Shortage of child care

Reader comment on: The Traffic Paint Shortage

Submitted by benjamin (United States), May 24, 2010 11:29

It is funny, we often read about how the market fails to provide things as well. On today's front page, many poor women can no longer afford childcare so have to give up their jobs. Is this a market failure? Perhaps you say it is government regulation that causes this - afterall, if a person could have a childcare center in his home with 50 children for each adult, the price would surely come down! (as infant fatalities rise). It is just worth noting that there are shortages of things all the time because there are scarce resources - some are market created, some are government created. As a society, we must decide where these scarce resources go. We can let the free hand of the market make all the decisions for us and end up with an unregulated state of nature, or we can have the government provide a basic safety net. I would prefer that the overall pie is a bit smaller if it guarantees that nobody starves to death.

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