not a moral category but a problem that modern technique can solve. In fact, nowadays in order to allow women to work without impediment doctors regularly prescribe synthetic hormones to sterilize women temporarily to avoid the natural process of fertility.
The natural function of a woman's body is impeded by medicine. Granted, this gives a kind of freedom. But it also creates a pressure in industry in which women feel as though they disappoint their peers if they get pregnant since that will draw them away from productive activity for a business. If you don't think that happens, ask a woman in business who has had children.
The point: the freedom to work more in order to create more capital does not equal freedom. Kapital macht frei is a lie. And yet it's not capital's fault, but rather the way in which we have couched freedom in economic activity rather than a more humane category that includes but is not exclusive with economic activity.
Note: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claims that the government's childcare policy reduces the costs while "creating jobs, growing the middle class, and giving our kids the best start in life." It is clear that creating jobs and growing the middle class in economic terms is a basic goal.
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