I no longer believe in capitalism. At all.

[Jon Miller]

I don't think that disagrees with what I'm saying at all. Confirms it, more - I'm not arguing that daycare is necessarily superior, but that it is as good, and better in different ways. I prefer a daycare to a nanny because you know more what you are going to get, as you have a lot more parents to get 'reviews' from, and it is likely cheaper unless you have 3+ kids. I think both have advantages, outside of cost issues - but explicitly saying nannies are better is flat-out wrong (as explicitly saying that stay-at-home mom is better is also wrong). All three have advantages and disadvantages and the individual situation is relevant.

I would agree with that.

I was just surprised at how cheap Nannies were (at least in other countries, daycare is extravagant in every country).

What I disagreed with at the end was on those who have training being better child care providers than those who don't. It isn't like engineering or IT that way, but more like musical performance.

JM

[snoopy369]

Umm, musical performance is some of both just like childcare. You think really good musicians don't have advanced degrees oftentimes? Practicing your instrument alone is insufficient, you need to learn about music theory to be really good at it, particularly at teaching others. Same for educating children - you can't just magically learn how to teach small children by doing it, you have to do it AND learn how to do it. Knowing how children learn and develop is very important.

[Jon Miller]

Really good musicians don't have to have degrees/etc.

They can get them, sure, just like child providers can.

And a lack of ability can be made up for by education.

But it is entirely possible to be amazing and not have degrees/etc.

JM
(I would actually say that musicians are even more dependent on degree type things than childcare, there is NO evidence that I have ever seen that increased education requirements for child care providers results in better better child care.)

[Jon Miller]

Knowing how children learn and develop is very important.

Show me the evidence.

JM

[Aeson]

Certainly possible, but socialization in a group setting (being used to sitting in a circle, for example, and listening to someone teach) is not really possible without a structured environment. You also get over separation anxiety much more easily, and get used to doing things in a school environment. I see kids even at 1 having a harder time adjusting to the daycare environment because they sat out that first year - at 5 it's much the same.
See: http://www.livestrong.com/article/55...nding-daycare/

Socialization is just as possible out of school. Like I said, I always had more socialization outside of school than in it. If you think that structured socialization is more important (I think relying on it too heavily has a negative towards individuality which I value higher than conformity) you could sit your kids in a circle while you teach, and if you don't have enough kids, coordinate with other stay at home parents.

As for separation anxiety, it's mostly an individual thing, and usually takes a couple days to get over. Not a big deal. One of my brothers (of the 3 of us that were very close in age and nature of our childhood) had a problem with it going into kindergarten, and it lasted all of a few days. After 5 minutes I (and everyone else in the kindergarten class, very few if any of which would have had anything like a real daycare) was ready to migrate to another continent.

This isn't imaginary science here, Aeson. This is real, basic social immunology (which my wife has a Ph.D. in, so I do have some real knowledge here). Your body will react to each different strain of various viruses/bacteria/fungi as it is exposed to them, and then will gain some basic immunity to them. This is why kids get sick with all sorts of things while as an adult you get a lot less... each kid has to be exposed to the various strains of germs and develop the memory cells to better resist future infections. Kids that are in daycare are exposed to more of these diseases than kids that are not, because not only are they interacting with more children at once (both in their class, and in the school) but they are also interacting with kids from different neighborhoods typically. You miss less school in the first few years of elementary school if you've been in a daycare because you have fewer new things to get exposed to - you still see some, like you say the flu virus for example, but you also miss some things other kids have that you already were exposed to (including some of the older flu viruses, which certainly still hang around).
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/he...childhood.html

If you really wanted to do right by your kid then you'd raise them in a third world country with livestock sharing the home environment ... so they'd be exposed to more, earlier.

Again, you're ignoring that the child can be exposed to all these things anyways, and often much more, by not sitting around 8 hours a day in the same environment every day with the exact same kids. A stay at home parent can have every bit as much of this interaction they want, and more than with daycare if they really care to promote it.

Lower ratio is better in some ways and not in others. Having a higher number of teachers is also better in some ways - you have teachers with different strengths, for example. My wife is good at science and math, I'm good at math and history, but neither of us is really very good at music or art. Which of us is going to give our son a good foundation in art?

