Universal, free childcare - is it a solution?

[KateMumsnet]

This week, Mumsnet Blogger Mummyisagadgetgeek reports back from an event organized by the thinktank Progress on the subject of universal childcare. Should they win the next election, Labour are considering it as a possible policy - so we thought it would be good to find out what it was all about.

So: read her blog report from the event, tell us what you think here on the thread - and if you blog, let us know about it. We'll be tweeting posts next week.

"less than 38% of the country have an income of £25k or over..."

Wow. How does anyone make it on £25K or less?

50% of the country live on £18k or less

welcome to the real world

The EYFS 2012 already allows c/ms to care for more children....see page 21, does not mean that all are rushing to it...some have tried and now regretting it
The high ratio is in 'exceptional circumstances' and for short periods not all the time
In nurseries if the the number of children is higher they need more staff...so lose out that way...yes of course a desperate govt can do what it wants does not mean we will all follow like lambs...that is what representing associations are against

Maybe we are losing track of the fact we are talking about children ...we are all businesses, c/ms included, and we should be against all this simply because someone has decided childcare is too expensive...is it when some are paid so low? work it out

In addition the funding for 'disadvantaged' children is for families earning about £16,000 (one of the criteria)...pay parents a living wage and they would not qualify anymore...so in reality paying better wages saves on benefits...rocket science it is not !!

As I ghaev said on other threads in many parts of the country if you have a low income it is made up by the state to what higher earners earn and the low paid seem to walk around thinking higher earners ave much better off but they have absolutely no idea what you end up with in terms of net pay if you are on say £50k, pay tax and a full time childcare place and commuting costs and a mortgage on a tiny flat in the SE.

No...low paid do not get help to get an income equal to high earners...remember all benfits have been cut and we actually have food banks...shameful!
I have never heard low earners say you are better off...some just get on and suffer the guilt they are made to feel...some are called scroungers when in fact they are struggling

You have commuting cost I, as a c/ms, have expenses such as food, petrol, utilities and lots of red tape.... so it is balanced

TalkinPeace

Many Many . I wasn't aware of this fact and as a v. low income family ourselves, fell into the trap of presuming everybody was better off than us.
Whether two parents working or one seems irrelevant when faced with the fact that people do and can survive on 18k.

morethanpotatoprints
MN is a very wealthy bubble - there are more Eton parents on these boards than there are boys at Eton

The median HOUSEHOLD income (ie half the households have less than and half have more than) is £26k
and that includes tax credits

the median (middle, rather than average) personal wage in London is £23k
so all these people saying they are poor because they are losing CB are talking carp - they are in the top 20% of earners
the fact that they have taken on expenditure to use up that income is their choice

stand tall, work hard, you'll be fine.

TalkinPeace.

You are great at figures are you a mathematician ?
I was feeling really poor and woe is me tonight until I read your facts. I now realise that we are not so bad after all.

Accountant ...
with a serious google habit for finding statistics :-)

Have a play with this lovely little online tool.

Where do you fit in?

I think there are some serious questions regarding the fact that if the top 10% are finding childcare costs and commuting costs pretty eye watering, as well as eldercare, then whether the marketised economy has become seriously skewed in favour of the wrong things.

((((((BoffinMum))))))
That tool is just WONDERFUL
www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/
should be checked by EVERY poster before they say they feel poor.

I know, I know, it's practically statistics PORN!

But I would add that it doesn't take into account regional variations plus other fixed outgoings that allow people to earn that kind of money in the first place, so don't be too hard on the people who are anxious.

Boffin: "Where do you fit in?"

Wow. We're at the tail-end of that distribution, which is kind of scary. I feel like we're just making it-not struggling, but not awash in extra cash, either-and most British are worse off than us.

I don't know if I feel embarrassed, or ashamed, or what...

For example, if you fiddle the thing a bit and roll up your council tax, 2 kids in nursery and 2 season tickets as fixed costs that most of the population won't have, then a couple earning the median wage for London (£26k each) start to look pretty hard up, actually, with 2/3 of the population better off.

I have just done this myself and its weird in our circumstance. . Dh is a company director (very small business). If I give business income we are well rich 2nd decile. If I give his personal actual income and our benefits wer'e the poorest of the poor. So to make myself feel much better I'm going with the business profit.

