Late last month, the New York Times highlighted what might be considered a weakness in Zohran Mamdani’s universal free childcare plan: the rich will get to use it too. The article, titled “They Pay $34 for Burgers. Should Their Child Care Be Free?,” enumerated the consumerist excesses of a tony Upper East Side neighborhood slated to receive a daycare center, then questioned whether a city facing a budget crisis “should be using taxpayer money to fund free services that some families could pay for themselves.”
Its author, Eliza Shapiro, presented a range of perspectives, to her credit, including the view that progressive taxation already addresses any potential unfairness. Mamdani’s childcare centers will be tax-funded, and income taxes rise with household tax brackets, so wealthier Upper East Siders are already paying more for public programs. The article also acknowledges that not everyone in the neighborhood is wealthy, and that the center will also serve residents of less affluent areas like Roosevelt Island and parts of Chinatown.
But Mamdani’s critics get the last word: the piece concludes with one expert articulating the view that the first childcare spots should go to children from the lowest-income households, expanding up the income ladder on a sliding scale as funds become available.
This approach is known as means-testing, or gatekeeping access to public services behind eligibility requirements and restricting that eligibility to people with limited means. Examples include Medicaid, SNAP, and Section 8 housing vouchers, all of which are available only to low-income people. The opposite of means-testing is universal program design, where all people, no matter their income, are entitled to a particular benefit just for being members of society. Examples include public education, Social Security, and Medicare, where we all pay in with our taxes and all get to benefit directly.
The virtue of means-tested versus universal programs is not a…
Auteur: Meagan Day