The difference in strengths as applies to a child 1 to 5 is minimal. In that situation the only thing that really matters is to have a caring nature and the ability to communicate. Virtually all adults have the intellectual facilities to sound out words, use flash cards, do basic math, or read children's books.

For art, a child isn't going to have any difference in experience between fingerpainting or going to a gallery with their parent or anyone else based on the adult's knowledge of art. If there is a difference it would be based on the adult's personality and temperament, which could just as easily favor the parent or the daycare worker.

Am I going to have to have my sister come over regularly to give him music lessons?

You could certainly hire someone to do so if you felt it was important. There were stay at home parents in the community which taught music lessons from their home. This is part of the community potential of stay at home parenting you seem to be ignoring.

On the other hand, the daycare has an art teacher, a music teacher, and the teachers in his class have various strengths as well. You still have a very low ratio - at most 5 to 1 for his class, and usually 4 to 1. We're not talking a 30 to 1 public school here (that would be way cheaper for one!). There's still a lot of personal attention, and on top of that he learns from the other kids - I can see that already, learning to wave from one kid (because he waves in the same manner), learning to say a word from another.

Again, the social interactions are possible outside of daycare. Just because you can't seem to accept this reality doesn't mean it's not true.

I don't know why you hate structured school environments - perhaps you had poor ones - but they don't need to treat everyone like clones, and good ones don't. They recognize that everyone does need to learn the same things while also realizing different people learn differently, and adapting sufficiently to meet both needs.

I don't hate them. I think the actual implementations we have in US public schools are generally poor learning environments relative to what is feasible for a society of our affluence, especially for someone with abnormal learning abilities (+ or -). I think that home schooling can actually provide a better learning environment in this regard with a dedicated parent. (Not saying that all home schooling will be better. Just that the possibility exists that it can be.) This isn't true of all schools of course, which of course highlights why I choose "feasible" in the previous statement. It's obvious that there is a lot of room for improving our public schools in general.

In my case my schooling was 12 years (8 hours a day, 200 days a year) of essentially wasted time. The value of the structure itself, which actually does have potential for value, was lost on me. It actually became a negative because it was creating an association between this structure and such depressingly repetitive and uninteresting curriculum. The value I learned about structure thus came mostly from my parents and nature, and was countered by my schooling. As such I don't view it very highly.

That's absolutely not true. Start with the fact that a young kid in daycare (1 or 2) learns primarily from the toys he plays with (hand-eye coordination, for example). You can buy all of the toys the daycare has... if you have a lot of money. But most people have a smaller selection by far - and thus the exposure to new toys in the daycare is valuable. On top of that you can buy all of the toys you'd buy otherwise, and have all of the daycare's toys in addition... books the same way, you have a larger selection, plus you find out about things you may not have known about. Art materials are more freely available; you certainly could have all of that stuff, but my point is about efficiency - it would cost you a lot more and you'd get less use out of them. The proper reading level should be found at both daycare and home - an involved parent will ensure that if nothing else (if your student at 3 can read, like I could, you just make sure the daycare lets him read from the 5 year olds' room).

The need for toys for learning is minimal. Some few toys are designed well to stimulate fun and physical/mental exercise, but you really only need one or two of those to address all the developmental needs a child will have. Too much of a selection of toys is derogatory as it can create a dependency on having variation provided rather than create it. A good share of the "toys" my brothers and I had growing up we made, even at a very young age. Even at 3-5 every stick, every rock, and whatever of the wildlife we could capture was a "toy". Before that I don't remember much at all, but doubt there would be a significant developmental difference between having 3 toys and 5 toys as a 2 year old. Having an impetus towards creating our own towns rewarded innovative behavior, planning, logical reasoning, physical dexterity, an industrious nature, and in some cases even math/geometry skills ... and it was all fun.

Even if you disagree here though, your point just comes back down to an economic difference (which has already been noted exists).

Like it or not, nearly everyone must spend significant time in a structured environment during their lives, whether at school or at work, or likely both; starting as a baby to learn how to fit in and be your own person while also meshing well with others makes it much easier in the long run.

This is again going to happen in any healthy home environment. Which will of course include leaving the home. "Stay at home" parenting doesn't mean you're stuck in a box. It simply means you have a lot of free time to do whatever it is you think is in your child's best interests. That includes taking your child out into public places where they can be exposed to all that society has to offer.

