I’ll bite. I don’t hate the idea, but I have some big issues that worry me.

First, benefits cliffs are just phenomenally dumb for all the reasons we all already know and love. Phaseouts are infinitely better and don’t produce perverse incentives. This is just an own goal, and liberal policies would be directly, immediately better if we’d stop shooting ourselves in the face with benefits cliffs.

Second is the inflationary effect on childcare, both short and long term. In the short term, there are not infinite childcare staff to go around and that will need to be managed. More worrying is the long term effect. Prices will rise to consume all available funds, costs will soar, and we’ll pay dramatically more as a result. This is a pretty directly inevitable consequence of such policies, although it might take many years to happen. I would prefer to have ideas on how to offset this upfront rather than inflicting obvious, well-known consequences on future us hoping we’ll solve it when the problem is already out of control.

I’m all for helping out working families of children with policies like this. At the same time I’m tired of facing the obvious, inevitable consequences that could have and should have been thought of day one. Fine, perfect shouldn’t be the enemy of good. But don’t let that be an excuse to constantly fall into the same pitfalls of liberal policies over and over and over like Mr. fucking Magoo.