I’m not analytical enough to dig deep and figure this out but what does BBB do for poor single people without children. The folks at the McD’s window handing you a bag of fries, etc?
Wanted to revist this as a week on, it appears you nailed it. This is being reported as what's being offered to Dems by Biden, agreed to by and with M*nchin. An interesting subtext, the policies offered in the deal did much better when the "tires were kicked" on the actual substance than the ones dropped. A lesson going forward.
Am I missing the Obamacare subsidies increase (to eliminate the UMC cliff) from the Yglesias BBB bill? It's possible it doesn't give as much political bang for buck as some of the other BBB components (I couldn't say). But I'd personally like to see it preserved nonetheless, in that, if there is any goal that has long been (and should continue to be) a core tenet of the Democratic Party, it is the desirability and necessity of truly universal healthcare coverage for all Americans. Eliminating the subsidy cliff would plug one of the remaining and more egregious holes in the healthcare component of America's safety net, and strengthen the ACA itself.
If we want to do redistribution, we should do it through tax rates. Not by punishing parents by pushing all the redistribution through child care rates. Fundamentally not good policy. We should be giving all parents, burdened by additional expenses, a break, not targeting parents to provide all the redistribution.
Just wanted to say thanks for talking about the actual policy merits and issues in the bill instead of just the $ number. Popular discussion of policy has really been in the shitter lately.
Every time Matt writes on money for kids, he asserts that we need this to increase the birth rate, because people don't have kids they can't afford. I understand that makes sense, and people say that in surveys all the time, but we don't really see dramatic increases in birth rates in countries with extensive kid welfare states.
Whether or not we should subsidize reproduction, where is the evidence that people actually don't have kids because of money, as opposed to that being an easy excuse?
This is one of Matt's best posts because it directly addresses one of the things I've found most frustrating about the BBB debate: anchoring.
That debate has focused almost entirely on a top-down movement of "what would we have to give up to go down from $3.5T to, say, around $2T?" This is bad because once those delightful $3.5T programs are anchored in supporters' minds, any movement down from that is colored by regret, disappointment and possibly anger.
But imagine if we said, hey, here's $2T to be spent over 10 years of so for (almost) anything you want. How would you spend that money? That's a very different, and far more positive discussion. Roughly $200B/year is a great chunk of change. Progressives would always want more (and might be justified) but with $2T as their anchor, we could focus more clearly on what would work best and satisfy the most people.
This is why I don't like the idea of Biden, or anyone else, going out there and "winning public support" by talking about what's in the BBB. There's nothing in the BBB because no one has agreed to anything yet. So you're talking about vaporware and, worse, risking making supporters mad when what you boosted disappears. And in any case, I have no idea how a Biden speech in Michigan is supposed to affect the thinking of Manchin or Sinema.
Instead, I'd like to see supporters build from the bottom up: here are the things we most like that would cost $2T (or $1.5T or whatever) and make that clear to Manchin/Sinema and congressional leaders. I can see that approach actually helping them make up their minds and, who knows, maybe even being open to adding a bit more.
Looking at recent Canadian political history, I think Matt is right: cash benefits first, other programs later.
In Canada, the debate over subsidized daycare vs. cash benefits was a major theme of the 2006 election, which the Conservatives won. The Conservatives promised to scrap the Liberal daycare plan and replace it with a taxable child benefit, universal rather than means-tested (UCCB). The Liberal quote that made a strong negative impression on the public was "don't give parents cash to spend on beer and popcorn."
Since then, the Liberals have reformed the program (as CCB) to make it more generous and tax-free but means-tested, which cut child poverty by a third. That was in 2015. It's only two election cycles later that the Liberals are adding subsidized $10/day childcare nationwide, with the provinces doing the implementation.
Not the main point of the piece but I wonder if it might be time to revisit the "feds disburse funds--states execute" model of program design as a whole. Not sure about other areas but this child care idea seems like a mess. Unemployment was obviously under a lot of scrutiny lately, the state level health care exchanges went pretty badly. Federal matching grant type programs for transit also seem to drive local agencies just to try to tick the boxes to get free money rather than actually doing a good program, or building what's actually needed. I would be interested in reading a big piece or book on this as a whole...
