A story in Sunday’s New York Times tells of a North Carolina couple who have two young children.
Their childcare costs are $2,000 a month.
$2,000 a month is more than their mortgage payment and a third of their income.
One of the childcare workers who takes care of one of their boys can’t live on the $10 dollars an hour she is paid, so she is a part-time barista at Starbucks.
“I’ve been an administrator for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said the director of the child care center. “Directors are at the point where they’re willing to hire anyone who walks through the door. The children deserve far more than that, and the families deserve far more than that.”
But if we use the Covid19 plague as a metaphor, none of us are safe until all of us are safe.
The recent revelations that Moderna is purposely keeping those in the global south and the poor from access to the Covid vaccine is a story of more than a single profit-driven drug company.
It is the way the system works.
Scientists tell us that as long as the poor and the global south remain unvaccinated, new variants can emerge that threaten us all.
In the same way, we can’t be forced to choose between the old and the young.
Republicans and a handful of Democrats are keeping even the modest Biden proposals from coming to a vote.
The Biden bill would cap families’ child care expenses at 7 percent of their income, offer subsidies to child care centers, and require the centers to raise wages.
A version before the House would cost $250 billion, which is small potatoes in terms of federal spending.
The bill contains $200 billion for early child care, the most federal dollars for child care ever spent by the feds.
Republicans are opposed and say federal dollars to pay for kids like those in North Carolina smells too much like socialism.
Really?
I say a system that can’t provide for both old folks and children has no humanity.
These are the same Republicans and Democrats that oppose expansion of Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision.
And oppose lowering the eligibility age for Medicare coverage.
They want to continue to block Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices.
There are those who say we can’t afford to do it all, in spite of the country’s wealth.
Even some liberals say we have to choose between caring for the elderly and our kids.
I’m reminded of the movie Soylent Green.
It starred Charlton Heston and was made in 1973. But the story takes place in 2022. Global warming and pollution have forced the political leaders to find food for the masses and come up with a product they call Soylent Green.
The ingredients of Soylent Green are a secret until Heston, a tough homicide detective uncovers the secret.
Soylent Green is people.
But the elderly aren’t Soylent Green and we don’t eat our young.
In a country as rich as this one, where multi-billionaires are taking recreational rocket trips to inner space, we don’t have to choose between providing for both the young and the elderly.