Cause and Effect

They raised the minimum wage, but are confused as to why daycare now costs more.

Starting in January, Advent Child Center is increasing tuition about $140 a month per child, taking tuition from $705 to $845 a month, an increase some are not ready to pay. “It just adds to the tightness of general month to month expenditures," said mother Dawn Ellis, who has two children enrolled at Advent Lutheran. The increase is a direct result of the passing of Initiative 1433, increasing statewide minimum wage to $13.50 by 2020.

See, if you require businesses to pay their employees more, the business is going to have to charge more for the service in order to make up for that. That's how it works. It's what people who understand economics have been saying for forever. Here's my favorite part an employee who still doesn't get it.

Kristin Larson, program supervisor at Advent, said that "women and men who work here and go to school and get a degree in early childhood education should be paid a living wage." But the staff does wish that money could come from somewhere else. "I feel the state needs to be helping a little more,” said Larson, “it would be nice if parents didn't have to spend a majority of their paychecks for childcare."

Ms. Larson seems to have decided that the "state" a/k/a everyone paying taxes needs to now pay part of her salary. It's always this way with government intervention into markets. The government intervenes a little bit and then causes a problem. The proposed solution to that problem is additional intervention into the market. And so on, and so on, until the daycare facilities are just run by the state.

Same as what we've been seeing in healthcare. Intervention causing problems in the market and the next proposal is always more and more intervention until we get single-payer.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.