As you probably know, Georgia and Oklahoma have the most comprehensive preschool education programs in the country (free for all 4-year-olds). Thirty-seven states have limited programs, although some are quite excellent where they are available. And eleven states do not invest in preschool education at all, although that seems to be changing as word spreads about preschool’s positive socio-economic and educational benefits.

You can track news about what’s going on at the state level regarding preschool education at http://www.startsmartamerica.org. Its sister site, http://www.projectkidsmart.org, is more advocacy oriented and has info on HR 5084 in the US House of Representatives.

After living in Northern Europe for a year (then returning to Australia) I’ve often tried to grapple with their sorts of ‘gestalt’ political environment – ‘way’ of dealing with any issue.

The first things that comes to mind are the notions of ethicity and nationality that stand in rather stark opposition to ‘more post-colonial’ countries like the US and Australia.

Nevertheless, concocting ideal policies are fun thought experiments though.

And on the other side of the ledger, long parental leave is still a career-killer in competitive fields. There’s also a very clear assumption that it is the woman’s career that will come to an end, and a corresponding unwillingness to hire women into responsible positions.

Europe, in its wealth and variety, may be a source of ideas for some policies in the US, but don’t look for copyable models.

What is needed is first some agreement that subsidizing families with children is a worthy goal – something we have long done through both the tax code and publicly-supported education.

I think it’s interesting that you don’t support a one-size-fits-all solution to subsiding children, where one set of values gets imposed on everyone else. But you are imposing a system of non-pluralistic system of values by the very act of subsiding children. As this (implicitly) discriminates against people who do not have children and between people who choose to have different numbers of children.

I don’t think there’s been a credible reason given yet why children should be subsidied. The “children are public goods” argument fell at the first hurdle as (1) children aren’t public goods, (2) even if they were, we don’t neccessarily subsidise something just because it’s a public good.

I also don’t think the education analogy works. Publicly funded education is in effect a subsidy to families with children, but this isn’t the rationalisation most people would give for publically funding it. Most people would justify it on the grounds of the importance of education, not because people with children are morally deserving of other people’s money. Because of this the subsidized education doesn’t automatically cease when someone stops being a child.

MB: “National consensuses simply aren’t as easy to come by [in America]…”

Since the school systems are run locally or by the states in the U.S., I’m not sure the U.S. needs a national consensus before proceeding. Why doesn’t Massachusetts or Vermont or New York introduce universal preschool education? Shouldn’t proponents work to get it passed in one state, which can then serve as a laboratory and convince other states on its benefits?

Back in life as we live it: good luck bringing such a state of affairs about. Left and right setting aside antagonisms … Government behaving in a hands-off fashion … General agreements being reached by nearly all parties about what is to be done … And, presumably, lawsuit-lawyers and special interests generally putting what they usually do on hold …

Why any of this should be thought likely to happen is beyond me.

Some of us who are modest-government-is-generally-better-especially-in-America types are that way largely because we suspect that the odds of such a constellation of factors ever coming about are very, very long.

America’s a big, big place, nearly the size of Europe, full of many different populations and regions. We’ve got a largely-open border that we share with a poor country. We’ve got hordes of lawyers. Special interest groups swing enormous amounts of weight around. There’s a lot of churn. National consensuses simply aren’t as easy to come by here as they are in a centralized, relatively homogeneous country like, say, Sweden (pop. 8.6 million).