[HN Gopher] America is substantially reducing poverty among chil...
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America is substantially reducing poverty among children
Author : paulpauper
Score : 111 points
Date : 2021-09-24 19:05 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| clcaev wrote:
| This is not a zero sum game. By providing funds for necessities,
| there will be increased demand. This demand will spawn new
| supply, which will bring prices back down. If this child tax
| credit is left in place, it should cause our economy to
| restructure some, paying more attention to essentials for
| children. Those providing for these needs create jobs, further
| economic activity, and tax revenue.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Poverty is more than an financial state. Giving away money to
| move someone from just below the poverty line - which is
| artificially low - to just above that line is honorable, but
| "curing" poverty is not that simple. Unfortunately, articles like
| this help the myth persist.
|
| More political magician-y mumbo jumbo.
|
| It's also important to ask: at what cost? If these monies were
| financed by printing more money, then that's a form of tax. It
| discounts all other money in circulation. Who does that hurt the
| most?
|
| No doubt something should be done. Poverty is a cruel and
| unnecessary disease. But printing money...a one off??? Let's not
| over sell this. Unfortunately.
| 45yu56bwedfg wrote:
| Money is always printed. The only difference is how fast we
| inflate the current supply, not that we inflate it. Inflation
| is a function of the system itself. Its fundamental.
|
| Poverty is a desired outcome of this system.
| clavalle wrote:
| Keeping money moving is the desired outcome of inflation.
|
| Spending money isn't what keeps people in poverty.
| munk-a wrote:
| Inflation always directly hurts those with the most the most by
| value alone - but it can specifically cause hardships to those
| who are in some critical point where an extra dollar could
| cause a dramatic increase in quality of life.
|
| I think most proposals around sustaining this benefit in the
| long term don't rely on pure monetary creation but instead
| would shift it to a budget item that is directly funded by
| taxes (which in theory can be better targeted to hit those with
| excess)
| flimflamm wrote:
| How can children be poor? Aren't their parents poor? Or are
| children supposed to provide for them selves in US?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I would look past the literal question in the parent, and think
| about the implications: Who provides for children? Why should
| they suffer poverty, having no power or responsibility for
| their own condition?
| ip26 wrote:
| We attach a dollar figure to make it easier to measure, but a
| different way to look at it is when your basic needs are not
| met (food, shelter) you live in poverty; you are impoverished.
| stevenpetryk wrote:
| Consider this: the intention is quite obvious, and the gravity
| of the situation makes pedantry like this come across as
| completely tone-deaf.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| The phrase isn't "children who are poor", it's "children living
| in poverty." Which yes primarily counts children living with
| poor parents, but could also count runaway children, children
| living as wards of the state in bad conditions, etc. Either
| way, it's defined as children in living conditions that don't
| have enough resources to meet a minimal acceptable standard.
| munk-a wrote:
| Dependents can certainly live in poverty - that does almost
| always indicate that the family unit as a whole lives in
| poverty but it does allow some differentiation for families
| that are struggling with debt but manage to provide a
| relatively poverty free childhood for their offspring.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| You're getting downvoted for the joke, but in a way, yes
| everyone in the USA is supposed to provide for themselves.
|
| Aside from a few demeaning and complicated government programs,
| the USA has only distributed resources through factor payments
| based on labor, or ownership of capital. Most of our programs
| aiming to help the poor only phase in after the poor have
| earned a certain amount of money through labor.
| jollybean wrote:
| The data from the graph in the article shows a very obvious
| downward trend of child poverty from the end of 2020 until now.
| The line that demarcates the 'monthly cheques' I don't think is
| remotely remarkable.
|
| That's not to say anything for or against the program, but I
| think that they are overstating things.
|
| If you want a chart that shows a 'possible driver' of lowered
| poverty that lines up a little bit more nicely with that graph,
| try this [1] which is just US BLS unemployment. As millions of
| people become unemployed ... child poverty rates spike, as they
| become employed, they go down.
|
| [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Mostly because the pandemic caused panic stimulus spending, not
| because of permanent, structural changes to fiscal policy.
| srj wrote:
| Not sure if you're aware but the US recently started sending
| checks to families every month.
| BeetleB wrote:
| They are merely paying out a tax credit early. Families are
| not getting more (or at least, not much more) than before due
| to this.
| nielsbot wrote:
| The blurbs I've heard say this has cut US child poverty in
| half. I should find a source...
| iammisc wrote:
| You can't honestly believe that this reduced child poverty.
| While the Child tax credit has been increased, it's been on a
| steady increase for a while, and the net amount hasn't
| changed that much. If the claim is that the timing of
| payments is reducing poverty.. that's quite the claim.
|
| The more obvious answer is that America had quite the
| recovery from the great recession including a pre-pandemic
| unemployment rate approaching 0%.
| lkbm wrote:
| > While the Child tax credit has been increased, it's been
| on a steady increase for a while, and the net amount hasn't
| changed that much.
|
| From what I can tell, it increased by 80%[0], from $2,000
| to $3,600. (It varies for different household
| structures/incomes, but in general the poorest get the
| most.)
|
| > If the claim is that the timing of payments is reducing
| poverty.. that's quite the claim.
|
| As someone who's got some close friends who are poor, yes,
| monthly payments can make a big difference.
|
| But really, the extra $1,200 isn't insignificant. It's 5%
| of the 25%ile income, and 14% for the 10%ile[1]. $1,200 a
| year is literally over 50% some of my friends' total food
| budgets. (I'm sure someone will jump in to explain how they
| could _never_ eat for that little, but I can assure you
| that _many Americans do_.)