I certainly am not going to say that everyone must go to daycare, or that it's always better or for any particular child. What I am saying is that daycare has benefits, and the claim that it is always better to be a stay-at-home mom is incorrect.

What you claimed in the post I responded to was much less well qualified:

"I'd always prefer a good daycare to raising my kid(s) at home. The difference is really telling when you look at kids in kindergarten or first grade. Even seeing kids coming into daycare at 1 year old (mine just entered the next older classroom, and a lot of kids seem to enter daycare at 1), there's a huge gap - in socialization, in learning, in being able to cope with new situations."

Nowhere did you mention that there are benefits to stay at home parenting, or even acknowledge that there exist options for stay at home parents to do essentially the exact same thing in specific cases. (You still are denying several of the obvious ones that exist.)

[Aeson]

Certainly possible, but socialization in a group setting (being used to sitting in a circle, for example, and listening to someone teach) is not really possible without a structured environment. You also get over separation anxiety much more easily, and get used to doing things in a school environment. I see kids even at 1 having a harder time adjusting to the daycare environment because they sat out that first year - at 5 it's much the same.
See: http://www.livestrong.com/article/55...nding-daycare/

Socialization is just as possible out of school. Like I said, I always had more socialization outside of school than in it. If you think that structured socialization is more important (I think relying on it too heavily has a negative towards individuality which I value higher than conformity) you could sit your kids in a circle while you teach, and if you don't have enough kids, coordinate with other stay at home parents.

As for separation anxiety, it's mostly an individual thing, and usually takes a couple days to get over. Not a big deal. One of my brothers (of the 3 of us that were very close in age and nature of our childhood) had a problem with it going into kindergarten, and it lasted all of a few days. After 5 minutes I (and everyone else in the kindergarten class, very few if any of which would have had anything like a real daycare) was ready to migrate to another continent.

This isn't imaginary science here, Aeson. This is real, basic social immunology (which my wife has a Ph.D. in, so I do have some real knowledge here). Your body will react to each different strain of various viruses/bacteria/fungi as it is exposed to them, and then will gain some basic immunity to them. This is why kids get sick with all sorts of things while as an adult you get a lot less... each kid has to be exposed to the various strains of germs and develop the memory cells to better resist future infections. Kids that are in daycare are exposed to more of these diseases than kids that are not, because not only are they interacting with more children at once (both in their class, and in the school) but they are also interacting with kids from different neighborhoods typically. You miss less school in the first few years of elementary school if you've been in a daycare because you have fewer new things to get exposed to - you still see some, like you say the flu virus for example, but you also miss some things other kids have that you already were exposed to (including some of the older flu viruses, which certainly still hang around).
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/he...childhood.html

If you really wanted to do right by your kid then you'd raise them in a third world country with livestock sharing the home environment ... so they'd be exposed to more, earlier.

Again, you're ignoring that the child can be exposed to all these things anyways, and often much more, by not sitting around 8 hours a day in the same environment every day with the exact same kids. A stay at home parent can have every bit as much of this interaction they want, and more than with daycare if they really care to promote it.

Lower ratio is better in some ways and not in others. Having a higher number of teachers is also better in some ways - you have teachers with different strengths, for example. My wife is good at science and math, I'm good at math and history, but neither of us is really very good at music or art. Which of us is going to give our son a good foundation in art?

The difference in strengths as applies to a child 1 to 5 is minimal. In that situation the only thing that really matters is to have a caring nature and the ability to communicate. Virtually all adults have the intellectual facilities to sound out words, use flash cards, do basic math, or read children's books.

For art, a child isn't going to have any difference in experience between fingerpainting or going to a gallery with their parent or anyone else based on the adult's knowledge of art. If there is a difference it would be based on the adult's personality and temperament, which could just as easily favor the parent or the daycare worker.

Am I going to have to have my sister come over regularly to give him music lessons?

You could certainly hire someone to do so if you felt it was important. There were stay at home parents in the community which taught music lessons from their home. This is part of the community potential of stay at home parenting you seem to be ignoring.

