Bill Shorten Appeases the Feminists with Supercharged Danegeld.

Yesterday in the Australian Leaders Debate Bill Shorten said, in regard to his proposal for the government to pay extra wages to childcare “educators” (via Catallaxy)

I’d put it to you. Childcare educators. There’s only four things that can be done.

1 – They just never get a pay rise. Well that’s not good is it. I think you’d agree with that. 30% turnover. Very important the development of kids.

2 – We ask the parents to pay a lot more. That’s not really viable either with the cost of living crisis under this government.

3 – We just ask all the operators to increase their costs and not pass it on to anyone. That’s not economically rational or reasonable either. Or

4 – The government assists. Provide (sic) money to the child care sector so that workers can get better wages.

This is anti-market, because the ideologues are stepping in and further altering the wages set by supply and demand. That’s always economically inefficient, resulting in worse uses of time and money, for which we all end up poorer, etc, etc.

This is the thin edge of a wedge. Now the government will directly subsidize the wages of politically-chosen people. This is a new wealth transfer from the politically unfavored to the favored. Look where there has got us with identity politics and “affirmative action”. Think it’s going to stop at childcare workers? Every pressure group is going to be angling for some above-market money from their politicians. Guess who is going to end up paying for those subsidies?

Finally, it’s an even greater subsidy for upper middle class career women. Smart women are now encouraged by feminist society to want careers more and kids less. (Who wouldn’t want a cubicle, a smartphone, and a boss, rather than raising their own kids? Never mind … if there are genes involved, such women will be extinct soon.)

To allow feminists to compete with men, they need childcare. Better to get someone else to pay for it — we already have massive childcare subsidies, paid for by taxpayers, mainly men. Still not enough. The market is not providing enough childcare by suitable people — too many lower class women, when it would require higher wages to attract more middle class women into childcare. Sounds like a job for government intervention. How did society ever function without massive government subsidies for upper middle class women? Must have been frightful.

Still, too bad for the kids, the gene pool, and tomorrow’s society, eh?