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/taxes/will-i-receive-
| the-chil...
|
| [1] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
| iammisc wrote:
| Is the claim that 1600 dollars made the difference
| between poverty and subsistence?
|
| I have nothing against the child tax credit. I think it's
| great. But I am hard pressed to believe 1600 dollars has
| eliminated poverty. If it did... Great that's a really
| cheap way to do it!
| RegBarclay wrote:
| Those checks are prepayment of a child tax credit. In my
| case, it just increases what I'll owe when I file my taxes.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think this (COVID relief) is the closest America is going to
| get to a legitimate domestic experiment on UBI we're going to get
| for a while so it's rather heartening to see the drop in family
| poverty.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I bet the new child tax credit will stay on the books. It's
| such a game changing boost to lower income families.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| This is going to last only as long as it will take for the
| labor supply pressures to squeeze out small- and medium-sized
| businesses for the large corporate interests to scoop up on the
| cheap. They're not going to permanently constrict the reserve
| army of labor.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| If cost is not controlled I'd expect expenses of food, clothed
| and renting to rise after UBI being implemented.
| encoderer wrote:
| Costs cannot be controlled. That's not how it works. That's
| how you get empty shelves.
|
| I think some inflation will happen but not dramatically in
| food and clothing. We do not have many naked and starving
| people in America. It's the premium consumer goods that will
| see higher demand - think dishwashers not Chanel.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Costs cannot be controlled. That's not how it works.
| That's how you get empty shelves.
|
| Many types of food in America are massively subsidized,
| including dairy[1], beef[2], and corn.
|
| Government policies can certainly drive down prices. Direct
| price controls don't work, but subsidizing production most
| certainly works.
|
| Though an economist would argue that a dollar saved at the
| market cost tax payers more than a dollar to get, due to
| inefficiencies, counter argument is that people who are
| poor pay less taxes and benefit more from reduced food
| prices. (At which points arguments about corn subsidizes
| and long term harm to the health of the citizenry are
| brought up.)
|
| [1] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/country_price_rankings...
|
| [2] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/country_price_rankings...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I guess rent will be the one to go up in case of UBI.
|
| UBI fundamentally does not solve the problems that:
|
| a) some people do not want to live next to some other
| people, and are willing to pay extra for that privilege -
| now they have even more money to use for that purpose,
|
| b) in the most expensive regions, demand exceeds supply a
| lot.
|
| I even think that a vast majority of UBI would, at the end,
| accrue to landlords.
| vpribish wrote:
| in the current context of this experiment rent dropped by
| 30% in SF while this was going on. Sure some of that was
| people fleeing dense urban areas to escape lockdowns, but
| also some was people decamping because the economic
| pressure to work in a city was lifted. UBI might be a
| terrible threat to landlords' incomes as people
| redistribute.
| chii wrote:
| the drop in rent would be more attributable to the WFH
| policies instituted by many companies rather than any UBI
| imho.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| It's gotta be combined with YIMBY policies, hopefully
| LVT.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| The state can definitely influence the prices of goods
| (e.g. it can affect the price of money). Direct control is
| indeed infeasible.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| I can see the argument for the price of rent rising, but why
| would the prices of food and clothing rise? My understanding
| is that those are highly competitive markets, with low
| margins on top of the cost of production, at least in their
| non-luxury segments. Is that wrong?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Food and clothing depend on other things (cost of
| employees, equipment, materials, etc.) When the costs of
| those things rise, the cost of food and clothing will have
| to rise.
| rualca wrote:
| > Food and clothing depend on other things (cost of
| employees, equipment, materials, etc.) When the costs of
| those things rise, the cost of food and clothing will
| have to rise.
|
| Not really. You're pointing to production costs, but
| production costs just define the price's lower bound, not
| the price itself.
|
| Price depends solely on willingness to pay and pricing
| strategy, which is higher than the production cost when
| the product/service is not subsidized or a loss leader.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| It seems like there are two effects we're considering at
| the same time:
|
| 1. UBI might increase people's willingness to pay for
| goods in general, and the prices of goods that are most
| strongly driven by willingness to pay would rise. (Rent
| in expensive cities might be an example of this. Milk,
| soap, and socks probably aren't.)
