115 Comments

Well crap. Apparently I am the only person up this early on a Sunday Morning. Sitting in front of computer in a hotel room for a meeting that isn't happening.

So apparently I have to be the first to tell Marc that he is full of crap.

Just kidding Marc. You are sort of spot on.

I've been learning a lot more about the mechanics of these welfare problems since my oldest daughter got knocked up, had a baby and moved back home to enroll in school full time.

Currently she receives...

- GI Bill (from me) to pay for school.

- Pell Grants.

- Work study job.

- WIC.

- Subsidized child care.

- Medicaid (or is it Medicare) for the baby. She is on my policy.

- Is applying to for a Section 32 low income apartment (fingers crossed... love my daughter and granddaughter, but kids need to go!),

- Working on SNAP.

- Also, she will obviously qualify for the CTC.

Literally an alphabet soup of programs. It is pretty cool... but... you would not believe how much paperwork is involved in each and every one of these steps. All are handled by different people and agencies. All involve tedious forms documenting all sorts of stuff. I can only imagine how much money is wasted on overhead.

Now I understand... people are shady. There are people who would take advantage of the system. (dont deny it... I know them personally). But sheesh. Why have all these programs with slightly different qualifications. Ran by different people. Using different forms.

In some ways I almost view it as a jobs program for social workers. I'm glad they have jobs. And in Boise, they are super competent and very kind. But...

Wow... on a National Level, so much money is wasted.

Lost my train though. Oh yeah... lets fix the damn welfare state.

My daughter is a pretty bright person, and I am a pitbull when it comes to researching and helping her with these things, but I can only imagine how overwhelming all this paperwork is for a single mom without the social capital that we have.

If you made it down to this, my final point to add is that grandchildren are awesome. My little Syble (it was my grandmothers name)... is so frickin cute. Grandchildren are way better than kids. My advice to you young single people out there is to skip kids, and go straight to the grandchildren.

I wish substack let us post photos... but if you care.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CNhxN3kFHQz/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

(hopefully that isnt against the rules)

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“There’s no reason to insist that poor people buy food with their public assistance money (they will remember not to starve)”

I think one reason is to keep such programs in climates 3 and 4 rather than backsliding into climates 1 and 2. There’s an excellent argument for broadening the acceptable uses of SNAP/WIC to include foods intended for eating at the point of sale—back when I was a cashier any kind of hot food or prepared items like sandwiches, sushi, prepacked salads, etc were not SNAP eligible, but you could buy sandwich supplies, heads of lettuce, bags of rice and raw fish, etc, and I never fully understood the rationale for the distinction—and the brown eggs vs white eggs rule you mention is a good example of cruft, but some subset of people, however small, will in fact forget not to starve when they have a fungible resource that could be used on other compulsions.

I remember riding a public bus in San Francisco years ago and sitting next to two guys who seemed to be old friends. One of them was very patiently encouraging the other not to spend his remaining cash on scratchers (scratch off lottery-adjacent games) and arguing that he needed to buy food for the rest of the week, and the scratcher enthusiast was sincerely struggling with the choice. I had never seen that level of gambling addiction in person but it’s out there.

My point is, even if cash programs are more efficient *in aggregate* and better for most beneficiaries than food-only assistance programs, outlier stories (however rare) about heads of households buying scratchers and letting their kids go hungry are going to surface and attract outsize attention, and those are the kinds of things that push climate 3 and 4 people toward climate 1 and 2 mentalities. Hence a benefits-inefficient solution might in fact be more public-opinion-durable in the long run.

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I don't see the word 'Romney' in here, but it sounds like Marc would like Mitt Romney's Family Security Act. https://www.romney.senate.gov/romney-offers-path-provide-greater-financial-security-american-families

It too would transform various tax credits administered by the IRS into direct cash benefits administered by Social Security.

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Apr 11, 2021Liked by Marc Novicoff

"call it infrastructure that we need to build back better"

Seeing the young become cynical pragmatists right before our eyes gives me hope for the future.

PS Great article Marc!

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Apr 12, 2021Liked by Marc Novicoff

This is really good Marc! Appreciate the conversational tone!

