That's wild. New Mexico is fairly notorious for having terrible medical and social safety net stuff.
I have a friend that had a daughter that lived there, and had serious mental health issues, and I'd hear nightmare stories about how bad the state was for that.
I have family with similar issues, in New York, and they get an amazing amount of state support.
Childcare is a great way to kick this off - it's politically hard to fight against anything "for the children" and it's not a stretch at all to extend coverage gradually, as people see the benefit and want it elsewhere / just one more year / etc.
Just gotta hope it stays funded enough to avoid descending into a bureaucratic death spiral with months of delays for everything.
Important context here is that New Mexico's state income tax rates are in the "red state" bracket. Notably, they are lower than states like Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Montana.
I'm very unfamiliar with New Mexico (having only been a tourist in Albuquerque and Santa Fe for a few days), but according to U.S. News it ranks 50 out of 50 for education: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education. Given some level of geographic mobility it doesn't seem like a place I would want to raise a child.
This is fantastic! I hope they succeed and there is no abuse or other issues, because it will show how much an economy can grow when women are allowed to work to their full potential. Families who were previously in poverty because the mom would struggle to pay for childcare to work can now have assurance kids are ok while the mom can pursue jobs, start her own small business (huge chunk of businesses are small businesses ran by women) and prosper. If you pose your child’s safety vs another dollar, most parents would vote for their children. But if the children are taken care of, parents can give the economy their best and the taxes paid and GDP gained will pay back for the expense manyfold.
It's easy to promise things, but hard to deliver them. How can the state "guarantee no-cost universal child?"
Will the state provide the child care itself? Or will the attempt to provide funding, relying on the private market to provide the service. Are there a bunch of underworked child care providers just waiting around for new customers? Or would they expect the child care industry to go on a hiring spree?
Regardless who provides it, more workers would be required to deliver the service, and new facilities as well. What industries will those workers come from, who will now see reduced services and higher prices as a result? What doesn't get built while the construction workers are building new child care facilities?
Child care tends to be highly regulated. Is the government doing anything (aside from funding) to make it easier to open and run a child-care facility?
It's so easy to spend money. The hard part is the real-world actions and tradeoffs required. Everything comes at the cost of something else we could have had instead.
What you will see is: The funding will go to the people who are already receiving child-care services today, along with big price increases immediately and over time as government money chases supply that is slow to grow.
We're likely 5-10 years out from a world where tappy-tap computer keyboard jobs are in a death spiral and caregiving jobs are one of the only fields untouched by automation.
Where is the money coming from to keep these services afloat? The federal funding environment seems less magnanimous these days, plus as other have pointed out, New Mexico is not an economic powerhouse.
It baffles me (as European) that any politician, or informed voter, would stand up for non free child healthcare. Let alone the moral aspect of denying a child healthcare because she happen to be born into a low income family, it can’t possibly be economically advantageous for any society to ignore child healthy issues and it’s future.
> New Mexico has expanded access to no-cost child care to families with incomes at or below 400% of the federal poverty level, reducing financial strain on tens of thousands of families.
This is confusing me, is this the same as "at or below the federal poverty level" or is there something I'm missing with that 400%? Do you have to be 400% below the federal poverty level to qualify?
This is is honestly an economic nobrainer. Of course it needs to be tuned correctly for the context. I hope they they look at the long history of this in the Nordics. There's an insane amount of economic research readily available.
We have something similar in Quebec, $7 CAD per day. It's one of the coolest societal things in the province. Yes we pay a lot in taxes, but we have stuff like this.
Imagine if we saw mostly headlines like this rather than things like "Trump threatens war on Chicago" or "Supreme Court approves racial profiling", or "Columbia students deported for protesting" or "Trump delays tariffs for 90 more days".
We kind of do both in Germany. I say "kind of" becaue that year of parental leave (14 months total, shared between parents as desired) is capped at the lower of 1800 EUR/mo, or 2/3 of previous year's net monthly salary - that was significantly lower than either of our net pay, but we did it anyway.
And once the little guy was a year old, daycare for not quite enough hours to work full time (7am - 4pm) was a mere 500 EUR/mo, and would have been less had we not been a 1.5 engineer couple. It drops to 200 EUR/mo when the kids turn three. For awhile, Bavaria was considering giving a rebate to families who didn't use preschool, but then I think they realized that the people whose minds would be changed by an extra couple hundred Euro per month in their pockets were a lot of the people who this rather conservative state really, really wanted to have send their kids to preschool as soon as possible.
This goes hand in hand with very strong protections for parents choosing to work part time. My employer had to allow me to drop to part time for up to three years (prorated salary, of course), with an option to extend it until my kid is eight.
Result? I'm still working in the same department and position I was before the kid, but spend several hours a day with him.
He took to daycare like a duck to water and still loves preschool; it turns out that my little guy is way more social than either of his parents.
strong protections for parents choosing to work part time
how long ago was that? i thought i read that the right to work part time is now universal, that is after some time in a job you can just request it, and it can't be denied, unless there are some special circumstances (and i think small companies are exempt too), children or not.
Slightly tangent. At some point in future I can imagine humanoid robots will be doing this job. Of course, the robots need to be super reliable before we hand over the our kids
I just want to +1 this post before it gets flagged for being "political" or whatever.
I grew up in the 1980s and have watched America slide from being a civilization that was the envy of the world into something resembling empire or feudalism or I-don't-know-what. The US literally declared its independence from England to shrug off authoritarianism/aristocracy. Yet we've reproduced that wealth inequality here.
We're going to have to draw a line in the sand that says that we believe that we can build a dignified society together. That means that we've got to stop worshipping rugged individualism when our billionaires got rich on government contracts and let children starve in poverty. The hypocrisy has reached self-destructive proportions.