On the other hand, the daycare has an art teacher, a music teacher, and the teachers in his class have various strengths as well. You still have a very low ratio - at most 5 to 1 for his class, and usually 4 to 1. We're not talking a 30 to 1 public school here (that would be way cheaper for one!). There's still a lot of personal attention, and on top of that he learns from the other kids - I can see that already, learning to wave from one kid (because he waves in the same manner), learning to say a word from another.

Again, the social interactions are possible outside of daycare. Just because you can't seem to accept this reality doesn't mean it's not true.

I don't know why you hate structured school environments - perhaps you had poor ones - but they don't need to treat everyone like clones, and good ones don't. They recognize that everyone does need to learn the same things while also realizing different people learn differently, and adapting sufficiently to meet both needs.

I don't hate them. I think the actual implementations we have in US public schools are generally poor learning environments relative to what is feasible for a society of our affluence, especially for someone with abnormal learning abilities (+ or -). I think that home schooling can actually provide a better learning environment in this regard with a dedicated parent. (Not saying that all home schooling will be better. Just that the possibility exists that it can be.) This isn't true of all schools of course, which of course highlights why I choose "feasible" in the previous statement. It's obvious that there is a lot of room for improving our public schools in general.

In my case my schooling was 12 years (8 hours a day, 200 days a year) of essentially wasted time. The value of the structure itself, which actually does have potential for value, was lost on me. It actually became a negative because it was creating an association between this structure and such depressingly repetitive and uninteresting curriculum. The value I learned about structure thus came mostly from my parents and nature, and was countered by my schooling. As such I don't view it very highly.

That's absolutely not true. Start with the fact that a young kid in daycare (1 or 2) learns primarily from the toys he plays with (hand-eye coordination, for example). You can buy all of the toys the daycare has... if you have a lot of money. But most people have a smaller selection by far - and thus the exposure to new toys in the daycare is valuable. On top of that you can buy all of the toys you'd buy otherwise, and have all of the daycare's toys in addition... books the same way, you have a larger selection, plus you find out about things you may not have known about. Art materials are more freely available; you certainly could have all of that stuff, but my point is about efficiency - it would cost you a lot more and you'd get less use out of them. The proper reading level should be found at both daycare and home - an involved parent will ensure that if nothing else (if your student at 3 can read, like I could, you just make sure the daycare lets him read from the 5 year olds' room).

The need for toys for learning is minimal. Some few toys are designed well to stimulate fun and physical/mental exercise, but you really only need one or two of those to address all the developmental needs a child will have. Too much of a selection of toys is derogatory as it can create a dependency on having variation provided rather than create it. A good share of the "toys" my brothers and I had growing up we made, even at a very young age. Even at 3-5 every stick, every rock, and whatever of the wildlife we could capture was a "toy". Before that I don't remember much at all, but doubt there would be a significant developmental difference between having 3 toys and 5 toys as a 2 year old. Having an impetus towards creating our own towns rewarded innovative behavior, planning, logical reasoning, physical dexterity, an industrious nature, and in some cases even math/geometry skills ... and it was all fun.

Even if you disagree here though, your point just comes back down to an economic difference (which has already been noted exists).

Like it or not, nearly everyone must spend significant time in a structured environment during their lives, whether at school or at work, or likely both; starting as a baby to learn how to fit in and be your own person while also meshing well with others makes it much easier in the long run.

This is again going to happen in any healthy home environment. Which will of course include leaving the home. "Stay at home" parenting doesn't mean you're stuck in a box. It simply means you have a lot of free time to do whatever it is you think is in your child's best interests. That includes taking your child out into public places where they can be exposed to all that society has to offer.

I certainly am not going to say that everyone must go to daycare, or that it's always better or for any particular child. What I am saying is that daycare has benefits, and the claim that it is always better to be a stay-at-home mom is incorrect.

What you claimed in the post I responded to was much less well qualified:

"I'd always prefer a good daycare to raising my kid(s) at home. The difference is really telling when you look at kids in kindergarten or first grade. Even seeing kids coming into daycare at 1 year old (mine just entered the next older classroom, and a lot of kids seem to enter daycare at 1), there's a huge gap - in socialization, in learning, in being able to cope with new situations."

Nowhere did you mention that there are benefits to stay at home parenting, or even acknowledge that there exist options for stay at home parents to do essentially the exact same thing in specific cases. (You still are denying several of the obvious ones that exist.)