|
| 2. To the extent that UBI is paid for with higher taxes,
| the prices of everything would go up. This seems
| obviously true on average and to some extent, but the
| specific numbers matter a lot. For example if prices go
| up by 10%, but the people whom UBI is designed to help
| see their income rise by 20%, then UBI is achieving its
| stated goal. (Importantly, the hypothetical 10% rise in
| prices doesn't reflect wealth being burned or spent, but
| rather resources being moved around in some sense.)
| joshenberg wrote:
| Depends where we source them, for example American-made
| clothing is already prohibitively expensive to the
| economic demographic segments that are targeted by UBI
| experiments.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Not necessarily non-luxury but also the middle brands I
| think. But it's difficult to prove though. As a user said
| the pandemic also sees a decrease in supplies so it's kinda
| difficult to do "tests" properly.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think that's one of the biggest weaknesses of using the
| pandemic as an experiment on UBI - it's one of the best ones
| we'll get for a while (and I think we have seen increases in
| luxury spending from most sectors which would indicate
| greater financial security) but at the same time we're seeing
| the continued echoes of supply chain shortages. It'll be hard
| to determine precisely why the price of meat has gone up from
| two prior, there are quite legitimate additional costs on
| production by having increased sanitary and working space
| requirements - and I think both sides of the UBI debate will
| be able to sanely say that those costs were either mostly due
| to the pandemic or mostly due to labour shortages driven by
| the covid benefit... and I don't know if we'll ever get a
| really clear answer.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Nah, it's not.
|
| Monthly lottery winners are.
|
| If you know that 'free money' is just a temporary thing, you
| don't quit your job and move somewhere where that amount of
| money is enough to survive, and just stop working.... if ubi is
| permanent, and guaranteed to be "enough" to minimalistically
| survive, many more people would do that.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I think this depends. If you work in a fungible occupation
| with limited career growth you very easily can take a year
| off. And most of these UBI experiment have targeted low-
| income folks who most likely work these kind of jobs.
| munk-a wrote:
| Monthly lottery winners are a pretty poor basis for
| evaluating UBI since that is promoting an arbitrary
| individual to wealth - rather than providing a baseline
| income to a whole community. The effects of the later can
| easily be conceived to be quite different from targeted
| welfare. One of the common counter-arguments against UBI is
| that because the boon is applied across the board (and not
| just effecting the needy) that it will essentially cancel out
| and just cause a momentary bump in inflation - I think there
| are several very logical reasons that isn't the case but
| lottery winners are extremely poor experiments to disprove
| that theory.
|
| As an example of how prevalent that counter-argument is
| please see all the siblings specifically about how UBI =
| inflation. (Also - I don't think this debate is settled - I
| think there are compelling reasons why UBI is not just free
| inflation... but there are also several reasons suggesting
| that it is - the UBI counter-argument is not at all
| illogical).
| inglor_cz wrote:
| > providing a baseline income to a whole community
|
| The rich oil sheikdoms in the Gulf are already providing a
| good income to all their citizens (not the working class
| gastarbeiters).
|
| We should definitely observe them and learn from their
| experience. It is not precisely the same as UBI, but closer
| than anything else I can think of.
| munk-a wrote:
| Canada has also carried out a few interesting UBI
| experiments with pretty positive feedback - but I think
| America needs to see something happen domestically to
| give it a serious consideration.
| klyrs wrote:
| If only Alaska was considered "domestic" enough...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
| chii wrote:
| > sheikdoms in the Gulf are already providing a good
| income to all their citizens
|
| which is looking to failing as soon as the price of oil
| drops. The saudis are now having to pay VAT to the state,
| for the first time recently.
|
| UBI doesn't work if the productivity of the country would
| drop as a result of implementing a UBI. And i can't think
| of any reason why productivity would not drop, since
| there would definitely be some people who are currently
| productive, but would drop that productivity if there
| would be a UBI that's livable for them.
|
| The argument that there would be a percentage who would
| increase their productivity (such as starting their own
| small business, etc) is merely speculative, since if they
| could start a small business, why don't they do it now,
| without waiting on UBI? If the UBI is what enables them
| to invest their time and capital, what makes UBI the only
| way to obtain capital, rather than seed capital? If it is
| _only_ UBI that can give them this seed capital, then
| they are effectively being subsidized by tax payers to
| entrepreneurship - if that was the goal, why not make
| that explicit, and give grants for such?
