Friday, May 8, 2009

How to Use That Day Care Money

People who can afford the most children seem to control how many they have.   Conversely, many who can't support themselves, let alone any offspring, often exercise little or no control when it comes to procreation.

If we here at Mustard Street were mean-spirited conservatives, we might suggest that, as with so many of the depressingly familiar social pathologies, this phenomenon has nothing to do with income, and everything to do with behavior.

However, as enlightened, progressive people, we realize that there are plenty of folks who don't have access to what we once so quaintly called "family-planning" advice, or the funds to put that advice into practice.

Our suggestion to the government of Monroe County is that, in light of the extra $5 million the State just made available for day care, the County compensate by taking $5 million from elsewhere in the welfare budget and spending it on an aggressive birth-control outreach and resources program.   This should include full information about abortion services and funding for those who choose that course and can't pay for it themselves.

Such a program, resulting in fewer people needing government-paid day care in future, will pay for itself over and over.   Not just in the budget for day care, but across the board for the entire welfare-state spending agenda.   This is the single wisest investment local government could make.
 

1 comment:

Rottenchester said...

An aggressive bc and sex ed program is about 10 years too late, unfortunately. What's needed is something like this:

http://www.hcz.org/programs/the-hcz-project

They start with babies and their parents.