Mitt Romney and Ross Douhat are on board !!?! Why the U.S. Needs the Romney Family Plan Opinion | Why the U.S. Needs the Romney Family Plan Family policy, the way that America supports (or doesn’t) parenthood and child rearing, has always presented the best opportunity for serious bipartisanship in Joe Biden’s presidency. It’s an issue with real overlap between the left and right: Feminists and social conservatives, left-wing antipoverty activists and right-wing pro-natalists all agree that it’s too hard to raise kids in America today. And it’s an issue where the relevant interest group, the American family, isn’t a partisan force or a pre-mobilized constituency — which is usually a weakness for its interests, but in a polarized moment might actually make legislation easier. This week Mitt Romney put that theory to the test: His office rolled out a big proposal to reform the current hodgepodge of programs that help parents, the mix of tax credits and welfare benefits, by rolling them into a single family benefit that would provide $350 a month for kids 5 and under, and $250 a month for kids up to 17, up to a certain income level and benefit cap. (The cap effectively discriminates against large families, which means Romney can’t be accused of Latter-day Saint self-dealing.)
Farm wage $20/hr? Please spend a minute to get your facts straight. Exaggerating negates your arguments. Farm Worker Hourly Pay | PayScale
This works very well in situations where the parents have the knowledge, wealth, and time to put it into action. It doesn't works so well when both parents have to work two jobs just to pay rent and groceries. The drug problem that everyone complains about could be dealt with by removing the profit motive. The War on Drugs that has been around for years is just as stupid a plan as the Volstead Act--it can't work because there is too much money to be made. Treat drugs similar to how alcohol is treated. Provide treatment for those who have a drug problem. There will always be a few individuals that get hooked anyway, just as there are always a few alcoholics, but with no profit motive there will be no reason to pressure people into taking drugs. (I suspect there are too many politicians and law enforcement personnel on the take to ever make this happen, but it's a nice thought.)
This concept has been around since Milton Friedman suggested something similar in 1962. For the pros and cons, see the attached. The big negative is the effective marginal tax rate as recipients go back to work. Negative income tax, explained | MIT Sloan
"But the Romney subsidy phases out only at high incomes, so there’s no disincentive for a low-income parent to take a job. Meanwhile, the plan also tweaks the earned-income tax credit to make it more pro-marriage and pro-work, potentially balancing out any disincentives created by the child benefit."
Yes, you can. And no I would not income test. Spend a day in juvenile court when you see the number of women come in with 6 , 7 + kids ALL by different men. Or the ones who are there because of their drug addiction the kid was a premie and air flighted to a major hospital for $1 million in care and as that one was taken away from her she is already in court pregnant again. And the guys with multiple kids by multiple women and cannot support any of them. Go watch the movie Idiocracy - because that is where we are headed - if we are not already there.
But if they did that, it would give the poorer sections of society a chance to move upwards because they wouldn't have children they were forced to have but can't afford (or aren't mentally mature enough to raise properly)--so the poverty cycle will continue. Really, you shouldn't have children until you are financially and mentally able to care for them properly.
Biden's new conservation corps stirs hopes of nature-focused hiring spree In the 1930s, when US unemployment was at 25% and flooding and deforestation were rife, Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps, which put 3 millions Americans to work and planted more than 3bn trees. Fast forward almost a century, and Biden has announced the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps Initiative, offering well-paid conservation jobs. Could this tackle unemployment and the climate crisis in one fell swoop? Paola Rosa-Aquino learns more. Through its nine-year existence, Roosevelt’s “Tree Army” put an impressive 3 million jobless Americans to work. All in all, CCC enrollees planted more than 3bn trees, paved 125,000 miles of roadways, erected 3,000 fire lookouts, and spent 6m workdays fighting forest fires. The artifacts from this ambitious effort – from trails and structures dotting the Grand Canyon national park or the Pacific Coast Trail – are beloved today. The transition to a renewable energy economy at the scale needed to keep warming under 2C is going to require an unprecedented investment in workforce training,” Sprenkel says. “A Civilian Climate Corps can be that program that engages workers in hands-on learning, so they are prepared to enter solar, wind, habitat resiliency, disaster response and other essential industries such investment in those industries come to fruition.”