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| > if ubi is permanent...
|
| The most likely outcome is that very quickly all the UBI
| money will be going to the few landlords and soon people will
| need "UBI plus a job" to pay rent and make ends meet.
|
| And whilst the masses our back out in the wilds scrounging up
| their money, the landlord class will be consolidating into an
| every smaller group.
|
| Inflation is what happens when too much money chases a
| limited supply of goods. And desirable housing is always
| limited.
| [deleted]
| kiba wrote:
| That's why you need to fight asset inflation, reduce red
| tapes and increasing housing opportunities.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| Sure, but it behoves advocates to UBI to say:
|
| "We have a solution that not only includes handing outs
| cash to everyone forever, but to fight the associated,
| unavoidable rent inflation we will introduce sweeping
| changes to hard-earned building standards, negatively
| alter the character of many many neighbourhoods, and add
| a massive beurocracy to introduce and enforce with the
| power of the state all sorts of price controls."
|
| They don't do this because obviously far fewer people
| would think its a good idea.
| kiba wrote:
| I thought the problem was with bureaucracy, especially
| with restrictive zoning laws, and the propensity to say
| no.
| onetrueliberal wrote:
| Bureaucracy is a wellspring of employment.
| jlmorton wrote:
| Rent is only affected by income/capacity to pay to the
| extent that supply is limited.
|
| You could give everyone currently living in Detroit
| $10,000/month, and it wouldn't impact rental prices at all,
| because there is an abundance of supply. Do the same thing
| in NYC, and indeed rental prices will soar.
| notJim wrote:
| > The most likely outcome is that very quickly all the UBI
| money will be going to the few landlords and soon people
| will need "UBI plus a job" to pay rent and make ends meet.
|
| This doesn't make sense. If it was the case, raising the
| minimum wage would have the same result, but studies have
| shown that people are better off when the minimum wage goes
| up. Landlords do not have infinite power to raise prices,
| because they are in competition with one another.
|
| To the extent landlords have too much power, it's largely
| because we have decided to prevent the construction of new
| housing for many years.
|
| > And desirable housing is always limited.
|
| Does not have to be if you allow people to build more
| housing, and fix the regulations that make it overly
| expensive to do so.
| chii wrote:
| I would argue raising minimum wage doesn't have the same
| effect, because the value produced by the job on this
| minimum wage, in totality, is still higher than the
| minimum wage (because if it weren't, those jobs would
| then be gone, and the person would end up with no job,
| rather than a raised minimum wage).
| TuringNYC wrote:
| It depends on how much UBI is. There is plenty of housing
| in the US, for example -- except there isnt enough near
| where jobs exist. If UBI was sufficient for survival,
| people could migrate away from high cost areas to exurbs.
| There are huge swaths of housing once you go far enough,
| except that isnt possible if you still need to supplement
| UBI with a job and are hence tied to a major metro area.
| est31 wrote:
| If 20 quit their low wage job and one of them finally has
| time to study and become a researcher or doctor, I think it's
| worth it.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| What if they become a shitty musician? And curent
| researchers get paid even less, because their money goes to
| a kid who'd rather play his ukulele inestead of working?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| That's a valid argument only if you believe that a person
| only lives a life worth living if they have utility to
| others.
| munk-a wrote:
| And honestly - the internet has democratized content
| creation to such an extent that a lot of really niche
| interests can attract funding (just, not very much).
| jandrese wrote:
| Using Lotto Winners as your experiment has the problem of
| selecting only the people who play the lotto. Your data will
| be biased towards less fiscal responsibility.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| While I'm certain that there are people who spend an
| irresponsible amount on lottery tickets, I don't know if
| those are also the lottery winners.
|
| I'd be very interested in any statistics for that. Where I
| am lottery tickets cost about the same as a Starbucks
| coffee, and I'd bet the average lottery player buys tickets
| less than the average Starbucks drinker buys coffee, making
| me wonder about the label of "less fiscally responsible",
| unless we're also grouping all Starbucks drinks in there.
| And given the astronomically poor odds of winning, I also
| wonder how much more regular players win vs those who buy a
| ticket once every month or two - does it really help enough
| to be obvious in the statistics.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The lottery ticket purchase is a gamble: spend money,
| almost certainly get nothing, tiny chance of winning big.
|
| The coffee purchase is just that, a purchase: spend
| money, get coffee.
|
| The amounts might be similar but the transaction class is
| totally different.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I don't know, it's really a form of entertainment. The
| odd chances I do buy a ticket it's to think about what I
| would do if I won. I'm not expecting to win, I just like
| the idea.
|
| And both are transient and rather empty - neither provide
| any real value outside of a brief joy.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| If a noteworthy number of people decided they were going to
| not work, the cost of labor would rise, and prices would rise
| until those people needed to work again.
| jollybean wrote:
| That might be true. But the payouts were more limited than a
| nominal UBI program, and the costs were astronomical.
|
| The US added 20% of GDP in debt in a single year. [1]
|
| The US Fed added 4 Trillion to it's balance sheet in 2 years
| [2] which is ballpark maybe 25% of GDP.
|
| Obviously there was more than just wealth distribution in
| there, but what becomes clear in the calculation is the
| gigantic expense of UBI.
|
| UBI doesn't work in current terms, it's not a program that can
| be remotely afforded without a 'total re-work of the system'.
| Surely there are opportunities with taxing the ultra-wealthy
| and considering loopholes (esp. offshore tax havens) but
| there's just no calculus where it works out neatly. In other
| words 'UBI' is not like 'child care benefits' or some kind of
| regular social program where can argue about the balance sheet.
