The national scandal of childcare costs

This assertion from Robert Colville is worthy of a little more examination we think:

Our obscenely expensive childcare costs are treated not as a national scandal but as an unfortunate fact of life.

That examination requiring the splitting of the question of why those obscenely expensive costs into two.

The first is, well, have we made the system more expensive than it need be? Say, limitations on who may provide childcare and how? The ratio of children to carers, the equipment required, the number of clipboard wielders necessary to ensure such rules are followed?

Perhaps this is true. If it were it should indeed be a national scandal. Let us free the market from such restrictions and let rip therefore. We can even test this by looking from the opposite end. Being a nursery or childcare bod is not a well paid occupation. Nurseries, childcare facilities, do not produce vast profits as we can see by the number that go bust. If the workers and the capitalists aren’t making out like bandits then high costs can have only one of two causes. Either the regulations make it expensive or it’s simply an expensive thing to do.

If it’s the regulations then indeed do something about the scandal. If it’s just one of those unfortunate facts about the cost of getting it done, well, then what?

The second part of the question, or the second question, is who should carry these costs? The families wishing childcare for their children? The taxpayer more generally? Employers who wish access to the labour of those with children? Each answer has its own arguments both pro and con.

But this is indeed a very different question from what the costs are. Someone, somewhere, has to bear the high costs. We thus need to work out whether the costs are in fact high - and what we might do about that - before arguing about their allocation.

Our own view tends - note tends - toward the view that those costs are higher than they need be as a result of regulation. So some part of the fix is to change that part of the system. As to the other, well, some at least substantial part of the costs should be shouldered by parents directly. On the basis that we are all opposed to the privatisation of benefits and the socialisation of costs, aren’t we? You know, people should face the full prices of their decisions?