During his inaugural address, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani made a lot of promises. Stating “there is no need too small to be met,” he promised to use government power aggressively to make life more affordable for New Yorkers, including to “deliver universal child care for the many by taxing the wealthiest few.”
Undoubtedly, this sounds great to many cash-strapped New Yorkers, particularly parents who know firsthand that child care in New York is expensive and scarce. Most savvy New Yorkers also suspect that accessing city-provided “free” child care won’t be as easy as Mamdani makes it sound.
Economists can detail exactly how big a line item child care for the 500,000 children 5 and under will be in the New York budget. Given that child care costs are in the neighborhood of $20,000 per child, a back-of-the-hand calculation suggests it will exceed the initial $6 billion estimate and would be closer to $10 billion. In fact, the costs are likely to be even more eye-popping since, at the same time as he promises to shift all day care costs onto taxpayers, Mamdani declares he will also raise wages for day care workers to be closer to those of public school teachers.
Those same economists will likely also warn that the “wealthiest few” of city earners whom Mamdani promises to hit with another tax to pay for all of his freebies are already overtaxed, are too few in number, and are busy packing their bags for other states for these numbers to add up.
Yet, the biggest problem for Mamdani’s “free” day care plan isn’t that it’s unaffordable but that it fails to understand the basic idea of tradeoffs and scarcity.
As of December, there were more than 10,000 children on the waiting list for the existing program that defrays child care costs for low-income families. There aren’t slots in day care centers to serve these families.
Imagine how such waiting lists will explode under a program that makes child care not just subsidized but “free.” Presumably, this “universal” program would mean that all families currently paying for child care in New York City would stop making private payments, and their costs would be picked up by taxpayers.
And what about all those families who aren’t using formal day care services at all? Many families, especially lower-income families, rely on grandparents, other relatives and neighbors to help provide child care in order to save costs. Many other families have one parent at home caring for their young children. Some parents plan their work schedules so that someone is always at home, rather than paying for outside care. Yet, if all these families suddenly become eligible for free care at a licensed, city-paid-for center, they will join the queue, too.
Mamdani’s system will face the same problems that have plagued every collectivist, one-size-fits-all system ever created: There will be no mechanism to distinguish between those who really need the services and those who don’t. That means those who really need child care to work will have an even tougher time getting spots in a system overwhelmed by demand.
Undoubtedly, Mamdani is dreaming up ways to massively increase the supply of child care. However, day care slots don’t multiply overnight. Licensing, staffing, space and compliance all take time and money.
These issues will be particularly difficult to overcome since, naturally, Mamdani isn’t just promising more day care, but more high-quality daycare, and government officials like him will get to define exactly what that means. Day care providers should brace for a tsunami of red tape and increased micromanagement of their business practices, or risk becoming ineligible for city subsidies. Parents may find they have fewer options that provide the environment they want, even if the city manages to create more industrial-size child care centers.
New Yorkers are likely to find that Mamdani’s promise of free, high-quality day care for everyone is simply a fairytale. The fact is, child care can never truly be free. The real question is who pays, how much it costs, and whether the system can actually deliver options that work for families.
Unfortunately, New Yorkers are likely to find that Mamdani isn’t just unlikely to solve the city’s significant day care challenge, but that he may make it much worse.
Carrie Lukas is the president of Independent Women. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.