| It's a completely different scale of costing problem.
|
| If the US focused really hard on 'some kind of healthcare for
| all' (not making any statements about what that might look
| like) and controlling costs there, improved minimum wage, and
| did 'basic structural tax reform' - things might improve quite
| a lot. (i.e. doing the hard work of reforming normal programs
| we have to have would go a very long way). But I don't think
| there's any actual magic math that would allow for a true,
| enduring UBI situation. Even really well managed Oil-rich
| places like Norway don't quite have that, they sort it out
| using the more accessible, 'normal' social programs etc..
|
| For more context 'the current payout program' which is not not
| 'U' in the UBI, just for about 10% of the population, is going
| to cost 0.5% of GDP. Meaning just that limited program,
| expanded to 'U' i.e. 'Universal' is 5% of GDP, every year.
|
| Edit: finally should not that a lot of the expansion of the
| Fed's balance sheet amounts for 'welfare for the rich' and it's
| not a small amount. That's a problem as well.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...
|
| [2]
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
| fozzyfozfoz wrote:
| No wonder the US president is going around kneeling like he
| just took an arrow in the Achilles. The US just spent tens of
| trillions of dollars chasing Hector around Troy while Hector
| had a trojan stuck right up the US' big thick yoga ass.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > a legitimate domestic experiment on UBI
|
| The pandemic spending is unsustainable.
| gkop wrote:
| Parent said "experiment".
| sam0x17 wrote:
| A lot of people on the left do want to make the child tax
| credit permanent, and there is no logistical reason we
| couldn't do that other than political constraints.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| The amount we've spent on child tax credits and toe-dipping
| into UBI is a drop in the bucket compared to spending
| $300m/day for 20 years in Afganistan without even breaking a
| sweat. Clearly we can handle this kind of spending, and more,
| especially if we increase tax enforcement on the top 1% of
| earners and _gasp_ actually re-assess the capital gains tax
| to ensure that people like Jeff Bezos are paying at least 28%
| tax on their capital gains just like they would on regular
| income.
|
| These programs are also an investment in the economy that
| pays itself forward in the form of increased social mobility,
| and thus increased future tax revenue, so it is by no means a
| net loss. It could even be the case that every $1 invested in
| these kinds of programs results in more than $1 in created
| new tax revenue a few years down the road. This is called
| investing in our future. A new concept, I know.
| fozzyfozfoz wrote:
| At the same time the largest growing group is supposedly "Asian"
| Americans according to Pew research. It's funny how they group
| over four billion people into one ethnicity. Ironically (or not)
| the two major economic work horses in the American "alliance" are
| experiencing sharp declines in population growth, while the
| Chinese and Filipinos make up the largest group.
| notJim wrote:
| https://archive.is/I6wrL
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Wait until you start to really feel the effects of inflation. The
| tone of this article is very pravda-esque.
| silver-arrow wrote:
| Agreed. Simply a changing unit of measurement. Wait until this
| finishes out, you will see decimation of the middle class
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| For an outlet called "economist" you'd think they would be
| more cautious at jumping for joy at 1 month of data which is
| barely even a blip.
| m_ke wrote:
| *Temporarily, and partially thanks to the previous administration
|
| The infrastructure bill is about to fail due to a few corrupt
| corporate Democrats.
| munk-a wrote:
| I am pretty certain the COVID relief funding has been primarily
| placed on the chopping block by republicans recently with
| efforts to increase it coming out of the democratic side -
| there are of course exceptions to this with some of the more
| moderate democrats siding with a scaling back of benefits
| (nothing is monolithic or purely black and white).
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into partisan flamewar. It's the
| opposite of what we're trying for on this site.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| m_ke wrote:
| It's not partisan, the child tax credit that gives parents
| $300/month/child that was included in the "American Rescue
| Plan" expires at the end of the year. [1]
|
| The new infrastructure bill was supposed to include free
| childcare and other benefits but it's looking like it will
| get killed by Manchin and Sinema.
|
| [1] "The American Rescue Plan allows families to opt in to
| receive the monthly payments from July 15 until Dec. 15,
| 2021." - https://www.forbes.com/advisor/taxes/will-i-receive-
| the-chil...
| munk-a wrote:
| I feel like the wording in your original post was
| particularly poor though - instead of focusing in on those
| two as individuals you attributed the issue to democrats as
| a whole - and also omitted that the bill would also pass
| quite easily if, say, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz decided to
| vote for it. You mentioned that it passed due to the
| previous administration (a republican administration) and
| was now in danger (under a democratic administration) due
| to corrupt democrats. It's a guideline on HN to always read
| things as charitably as possible but the wording here was
| really really poor and could easily be read as a
| proposition that the democrats were torpedoing something
| championed by republicans. Additionally - specifically
| pulling political parties into the discussion will always
| make the discourse degrade.