If free childcare is gonna sink the country, then we're already sunk. Same with free healthcare and free education. You want to know what sinks a country? When grocery prices triple and (waves hand at everything).
New Mexico has some serious generational social issues. Extreme poverty, lack of education, lack of work (or most anything else) ethic are very common. Drugs and alcoholism are endemic.
I wonder if some of the intent behind this is to reduce some of the generational effects by exposing children early to at least some semblance of order and sobriety? Then when they enter school they have more of a chance.
I'm not by any means "socialist inclined" but I can't say I'm against this program because the situation is dire enough something must be done.
When I lived in Norway 35 years ago, I’m pretty sure they had this. Little kids went to barnehagen. I think as early as 1. Can anyone from the Nordic states chime in? Is that still the case? Does it work? I would guess Sweden and Denmark were similar.
Apparently until now they've been providing this only to families below 400% of the Federal Poverty Level. FPL is $32,150 for a 4-person family, so $128,600 combined family income (2 people working for $64,300 each -- and that's before fed and state taxes are deducted). Since that is far from being wealthy enough to "just" spring for expensive care, I'm glad to see this.
My only question is who the heck is going to be working in these childcare centers?? Right now (granted, I don't live in NM so this is in California) most places that are decent have waiting lists - indicating that they could expand but are unable to, instead they're already leaving money on the table. I don't think there are enough people willing to work a very grueling job for a wage that the current costs are enough to support. So, if this is a new entitlement program the state may find its costs doubling soon as they try to force the market to provide, or are forced to directly provide, care.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 54.4 ms ] threadI have a friend that had a daughter that lived there, and had serious mental health issues, and I'd hear nightmare stories about how bad the state was for that.
I have family with similar issues, in New York, and they get an amazing amount of state support.
Just gotta hope it stays funded enough to avoid descending into a bureaucratic death spiral with months of delays for everything.
Am I mistaken? Thoughts?
Will the state provide the child care itself? Or will the attempt to provide funding, relying on the private market to provide the service. Are there a bunch of underworked child care providers just waiting around for new customers? Or would they expect the child care industry to go on a hiring spree?
Regardless who provides it, more workers would be required to deliver the service, and new facilities as well. What industries will those workers come from, who will now see reduced services and higher prices as a result? What doesn't get built while the construction workers are building new child care facilities?
Child care tends to be highly regulated. Is the government doing anything (aside from funding) to make it easier to open and run a child-care facility?
It's so easy to spend money. The hard part is the real-world actions and tradeoffs required. Everything comes at the cost of something else we could have had instead.
What you will see is: The funding will go to the people who are already receiving child-care services today, along with big price increases immediately and over time as government money chases supply that is slow to grow.
This is confusing me, is this the same as "at or below the federal poverty level" or is there something I'm missing with that 400%? Do you have to be 400% below the federal poverty level to qualify?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/24/quebec-unive...
It is great to offer free childcare to all citizens, but if those childcare facilities are inadequately resourced the quality of care will decline.
I think it would be much better to provide a one year paid stipend so that a parent can be home with the children during their tender years.
This entire structure is set up to keep the boss happy while a stranger raises your child during their most formative and vulnerable years.
And once the little guy was a year old, daycare for not quite enough hours to work full time (7am - 4pm) was a mere 500 EUR/mo, and would have been less had we not been a 1.5 engineer couple. It drops to 200 EUR/mo when the kids turn three. For awhile, Bavaria was considering giving a rebate to families who didn't use preschool, but then I think they realized that the people whose minds would be changed by an extra couple hundred Euro per month in their pockets were a lot of the people who this rather conservative state really, really wanted to have send their kids to preschool as soon as possible.
This goes hand in hand with very strong protections for parents choosing to work part time. My employer had to allow me to drop to part time for up to three years (prorated salary, of course), with an option to extend it until my kid is eight.
Result? I'm still working in the same department and position I was before the kid, but spend several hours a day with him.
He took to daycare like a duck to water and still loves preschool; it turns out that my little guy is way more social than either of his parents.
how long ago was that? i thought i read that the right to work part time is now universal, that is after some time in a job you can just request it, and it can't be denied, unless there are some special circumstances (and i think small companies are exempt too), children or not.
I grew up in the 1980s and have watched America slide from being a civilization that was the envy of the world into something resembling empire or feudalism or I-don't-know-what. The US literally declared its independence from England to shrug off authoritarianism/aristocracy. Yet we've reproduced that wealth inequality here.
We're going to have to draw a line in the sand that says that we believe that we can build a dignified society together. That means that we've got to stop worshipping rugged individualism when our billionaires got rich on government contracts and let children starve in poverty. The hypocrisy has reached self-destructive proportions.
If free childcare is gonna sink the country, then we're already sunk. Same with free healthcare and free education. You want to know what sinks a country? When grocery prices triple and (waves hand at everything).
I wonder if some of the intent behind this is to reduce some of the generational effects by exposing children early to at least some semblance of order and sobriety? Then when they enter school they have more of a chance.
I'm not by any means "socialist inclined" but I can't say I'm against this program because the situation is dire enough something must be done.
When I lived in Norway 35 years ago, I’m pretty sure they had this. Little kids went to barnehagen. I think as early as 1. Can anyone from the Nordic states chime in? Is that still the case? Does it work? I would guess Sweden and Denmark were similar.
My only question is who the heck is going to be working in these childcare centers?? Right now (granted, I don't live in NM so this is in California) most places that are decent have waiting lists - indicating that they could expand but are unable to, instead they're already leaving money on the table. I don't think there are enough people willing to work a very grueling job for a wage that the current costs are enough to support. So, if this is a new entitlement program the state may find its costs doubling soon as they try to force the market to provide, or are forced to directly provide, care.