Prices don't lie, they inform

Apparently childcare is expensive:

According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the UK has the third most expensive childcare system in the world, behind only Slovakia and Switzerland; a full-time place costs £12,376 a year on average.

That cost doesn’t change simply because different people are asked to pay it. Whether it is parents handing over the money or taxpayers coughing up, it’s still that price. Because moving costs doesn’t change costs.

It’s also true that child care for two children costs around and about the median wage of £25k a year or so. Meaning that half - that’s what median means - of those putting two children into child care to go to work are costing society (again, whoever is actually paying that bill) not adding to the general wealth.

Do note that this is not the end of the story. Of course we can discuss further items - child care requirements are a stage in life, not a permanent feature for decades of it. Perhaps career interruption should be minimised, there are many factors here and the pure and simple cost of child care isn’t the end of it by any means.

But that cost of child care is still information that must inform our decisions. Simply because it is that factual information that prices are telling us. In terms of pure and simple economic value add child care, for many people, makes society poorer.

What matters is what we do with the information that prices tell us. As we say, shifting those costs over to taxpayers doesn’t change the costs nor the information. We ourselves would probably run with the idea that the first thing to do is to reduce - no, not shift, reduce - those costs by deregulating the sector. Then, and only then, start discussing the rest of it.