The birth rate in the US has declined. One reason is economics not moral failure | Moira Donegan But the reality of why American families are smaller is not about a failing national character or a decline in women’s femininity. It’s about money. Because while many more women are choosing to have no children or fewer children, others are having fewer children than they would like. And for these women, their own smaller families are the result not of their own personal selfishness or moral degradation, but of economic constraints. For all of the pro-natalist handwringing over America’s shrinking tax base, the United States has spent shockingly little of its annual tax revenues on creating accessible and effective support for mothers. For years, the US has made domestic policy that has punished women for becoming mothers, and by extension, de-incentivized those who want to have as many children as they would like. This is one reason why the birth rate has declined so much: women are not given enough material support by the state to be able to raise children while still leading prosperous, economically productive lives.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2021/feb/09/europes-baby-bust-can-paying-for-pregnancies-save-greece-video?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Convicted or not, Trump is history – it's Biden who's changing America | Robert Reich While most of official Washington has been focused on the Senate impeachment trial, another part of Washington is preparing the most far-ranging changes in American social policy in a generation. The Capitol attack film was brutal. That's why it must be watched | Francine Prose Congress is moving ahead with Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which expands healthcare and unemployment benefits and contains one of the most ambitious efforts to reduce child poverty since the New Deal. Right behind it is Biden’s plan for infrastructure and jobs. Another conservative bromide is that a larger national debt crowds out private investment and slows growth. This view hamstrung the Clinton and Obama administrations as deficit hawks warned against public spending unaccompanied by tax increases to pay for it. (I still have some old injuries inflicted by those hawks.) Fortunately, Biden isn’t buying this, either. Four decades of chronic underemployment and stagnant wages have shown how important public spending is for sustained growth. Not incidentally, growth reduces the debt as a share of the overall economy. The real danger is the opposite: fiscal austerity shrinks economies and causes national debts to grow in proportion.Another conservative bromide is that a larger national debt crowds out private investment and slows growth. This view hamstrung the Clinton and Obama administrations as deficit hawks warned against public spending unaccompanied by tax increases to pay for it. (I still have some old injuries inflicted by those hawks.) Fortunately, Biden isn’t buying this, either. Four decades of chronic underemployment and stagnant wages have shown how important public spending is for sustained growth. Not incidentally, growth reduces the debt as a share of the overall economy. The real danger is the opposite: fiscal austerity shrinks economies and causes national debts to grow in proportion. Not Biden. His proposal would not only expand jobless benefits but also provide assistance to parents who are not working, thereby extending relief to 27 million children, including about half of all Black and Latino children. Republican senator Mitt Romney of Utah has put forward a similar plan.
So the idea is to pay folks that can't afford kids money so they will have more kids. I'm sure this will work great.
Methinks the good academic needs to go back and look at the data from pre-COVID: BLS: Employment grew in 2019; unemployment rate fell to lowest level since 1969 NYT: Why Wages are Finally Rising... CNN: Wage Growth Hot and More Raises Coming... Brookings: Black Household Income is Rising Across US Bloomberg: Wage Growth Among Non-Whites Surges in US Economic Policy Institute: In 2019, black wages exceeded their 2000 and 2007 levels across the wage distribution for the first time in this recovery. So, the fact is unemployment was at the lowest rate in decades and real wages were rising for everyone pre-covid. Other than than, the Professor is correct. fwiw: I used to be a big fan of Reich since he was always analytical with real data, now he is just an academic hack.
I think you can still make the case that growth has been fairly low and wage growth fairly stagnant over the last 40 years. The fact that in 2019 we were finally recovering from the 2007/2008 financial crisis doesn't change the long term trend. That being said, it is really hard to blame one thing for stagnant wage growth and growing inequality. The lack of public spending probably isn't the reason - and it certainly isn't the only reason. I think, analytically, you can comfortably say that inequality has risen over the last 4 decades (or pick 5 or 3 or 2). That a disproportionate amount of economic growth went to those at the top of the income scale. Growth has been modest - but that maybe reality for where we are in history. When you take that growth and "give' nearly all of the benefit to the top 20%, then you have a stagnant wage problem for the bottom 80%. Cherry picking numbers from a decade out from a financial crisis - and a financial crisis usually holds down growth for a decade - doesn't solve the long term issue. If things are so great for everyone, why all the immigrant scapegoating? Why did 47% (or whatever 2016 number was) think we had to "MAGA"? Because they felt that we weren't G anymore. Most of that is because many were/are underemployed. There has been economic disruption with decreased high paying blue collar work. 2019 was no different in that regard. The issues are complex. Reich knows this but does spend a lot of his writing trying to influence people. He does a fair amount of dumbing down/over simplification. Still a very smart guy. There is no easy answer - I think any reasonable person can agree on this. Just like a reasonable person can state that 2019 was one year and does not reverse 40 years of trends.