In Illinois, we have some of the highest childcare costs in the country...and the Democrats brag about how much money they throw at it and pretend that solves the problem instead of contributing to the problem.

The higher they raise the subsidy for poor and middle-class people, the higher the daycare providers will raise the costs for people who pay their own way.  It is a simple economic concept.

Illinois child care costs are among the highest in the U.S.

Illinois parents pay among the highest child care costs in the nation, a new study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation has found. The average single mother spends more than a third of her paycheck on child care.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has done "an exceptional job" of providing state grants to help support child care businesses, Connors said. 

"With Smart Start Illinois, his new budget, he's put through quite a few different resources for child care providers to build capacity back in," she said. 

A new $130 million grant program from Smart Start is designed to strengthen child care workers' compensation with an aim of stabilizing the field. However, Conners said the government can't solve the problem alone. 

College costs are a great example of the harm that is caused when the government hands out too much money.

In the 1960s, the government started throwing lots of money at students in the form of grants and loans to supposedly make college more affordable.  Colleges used this largess to bulk up administrators, and their prices increased much faster than inflation.

As the colleges kept gouging, the government kept upping the money it threw at them.  I wonder what went wrong!

The solution today for Democrats is to have other people pay the debt, which would certainly not make colleges more affordable for current and future students. 

The proper solution is to stop requiring degrees for so many jobs that don't need them and stop throwing so much money at students to attend.  Make the colleges compete. 

Obamacare is also a great example of how to make things unaffordable. 

To get Obamacare passed, we heard multiple obvious lies:

• You were going to be able to keep your doctor and keep your current plan.
• There was going to be more competition.
• Prices were going to go down substantially.
• It was going to pay for itself. 

It doesn't take an economics degree to understand that a bill that has massive mandates, many taxes, and massive subsidies; takes away choices for what kind of policy you can buy; and forces you to buy it was going to raise prices. 

And prices did not go down.  They skyrocketed — for years. 

As rates skyrocketed, so did out-of-pocket amounts. Deductibles for popular silver-level plans, which cover about 70 percent of costs, increased 87 percent between 2014 and 2020, averaging more than $4,500, according to the Kaiser foundation.

When Trump and Republicans got rid of the individual mandate and gave the people back freedom of choice on the type of insurance they could buy, prices stabilized because competition returned. 

But Biden is back with Obamacare Jr.

Biden launches a new push to limit health care costs hoping to show he can save money for families

He is again advocating that people not have a choice of what kind of insurance they can buy, and is again promising that his policy would reduce costs.

As always, the media are presenting this story without reminding the public of the massive number of lies relating to Obamacare. 

As P.T. Barnum said, "There's is a sucker born every minute."  

Here are some simple statements about energy and supply-side economics that even most journalists, entertainers, educators, scientists, and other Democrats should be able to understand:

If the government seeks to destroy or limit the amount of reasonably priced and reliable energy sources like coal, oil, and natural gas that people and businesses can use and force them to buy less reliable, less efficient, more expensive sources of energy like wind, solar, and flammable lithium, prices are likely to rise substantially and contribute greatly to higher inflation.

The poor, the middle class, and small businesses will be the ones who suffer the most.  It will be unaffordable for them to replace their gas-powered cars, trucks, and other equipment and to remodel their houses to comply with the new requirements.

Almost all Democrat policies seem to be about controlling what we buy and use, and they do it through cumbersome regulations and taxation.  They then claim they take care of the poor and middle class by giving handouts to pay for a portion of these new products.  Most of the media applaud Biden economics and claim not to understand why the public don't appreciate the great Biden policies as their real wages have continued to drop substantially since Biden took office.

Either most journalists are as clueless about economics and the harm Democrat policies cause, or they just don't care, and they believe their job is to elect Democrats to remake or destroy America, no matter how much they have to intentionally mislead the public. 

Photo credit: Tumisu, Pixabay license.