| m_ke wrote:
| Here's my wording for anyone who can't see it due to it
| being flagged:
|
| """ *Temporarily, and partially thanks to the previous
| administration
|
| The infrastructure bill is about to fail due to a few
| corrupt corporate Democrats. """
|
| It's more than just Sinema and Manchin, that's why I said
| a few corporate democrats:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/house-democrats-threaten-
| hol...
|
| I'm pretty left leaning by American standards and no fan
| of Trump, but you can't give Biden too much credit for
| reduction in childhood poverty when it's mostly due to
| the expanded unemployment benefits that were first before
| Biden was elected.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| A lot of people fresh to the political process may not
| realize that this is a routine thing that happens on both
| sides of the aisle. For example, Lieberman in 2009 killed
| the public option[0] for his own party on Obamacare which
| would have gone a long ways toward forwarding the left's
| healthcare vision. Later on in 2017, Susan Collins, a
| Republican, voted to save Obamacare which very likely
| could have succeeded had she voted with her party[1]
|
| [0]https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/newslett
| er-art...
|
| [1]https://www.healthreformvotes.org/congress/300025
| m_ke wrote:
| Another thing that some people don't realize is that this
| reconciliation bill could be the last attempt at Biden
| passing any meaningful legislation. If it fails dems are
| guaranteed to lose seats in the midterms, giving up their
| slim majority and effectively turning Biden into a lame
| duck president.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I'm happy to disagree with you on that one. Consider the
| actual Senate elections[0]. There are 20 R seats up vs 14
| D seats. The R side is mathematically on the defense. In
| addition, if you look at the forecasts, _most_ of the
| seats are foregone conclusions - we 're down to ~5 seats
| that will be actual contests. This isn't to say one side
| will or will not win but neither side is likely to get
| the decisive win that each want.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_Senat
| e_elec...
| m_ke wrote:
| I hope you're right but:
|
| 1. His approval numbers are tanking
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/354872/biden-approval-
| rating-hi...
|
| 2. Summer is just ending and we're up to 2000 Americans
| dying from COVID a day, once cold weather hits the
| northern states we'll probably see those numbers rise
| even more.
|
| 3. Thanks to the filibuster reconciliation is the only
| chance democrats have at passing anything through the
| senate. If the infrastructure deal fails we'll see none
| of the campaign promises pass.
|
| 4. Depending on how China handles Evergrande, there's a
| decent chance that we'll see the stock market tank in the
| next 6 months.
| munk-a wrote:
| As Bernie is getting a bit older he might chose this
| election to stand down as well - but even if a
| "republican" won the seat it'd be a VT Republican (maybe
| even Gov. Scott) so that race might be more interesting
| than it might appear now - but the conclusion is probably
| going to be pretty predictably liberal.
| munk-a wrote:
| I absolutely understand what you were saying and I don't
| think you're incorrect - I just wanted to highlight that
| the wording was poorly chosen and could easily be
| misread. I personally have problems with clear
| communications myself all the time so I just wanted to
| provide a bit of feedback as to why it was called out as
| being flamebait - your core statement wouldn't start a
| flame war - but the way you said it wasn't the best.
| m_ke wrote:
| I tried to match the tone of the headline in the article,
| especially the subtitle: "The Biden administration's
| biggest success has not received enough attention".
| dang wrote:
| The last sentence of your GP comment was obviously
| flamebait. That's what we ask people not to post here.
| Let's not quibble over what counts as "partisan"--all
| political flamewar is something we're trying to avoid here.
| m_ke wrote:
| It was not meant to be flamebait, I'm a democrat and
| Manchin is clearly a corrupt corporate stooge. Here's an
| Exxon exec confirming on tape that Manchin is his go to
| guy and they want the infrastructure deal killed because
| it would raise corporate taxes:
| https://youtu.be/xs0xAS2mLtg?t=108
| dang wrote:
| I believe you, but short, intense, name-calling
| ("corrupt") political battle comments _are_ flamebait. We
| have to go by effects rather than by intent.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&
| sor...
| throwaway_dcnt wrote:
| If this statement has elements of truth (I mean maybe it
| does?), may I please see the evidence?
| m_ke wrote:
| See this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28647021
|
| The $300 per child per month payments are temporary and will
| expire at the end of the year. Before that the extended
| unemployment helped a lot of parents by giving them an income
| and allowing them to stay home and take care of their kids
| (which is why I said thanks to the previous administration).
|
| The 3.5 trillion "Human Infrastructure Bill" is supposed to
| be voted on on Monday but it might get gutted further by
| Manchin and Sinema.
| notJim wrote:
| Note that many of the administrative hurdles could be overcome by
| moving the benefit to the Social Security Administration, who
| already have the data needed. Also, it's been a while since I
| looked at this, but Republican Mitt Romney had the best proposal
| out of all the child benefit proposals that were kicking around
| earlier this year. That the democrats didn't pick up on it is a
| sad statement about them.
|
| https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2021/02/15/who-should-a...
| jessaustin wrote:
| Poor children don't vote and they don't contribute campaign
| funds. As implied by TFA, they were only helped this time by
| mistake.
