A simple question on child care should have elicited a boilerplate response. Instead, it further revealed delusion.

Conservative opposition to social safety nets is nothing new. But, as daycare costs continue to soar and the US Surgeon General warns that parents are dangerously overwhelmed, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle appear to agree that at least something needs to be done to help address the crisis.

Yet when faced with a simple question on the issue this week, Donald Trump and JD Vance stumbled profoundly, prompting many to wonder whether the Republican ticket had even bothered to think about child care affordability—again, one of the most acute problems facing the US economy—at all.

Just take a look. Here was Trump at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, rambling through an incomprehensible, half-baked theory that foreign tariffs will solve the problem, easy-peasy—all while dodging the question of specific pieces of legislation he’d push to help make child care more affordable. Meanwhile, economists widely agree that sweeping tariffs would severely hurt world trade.

  • @someguy3
    26•9 days ago

    Their plan is the free market will fix it. What they as the government have to do is nothing, get out of the way, let the problem fester, and that way the free market will come up with a solution. That’s their ideology.

      • @[email protected]
        26•9 days ago

        Come on dude wake the fuck up. If three kids die at the daycare on the corner you’ll know not to take your kids there. It’s the free market and it absolutely works.

        /s

        • @AbidanYreEnglish
          16•9 days ago

          That place shut down, there’s a new place there now.

          Yes, it’s got the same staff as the old one, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

      • @someguy3
        10•9 days ago

        When something bad happens Vance will say “that’s a fact of life”.

        Because his daycare will be rich people only, his free market will have solved it. If you want to solve yours, then just get rich. That’s how their ideology works.

    • @EldritchEnglish
      9•9 days ago

      Yes but the only problem with that is the reason we have regulation was the free market. It’s like the economic liberals that call themselves libertarians. Claiming that all our economic problems are because of regulations. And don’t get me wrong there absolutely are regulations that are bad that need to be changed. But the horrors of even the worst regulation. Are nothing compared to the horrors of unregulated unfettered capitalism.

      Unfortunately though for too many Americans are completely brainwashed to the point where. You could make a series of unintelligible grunts, shout MERICA! Free market! Yeeeeeehaaaaw! And have just made a convincing policy platform.