Oh, so the problem is that the marginal "tax rate" on people leaving social assistance is stuplidly huge? I'd be all for fixing that!
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And as well, the point of my arguement is that universal daycare provides for more than lower income families. My family spends (I'd have to double check with my wife) 650 a month on day care. If I could turn part of that around and invest it in an RESP, or spend it back into my family, I think it helps ALL families involved.
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I already subsidize your family to a huge extent. I'd be willing to make that 650 a month tax-deductable, it being a cost of employment, but building a government child care program is a bit much.
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Which brings us to the second part of that. Noone at all can debate that Molly is not the most qualified to care for her child. But that arguement is two pronged. By a statement like that, it seems to degrade the parenting of those of us who DO work and send their child to daycare. As well, I would argue she is not doing the best for her child resigning herself to a lifetime of low income living. No college fund, no nice dress at prom, no family vacations, there are many things you miss out on when living low income.
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I was just saying, if she can't afford to work and put her child in child care, then she must be more efficient at taking care of her child.
As it happens, the problem here was that social assistance results in punative marginal "tax" rates on people with low incomes. That huge tax rate magnifies the cost of working and hiring someone else to do something for you.
That single mom is earning, say, 18,000/year. If she goes to work at a 12$/hour job for 7.5 paid hours/day, 5 days/week and 48 weeks/year, she earns 21160$/year. She still recieves 2,000$/year in social assistance.
Her nominal marginal tax rate in going from 18,000$ to 23,160$ was, say, 18%.
Which means that by going to work, she earned 4238.58$ over the year. Now, she worked 1800 hours that year, which works out to an effective hourly income of 2.35$/hour.
She was paid 12$/hour. This means her
effective tax rate was over 80%.
Not only that, placing her kid in daycare cost her 7800$/year.
If you got rid of the punative effective marginal tax rates on people on social assistance earning income, and allowed daycare costs to be deducted from income, this wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem.
I hold that an 80%+ marginal tax rate on the poor is the core of the problem.