| SomaticPirate wrote:
| I'm a bit surprised by these comments. This seems like data
| driven evidence of a government policy working quite well.
|
| Yet there are people complaining about this causes inflation and
| is "printing money". The article clearly points out that most of
| the spending is on essentials and directly contributing to the
| children's quality of life.
|
| Not the article I would expect to see fiscal hawks on.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| A lot of people don't care much about the poor and instead care
| primarily about their own wallet. Whether it works or not is
| irrelevant to some folks.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| What about the trillions airdropped on Wall Street? That was
| surely also "printing money" ... And it was a lot!
| listless wrote:
| It's not that it's not working. It's that it's not a
| sustainable model. Or if it is, we need to cut a LOT of other
| stuff.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Our $2000 per capita annual war budget would be a reasonable
| starting place.
| grecy wrote:
| It works very well and has been sustainable for many decades
| in a handful of other countries around the world.
|
| It's simply a question of priorities, and evidently that is
| not high on the list.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Or raise taxes among the top earners, corps, cap gains. Seems
| worth it to me.
| president wrote:
| A bug fix can still work well even if you don't address the
| root cause. But sooner or later it will reveal itself again.
| maxerickson wrote:
| "fiscal hawks" probably isn't correct.
| riboflavin123 wrote:
| > depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six
| or one in five children counted as poor
|
| This is an alarmingly high number. I've been primed by media to
| blame this on an inverse relationship between income and number-
| of-children (i.e. poor people have many babies, rich people have
| few babies).
|
| Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the surprisingly
| high child poverty rate?
| eli wrote:
| An explanation for why child poverty is so high or why you're
| surprised that it's so high?
|
| I think the relationship between fertility and income generally
| goes the other way: the richer you are, the fewer children you
| choose to have. You can see this broadly by comparing different
| countries.
|
| There are serious structural problems with the American economy
| that make class mobility difficult. Two obvious ones,
| healthcare and child care, should be treated as urgent crises.
| We have policies that discourage the poor from working. And
| that's before even getting into the sexism and racism. (The
| child poverty rate is MUCH higher in female-led households or
| black households.)
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Could you provide a basis for this theory? I think the burden
| is on you to establish your claim, not on others to disprove
| it. So far, it's baseless, supported only by:
|
| > I've been primed by media ...
|
| The media isn't responsible for what I believe; I am. If I know
| I'm being "primed", then I don't believe it. Also, I'm not sure
| what media the parent refers to, but it's much different from
| what I read.
| riboflavin123 wrote:
| I am aware that most of my knowledge about income
| distribution comes via news articles/videos. In the instances
| where they DO cite sources (which is rare), I have never
| personally investigated the data behind claims.
|
| That is why I prefaced my comment about being "primed" by
| media.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Then perhaps the question is, 'what causes the high rate of
| child poverty in the US, can anyone provide some
| substantive information?'
|
| The claim is baseless and thus not relevant; posting it
| just spreads a baseless claim, which we have plenty of on
| the Internet!
|
| > In the instances where they DO cite sources (which is
| rare)
|
| If it helps, try higher-quality news. The journalism I read
| always cites sources; it's a rule of serious journalism.
| mikeg8 wrote:
| Your comments is condescending and counter productive to
| what was a generally inquisitive question by OP.
|
| Try shedding light instead of nit-picking. Your proposed
| question is not as superior to OPs as you think.
| AbjectFailure wrote:
| Just shut the fuck up, you annoying loser. Jesus Christ.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Commenter's aim is to seek knowledge. He is putting forth a
| hypothesis, and is seeking alternative theories. If he gets
| viable ones, he'll put less faith in his hypothesis, or may
| abandon it altogether.
|
| If one merely finds flaws in his hypothesis, he'll realize
| he's wrong, but will be no closer to the truth.
|
| Pointing out that he hasn't backed up his theory is
| reasonable, but it doesn't bring him closer to his goal.
|
| A relevant quote from Carl Sagan:
|
| "If you're only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through
| to you. You never learn anything. You become a crotchety
| misanthrope convinced that nonsense is ruling the world.
| (There is, of course, much data to support you.) Since major
| discoveries at the borderlines of science are rare,
| experience will tend to confirm your grumpiness. But every
| now and then a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid
| and wonderful. If you're too resolutely and uncompromisingly
| skeptical, you're going to miss (or resent) the transforming
| discoveries in science, and either way you will be
| obstructing understanding and progress. Mere skepticism is
| not enough."
|
| He also gave some good examples from the history of science
| of theories that eventually turned out to be true, but were
| originally on shaky (or even faulty) grounds for a long
| period of time. A culture of skepticism would likely have
| killed those theories. Unfortunately, I noted only this quote
| and not the examples.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| "Poor people have more children" gets by without enough
| examination.
|
| It's a weird, tautological statement. Only workin adults
| provide income to a family unit. Children and the disabled
| members of a household divide that income.