BoffinMum.

I know what you are saying. We are really bottom end but it seems as though we are much better off as we have hardly any major out goings.
Only have one car, mortgage paid off, no childcare, and all work expenses are tax deductable (I think).
To some they couldn't survive on our basic min wage but if you have relatively few out goings and a good accountant its possible. Just a joke about the accountant, I like to be able to sleep at night.

I had a period as a single mum on a lowish teacher's salary in a housing association shared ownership flat. I was able to live very comfortably in a chi chi area of London, with practically no domestic repair bills. I had a newish Nissan Micra with a good warranty and free insurance initially, so minimal bills there as well, and I didn't need to use it very often because London has loads of public transport. Utilities were cheaper than in the smaller flat I had rented, because everything was new and efficient. If I needed dental care, the area was stuffed full of high quality NHS dentists to sort me out. We had excellent shops and supermarkets nearby, as well as a daily street market, so food was cheap. I lived a very nice life, thank you.

Roll forward to 2012 and all my earnings go into a large mortgage for a large but painfully cheaply built family home (thanks developers) a very long way from where I work (thanks, town planners), childcare (thanks, New Labour), commuting costs (thanks, privatised rail companies), dentistry (eg specialist root canal work - thanks, New Labour and successive Conservative Governments) and specialist physiotherapy (disability - ditto). A lot of these costs are artificially high because there has been a complete decoupling of cost from typical income, often where Government meddling has failed.

So to see a specialist endodontist in East Anglia, for example, I am forced to go private, for the simple reason that we don't have a dental school so I am not in the catchment area for referral. I attend a ridiculously posh dentists with a waiting room grander than a boutique hotel and a built in bean to cup cappuccino machine for the receptionists, who all have designer uniforms. All the latest papers and journals are in the sitting room, which also has a designer fireplace. What an unholy waste of patients' money that all is. We are there for good quality dentistry but it's been subverted into all this conspicuous excess. And my alternative NHS option would be to lose several of my teeth, apparently, according to the NHS dentist at my workplace. Currently I am shelling out £1000 each time I get a problem, therefore.

If we were able to strip out branding and profit from the provision of public services, and streamline costs properly, I think we would all see our money go a lot further, and we'd feel more affluent. Meanwhile, squeezed middle doesn't even begin the explain what most of us feel like.

Did you choose to go and live where you do, BoffinMum, or was it forced upon you by circumstances beyond your control? A lot of your costs seem to be driven by where you live.

It's a little complicated, but essentially I had to follow the work. I moved up here as that was a requirement at the time, then I was made unexpectedly redundant and ended up having to travel a long distance to a new job -they offered a relocation allowance but it only covered a fraction of the real costs and I would effectively have been working for six months for free to cover the rest, on a post that wasn't going to be confirmed for three years, so highly risky to uproot. I'm a university lecturer so I have to work in institutions with a department in my subject.

I said the average pay was £25k. I was told it is utter bilge and of course as ever I am 100% accurate career-advice.monster.co.uk/salary-benefits/pay-salary-advice/uk-average-salary-graphs/article.aspx

Anyway the bottom line is low pay people with families get tax credits and housing benefit. Those just above them get less so they end up both on the same net receipts.

Glad to see Talkinp takes my view that it is absolute poverty that matters not relative!

Mode - Most popular salary if you list all the salaries in the country, probably a lot lower than 25k range
Median - Salary level bang in the middle if you list the salary of every single person in the country, that's probably the one in the mid-20k range
Mean - arithmetic average salary, easily skewed by high end salaries, so particularly in London the average will be a lot higher there (most of that attributable to Xenia's salary, I think)

Apart from the point that "the feel wealthy" element of having higher earnings can be wiped out by life circumstances (e.g. caring for parents/children, additional costs of disability), and seriously limited by the cost of working (e.g. travel, child care), the more money you earn, generally the more money you spend on boring things, e.g. pensions, insurance, home maintenance.

Obviously it's nice to be able to afford higher pension contributions in theory, but I think that these days you have to be super rich to assume that higher pension contributions will definitely ensure financial security in old age. Equally boring home maintenance like a new roof tends to make you feel poor. (Although it is nice to be dry).