Once upon a time in 2017, the government launched “Free Childcare for Working Parents”, a scheme offering parents of pre-schoolers in England 30 hours of free childcare per week, for 38 weeks of the year. The £100,000 threshold assumes a capacity to independently absorb huge childcare costs that we don’t recognise in our daily financial life. A major issue for our family is that the free hours are not, in fact, free. Or will they, too, be renouncing the free childcare they so badly designed? What is objectively true is that those earning £100,000 pay a much higher proportion of their salaries in tax.