A growing number of cities are passing tax increases to expand access to child care. Last year, New Orleans added more than 1,000 child care seats for low-income families after voters approved a historic property tax increase.

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Last year, New Orleans added more than 1,000 child care seats for low-income families after voters approved a historic property tax increasein 2022. The referendum raised the budget of the program seven-fold — from $3 million to $21 million a year for 20 years. Because Louisiana’s early childhood fund matches money raised locally for child care, the city gets an additional $21 million to help families find care.

New Orleans is part of a growing trend of communities passing ballot measures to expand access to child care. In Whatcom County, Washington, a property tax increase added $10 million for child care and children’s mental health to the county’s annual budget. A marijuana sales tax approved last year by voters in Anchorage, Alaska, will generate more than $5 million for early childhood programs.

The state of Texas has taken a somewhat different tack. In November, voters approved a state constitutional amendment that allows tax relief for qualifying child care providers. Under this provision, cities and counties can choose to exempt a child care center from paying all or some of its property taxes. Dallas was among the first city-and-county combo in Texas to provide the tax break.

    • jaschen@lemm.ee
      0·
      7 months ago

      You idiot. Your entire society is based kids that eventually pay for your dumb ass in a nursing home. OH, you gonna make so much money that you can pay for your own retirement? OH? Are you going to pay for your own police services and fire services too? Or the roads you walk and drive on. Or the utilities you use or the stable society you live in?

      It doesn’t matter if YOU have kids. The kids that you don’t have will eventually pay taxes that continues the standard of quality of your worthless life.

    • WindyRebel@lemmy.world
      0·
      7 months ago

      I wonder who takes care of you when you’re old, or the people that maintain infrastructure, or insert literally anything else that makes society run or continue. It’s certainly not the fucks who are as old or older than you.

      You must hate yourself and everything that helped you get to where you are today as equally as the kids. You were, after all, a “crotch goblin” that benefitted from much of the same shit yourself.

    • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
      0·
      7 months ago

      This type of mentality is a problem. You don’t personally use something therefore you don’t want to pay for it. You should be thinking about what is necessary for a working society to figure out what taxes should be used for. Kids are necessary even if you don’t have or want them.

      I don’t have and will probably never have kids but I gladly pay for kids welfare. Doesn’t just help the kids. It also helps the family as a whole do better.

    • RBWells@lemmy.world
      0·
      7 months ago

      I’m a taxpayer who had kids, who are all now also taxpayers. But if free childcare had been available to me when they were little, we could have both worked, I could have gone to college faster and made more money and paid more taxes.

      You are gonna pay taxes for something, the whole point is to use it for things that make society better.