The opening line of their report on childcare in the UK:
As a result of significant investment over the last decade, the affordability of childcare as a percentage of disposable family income has improved for most families, although costs remain among the highest in the OECD.
There has been no fucking investment in childcare. There has been an increase in current spending.
No one has built an asset, one that will make a return over the years to come. There has simply been an increase in the lifting of money from one section of the population to spunk it over the desires of another section of the population.
This is not investment. It is tax and spend.
And that\’s all you need to know about the Resolution Foundation. They are ignorant, ignorant tosspots. Who can and should be safely ignored.
Hang them all!
Oh, come come, Tim. You know all spending on socially desirable things is defined as investment. There’s even an easily spotted designation for socially desirable investment. There’s an extra zero added to the end of every amount.
When I were a lad, back when the world was young, my mum was a childminder. Caring for kids between 7am and 10pm (not all the same kids). Not a massive amount of income but every little helps as they say.
Crowded out over the years by the red tape, spiralling insurance costs, parents with unreasonable demands. In those years there was investment in childcare only to the extent of making it more professional. A big increase in the large scale childcare organisations, with multiple staff, management, a facility modified for kids etc. With appropriate expenses – all this has to be paid for.
I have no idea how much of it there’s been, but I’ve certainly seen actual investment in childcare facilities over the last decade. Increase the supply, prices should go down.
I think that’s because the previous individual service providers (both my kids went to local in-their-own-home childminders) have been driven out of business by the over-regulation. Therefore, you have had to have industrial-sized units appearing (with adverts etc) whereas you’d have had to be looking quite closely to have noticed that Mrs X had more than her kids in the living room / garden. And she’d probably have got her business through word-of-mouth (particularly mums chatting at the school dumping or collection times).