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A small town was about to lose its only daycare. The community voted to raise taxes to save it.

"I was a little shocked because I had made myself think that it wasn't going to pass so that I wasn't super disappointed at the end."

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Warren, Minnesota was in danger of losing its only daycare, so the community raised taxes.

Child care is essential for the majority of parents out there. Over the past couple of decades, it has become a necessity for both parents to work in many American households. When no one is home to care for the children, parents rely on daycares to fill the gap. But what happens when the only daycare in town is about to close?

In a small Minnesota town, that question became reality because there weren't enough workers and the cost to run the Little Sprouts Learning Center was high. Families, including the board members of Little Sprouts, were worried they'd have to relocate if the center was forced to close. They needed a radical plan.

Warren, Minnesota, where the childcare center is located, was in desperate need of a miracle since they're located in a childcare desert. A CBS Saturday Morning segment about the center mentioned that 51% of Americans live in childcare deserts, "where there are more children than available daycare providers."

"We really didn't know what we would do. We don't have any family who live here. What I have found over my experience with the daycare is that once they close, they're very hard to get back open," parent Kelly Pahlen told CBS.

So, what was the daycare board's radical idea to not only keep the daycare open but make it bigger and better? They took a chance on their community and asked to raise the taxes just a little to keep the only childcare center in business. The board members knew the risk and braced for the town to refuse that half-cent increase to their sales tax.

Much to their delight, they were pleasantly surprised by the results of the vote. The measure to raise the sales tax passed by 15 votes, and that provided enough money for the daycare to build a new, bigger center to care for more children in town. This is a prime example of what community support can look like, and it could catch on in other areas when people see how successful this town was.

Watch the full video below:

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Monopoly: the secret socialist board game you never got to play.

Did you know the original prototype of Monopoly was called “The Landlord's Game?" It was meant to promote the teachings of economic philosopher and writer Henry George, who believed that no one could claim to own any piece of land.

This is what the board looked like:

And here's an excerpt, from Harper's, about the big difference in the rules (the emphasis is mine):

In place of Monopoly's “Go!" was a box marked “Labor Upon Mother Earth Produces Wages." The Landlord Game's chief entertainment was the same as in Monopoly: competitors were to be saddled with debt and ultimately reduced to financial ruin, and only one person, the supermonopolist, would stand tall in the end. The players could, however, vote to do something not officially allowed in Monopoly: cooperate.Under this alternative rule set, they would pay land rent not to a property's title holder but into a common pot—the rent effectively socialized so that, as Magie later wrote, “Prosperity is achieved."


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