|
| Given the same income, a family with more dependents is sent
| into poverty by the mathematics of division.
| ip26 wrote:
| Right, so given this a naive observer might imagine the
| _rich_ would elect to have more children, and the poor
| fewer...
| Factorium wrote:
| 70% of African-American children are born outside wedlock:
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Nonmarit...
|
| Which is driven by a welfare system that punishes married
| couples with lower payments (witness the huge rise in out-of-
| wedlock births since the welfare schemes of the 60s/70s).
|
| 35% of African-American children live in poverty:
|
| https://www.nccp.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/wpc10-fig3.j...
|
| Creating a subsect of society which is endlessly reliant on
| transfer payments to avoid poverty is not a good outcome for
| society. It would be better to encourage family planning and
| marriage.
|
| http://marripedia.org/effects_of_out-of-wedlock_births_on_so...
|
| "The evidence is clear and disturbing, being born outside of
| marriage lowers the health of newborns and increases their
| chances of dying; it delays children's cognitive (especially
| their verbal) development; it lowers their educational
| achievement; it lowers their job attainment; it increases their
| behavior problems; it lowers their impulse control; it warps
| their social development; it helps change their community from
| being a support to being a danger to their development; and it
| increases the crime rate in their community.
|
| To make the situation worse, the government has instilled
| powerful incentives in the welfare system which makes
| illegitimacy a community way of life, particularly in very poor
| communities. The widespread incidence of illegitimacy in turn
| passes on all these effects to the next generation in an even
| more malignant form.
|
| While the government cannot instill virtue, it does not need to
| subsidize this rejection. Government policies have subsidized
| illegitimacy, and the evidence of its serious effects are
| steadily growing. Congress must adopt policies friendly to
| children. But to do that Congress must first become more
| friendly to married fathers and mothers."
| nullspace wrote:
| > Which is driven by a welfare system that punishes married
| couples with lower payments
|
| Is this true? If you're not married, then doesn't only one
| person get to claim the benefits? Not benefits x2?
| nescioquid wrote:
| > poor people have many babies, rich people have few
| babies...Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the
| surprisingly high child poverty rate?
|
| The question makes me think of Malthus. He argued that
| population grows geometrically, while agricultural production
| is linear, but the major restraint on reproduction would
| chiefly be access to food. You could extend that to say that
| the poor will be less numerous, but feeding them will cause
| their population to rise and result in inflation (I think that
| was apropos the Poor Laws).
|
| That was the 18th century thinking, at any rate. Some
| explanations I've encountered for why it doesn't work out that
| way involve examining other checks on reproduction which
| include things like education level and rights of women, and
| rate of child mortality. I think you raised a great question
| that's worth examining -- hopefully someone else can shed light
| on the subject.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Iirc its correlated with education level
| DonnyV wrote:
| This is just PR from the Economists, so that we think everything
| is fine. Its NOT! Just Google and find the mountain of evidence
| how the US fails its children and families.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Mind you, that "current reducing != ended completely". While we
| are nowhere near being as performant as a Western European
| state, we are taking the correct steps even if for the wrong
| reasons (Covid pandemic).
| [deleted]
| 45yu56bwedfg wrote:
| That's because Keynesian economists have studied absolute
| delusion. Thankfully we now have an Austrian economic system
| under Bitcoin that is fundamentally sound. We'll see how that
| plays out.
| koboll wrote:
| "Things are getting substantially better" doesn't mean
| "everything is fine".
| [deleted]
| lkbm wrote:
| We don't need to Google to find the mountain of evidence. The
| article starts out by saying the US has exceptionally high
| child poverty and spends relatively little trying to solve it:
|
| > America has long tolerated an anomalously high rate of
| poverty among children relative to other advanced countries--
| depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six
| or one in five children counted as poor. The reason why is not
| mysterious. The safety-net has always been thinnest for the
| country's youngest: America spends a modest 0.6% of GDP on
| child and family benefits compared with the OECD average of
| 2.1%.
|
| It criticizes the roll-out of the program:
|
| > That does not mean that the roll-out has been flawless. To
| reduce administrative barriers, the credits are supposed to
| flow automatically from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to
| family bank accounts. However, a significant minority of
| American families have not filed tax returns in the past two
| years--meaning that eligible children are missing out.
|
| And reports that it's currently scheduled to expire despite
| great success:
|
| > All this progress is currently slated to be time-limited,
| though. Democrats in Congress only agreed to implement the
| enhanced payments for one year.
|
| No one read this article and thought "everything is fine". It's
| about how things are terrible and making it clear that we need
| to fund programs that help.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Considering that the article points out the US's abnormally
| high child poverty rate, the difficulty the US has in actually
| getting the new child tax credits to those to whom it is
| warranted (since you have to file a tax return to get it, and
| the very poorest don't file tax returns), points out that the
| credits are only temporary and their permanent extension is not
| guaranteed, the article comes across not as "everything is
| fine" but rather as "this is a _start_ , not the _end_ --now
| keep at it!"
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