[Jon Miller]

Thinking about it I still think that a good nanny out-performs a good daycare. It just might be easier finding a good daycare than a good nanny. Among other things, a good daycare still requires good parenting.

Also, if you have 5 adults and 20 kids, than you are not going to have the connections that 1 adult and 3 kids will form. This is positive in some ways, just is providing more argument.

I haven't put much thought about a finding a good daycare, so even that could be wrong.

In the past people didn't have daycare, instead they played with the neighbor kids/etc/etc/etc, there was tons of socialization and it could be setup to be the healthiest sort.

JM

[Lorizael]

For an unlimited Ben, would you recommend a $100 billion dollar purchase per month until XX M*V is reached? I think it would need some cut off expectation.

Hey Jaguar, how's $40 billion a month?

[Kuciwalker]

kentonio, you may take this as additional evidence in favor of my claim re: taxation of investment income

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/21/mitt_romney_s_effective_tax_rate_is_very_low_most_economists_think_it_should_be_.html

Matt Yglesias is a progressive/Democratic blogger who until recently blogged at ThinkProgress, a progressive political blog (he's now at Slate, obviously).

[Jaguar]

Hey Jaguar, how's $40 billion a month?

The good: it's an open-ended commitment to keep expanding the money supply until their goals are reached.
The bad: they still haven't decided what those goals are.

I think it will help us, and so did the markets; I got in on the stock rally that happened after the announcement, and actually triple-leveraged my entire Roth IRA to go long on US stocks. (I'm up by a little bit.)

But again, they didn't name their goal, so we have to guess their preferred level of M*V. And I, like my friends in hedge funds and private equity, am suspicious that the Fed's preferred level of M*V simply isn't very high. I think we've finally reached the beginning of the end, but it's not going to go smoothly.

[Ben Kenobi]

Well, Jag - I don't think October is going to be very kind to you folks. I'm still wary about this market.

[Lorizael]

The good: it's an open-ended commitment to keep expanding the money supply until their goals are reached.
The bad: they still haven't decided what those goals are.

That's nice, but you're a week late.

I think it will help us, and so did the markets; I got in on the stock rally that happened after the announcement, and actually triple-leveraged my entire Roth IRA to go long on US stocks. (I'm up by a little bit.)

Yeah. Totally. I managed to quadruple Tim Roth's hedge clippers, so I'm feeling pretty good, too.

But again, they didn't name their goal, so we have to guess their preferred level of M*V. And I, like my friends in hedge funds and private equity, am suspicious that the Fed's preferred level of M*V simply isn't very high. I think we've finally reached the beginning of the end, but it's not going to go smoothly.

The beginning of the end of... the world? the recession (which technically ended some time ago, right?)? Mitt Romney's campaign?

[Jaguar]

Well, Jag - I don't think October is going to be very kind to you folks. I'm still wary about this market.

The likely Obama victory is already priced in. And Obama's adverse effects on the economy usually come in the form of higher consumer-goods prices for the middle class, not lower stock indexes.

I'm keeping the leveraged position through 2013. The advantages to making high-risk investments in tax-advantaged accounts are too large to ignore, and I think that the Fed just put a pretty strong backstop on the downside risk.

[Ben Kenobi]

The likely Obama victory is already priced in. And Obama's adverse effects on the economy usually come in the form of higher consumer-goods prices for the middle class, not lower stock indexes.

I'm keeping the leveraged position through 2013. The advantages to making high-risk investments in tax-advantaged accounts are too large to ignore.

I'd like to see some basis other than QE and fiscal policy for the market. Obama's policies have kept stocks high - at the cost of the erosion of the US's fiscal standing and increasing the debt. I still believe we're in long term deflation - which means the last thing I want to do would be to tie up liquidity in stocks.

I hope it works out for you Jag. You can copy and post my worries about a double dip and point and laugh to them later.

[Jaguar]

The beginning of the end of... the world? the recession (which technically ended some time ago, right?)?

The "recession." Some lame people in the 1970s screwed up the definition of "recession" so that recessions technically "end" long before the suffering does.

I am referring to "that thing we have right now where many people are unemployed, and it seems like it's very hard to sell goods, services, or labor for money." I would prefer to call this a recession, but other words, like "output gap" or "shortfall of aggregate demand" would be more precise to an economist.