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Apr 11, 2021Liked by Marc Novicoff

Marc, once again, great post. I fully support simplification. I actually watched the WIC video you linked (twice, once with me wife) and found myself horrified by the authoritarian nature of the pre/prescriptions. As I read the other comments I'm stuck by what a thoughtful community this is and how poorly our votes are represented in both politics and press. We need a movement.

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"Many Republicans are eager to flex their “populism,” so I think it’s possible you could get enough bipartisan support behind simple fixes that do a lot of good."

Ahhhhhhhh... no, they're not. They're pretty clearly going to the same playbook as they did in 2009 (feint toward bipartisanship, drag out the process, make popular sounding ideas less popular with time).

Not really anything I object to with your plans, but you need to convince Joe Manchin, not me.

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“ There’s no reason to insist that poor people buy food with their public assistance money (they will remember not to starve),”

You sure about that? It’s fairly common for alcoholics to present to ED with severe malnutrition as they don’t eat and get almost all of their calories from alcohol. A fair number of the very poor are poor due to rather significant mental health issues. It’s not nearly as clear cut as you seem to think.

They aren’t just like you except they didn’t have the opportunity to go to Dalton and Harvard.

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All this thought about the child credit and delivery, yet not one comment on the well thought out and compromise enabling Romney plan? Grade Incomplete.

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I get the arguments against it, but man, as an avid cook I miss having a gas stove. Induction burners are *almost* at parity in terms of responsiveness but they don’t work with all pots and pans, and for some applications (e.g. woks) it seems like it will be a while before we will reach a satisfying substitute. I imagine regaling my grandchildren with stories about deglazing a turkey roasting pan on the stovetop with sherry and then a flambé of brandy, and their eyes widening at the alien notion of indoor fire (not to mention consuming turkey protein that wasn’t grown in a bioreactor)

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What would be the reasoning behind giving 15k to adults and only 4k to kids? This type of split is not uncommon in UBI proposals but I am not sure what the actual logic is. Per dollar getting money to people is more efficient the earlier you can do it.

Is this why we need kids to be able to vote?

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Granting everything you say except this: how much has the political climate on this issue really changed? I would like to see a lot more analysis of why this is true. We live in silos/bubbles so it can feel to us that this is true, but it can be wishful thinking or confirmation bias. There is always a political reaction to these types of proposals and that reaction has to be factored into the decision as to how to proceed. Progressives often cite opinion poll top-line numbers on issue but the numbers shift when details become clear and when the right-wing media propaganda complex starts its work. Opinion numbers can and do change to closer to partisan identification numbers as the issue becomes more salient and also is fuzzed up by propaganda. I think there might be wisdom in trying to pursue these policies in a way that doesn't make it easier to rally the right against them. And yes in a first-best world we would optimize to reduce complexity, but there's a reason this tends not wo work. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm skeptical about the degree of the shift in public opinion over time. And if you combine this type of program with an ongoing perceived immigration problem, and more immigration to come due to climate and other problems, I think there's a lot of potential here for a strong political backlash.

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I would love to see something like cross-eligibility marketed as a simple government efficiency reform. If we have a program, why make people jump through 10,000 hoops? Keep it simple and just give them the money.

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Sorry, but I had to zero in on this quote: "The idea here is that nobody in America should suffer in poverty no matter how lazy or able-bodied they are."

I think that even the most cold hearted Ayn Rand disciple will acknowledge that there are people who are poor due to circumstances beyond their control. But progressives need to acknowledge that there are people who are poor because they are lazy and stupid. I personally know people like this; I'm tempted to post their names and phone numbers. Talk to one of them for five minutes and see if you still think they deserve a guaranteed income.

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I work as a volunteer, preparing taxes for low-to-moderate income tax-payers, and in that population it isn't true that "The IRS has the brand of an agency that takes your money, not as one that gives you money."

I frequently work with people who have no understanding of taxes and don't understand what's on their W-2, but they'll hand it to me and ask "what can this get me?" Most of these folks don't owe tax when they file, and are filing only to get back withholding or to get earned income and child tax credits.

The one exception would be the low-income self-employed, who don't have the withholding (and don't pay estimates), and often end up owing some self-employment tax. But, these are a minority.

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“Bill Clinton was a major champion of shrinking budget deficits...”

Your editor missed that misspelling. The name is spelled “Newt Gingrich.”

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