[Kaotique]

I think you misunderstood me. I am not saying they don't deserve support. I am saying that the government can support people in a way that is not so bureaucratic. Pay the institutions like schools, daycare, etc directly and don't burden the parents with requesting benefits and sending around enormous amounts of money. The institutions can apply for government money for each child they have to take care of. And the parents can just go to work and not move around swats of money.

On of the examples in a mother with 3 children who had to pay back a hundred thousand Euro that were classified as wrongly received benefits. That means she received tens of thousands of Euros per year! What an insane burden to put on mother.

If something goes wrong the consequences are gigantic. Just like it happened in this scandal.

[Beldin]

> That means she received tens of thousands of Euros per year!

I'm writing this from memory, so it may be wrong, but as I remember it: parents would receive "modest" support; a much larger part would go directly to the daycare, outside of the parents' view. Now if the daycare was deemed to be illegal/fraud/..., the parents would be on the hook for both the money they received as well as the money the daycare received.

Again, I may be misremembering - but this is definitely one way to put a mom into 100s of thousands of debt that she'd never seen.

[VBprogrammer]

The British "tax free childcare" system seems to be setup specifically to make it as hard to deal with as possible. My partner mostly deals with it but essentially you setup a weird bank account through which your childcare provider collects their payment.

[em500]

There are a few more reasons that I don't have time to delve into right now. But the main practical reason is that government assistance for daycare is very income dependent, so government paying directly to the daycare would require giving them parental income information, which is a big privacy no-no.

[pessimizer]

> the main practical reason is that government assistance for daycare is very income dependent

They should stop doing that. The wealthy pay more taxes, so refund them as free childcare. If you think the wealthy are getting away with something under a universal entitlement, raise their taxes.

[mrep]

I'm guessing he means have the government pay for all daycare for everyone fully and just pay for it from tax revenue generated by a progressive income tax.

[orwin]

This is why I really dislike social solutions that involves money. I understand that you have no choice but to use money in a developed economy (because if you just give services, it doesn't count toward GDP), but this is peak 'indicator became the target' dumbassery.

[BlueTemplar]

> (because if you just give services, it doesn't count toward GDP)

And considering GDP as the most important metric isn't peak dumbassery ?

[harvey9]

Who would give the services if there is no payment? Are you talking about a barter society?