It does seem like there's probably a better way for the federal government to redistribute money from one region to another than how it's done now. Some programs might be better all-federal, and others all-state with no federal role or just a federal block grant with a minimal list of conditions, otherwise there're too many chefs in the kitchen and too much push-pull between supporters and opponents in federal and state govts working at cross-purposes.
The issue is a little too technical for me, but I believe that your perspective reflects that you're a parent. I don't think child-free pundits are in a good position to evaluate issues like this.
If a non-parent wants to argue (for example) that the government should not support children's needs, I disagree but acknowledge their right and standing to express that opinion. I however, think that non-parents are in general not in a good position to judge the best ways that children can be supported and nurtured, and should usually avoid contributing to that discussion.
I understand this is my pet-issue and I was awarded the worst-comment-in-SB-history related to it but given some of these plans will require tax increases ... I'd just like to remind everyone how fucking gross and unjust these billionaire tax-avoidance trust schemes are. I remain convinced aggressive prosecution of tax cheats is a winning platform. I would cheer on a simple Biden tweet "Fuck Phil Knight".
WEll put. More on your basic point - look at "our" childcare proposal in BBB - talk about an implementation nightmare. How much better to just give parents the money letting them decide what's best for their kids and their family - you could have all kinds of new models including kinship care shared parenting etc. ((which often exists and could thrive with parent based funding) .
But no - instead we get a complex Rube Goldberg model ripe for fraud and abuse. Let's see - you set higher wages, matched to school salaries (so childcare competes with schools and assume the workforce is there) that may sound good, but really hard to figure and/or game. Then reimburse parents for costs above a percentage of family income, again think about implementation. So labor costs will rise and low income people will be reimbursed for their outlays (done with all their disposable cash on hand ? )
How will providers estimate labor costs to cover expenses given that many providers, especially the good ones, serving low income neighborhoods are non profits. All providers can now charge whatever they want since the the feds will pay an estimated 90% of salaries (and how will those checks arrive in time to meet payrolls) - you can easily imagine large for profit chains dominating this new market because they can upfront increased cost to more readily use the federal subsidies.
and families who choose to work less or share childcare get - nothing??
It would cost less and be so much fairer to just give parents the money
Then again think of all the investigative journalists who'd be employed analyzing the abuses easily foreseen in this mess
Very disappointing that replacing deductions with partial tax credits and raising marginal rates on personal income is not in there instead of corporate rates. Taxing business profits is just a bad way of taxing owners' incomes.
Cash is an ok idea but it’s a bit disappointing. I favor it in all kinds of spots but for the liberal party to just give up on state institutions for its signature piece of legislating would be sad. If states can’t be trusted to set up the institutions then the federal govt should. If the federal govt can’t be trusted to set up the institutions either then what are we doing? Why have a web of taxes lower and middle income people pay and also a web of transfers they get to offset their tax burden? This poorly thought out tangle of nudges amounts to an incomprehensible mess for me and I imagine the average person feels the same way.
Especially since we are mostly concerned about childcare, healthcare, education; areas where purely juicing demand can be at least somewhat self defeating.
Polarization has made more rural areas hard for democrats to win. So let’s lean into that and build out free federal institutions in high density areas. These can be ‘universal’ in the sense that anyone could use them but practically we can get a lot of bang for our buck by trying to build efficient service delivery out in high population, low and middle income areas. And if more rural states / areas want in then their senators / reps can vote for more money to fund similar, less efficient, institutions in lower population areas.
If we’re being realistic, state institutions in the US are absolute garbage and we should give up on them. If you want to build state capacity, find ways to reform the structure of state institutions before handing them 10’s of billions of dollars. Alternatively, we can replicate the “success” of the CDC.
CSA are census measurements that "represent multiple metropolitan or micropolitan areas that have an employment interchange of at least 15%." I'm not sure how these being the natural unit of local governance would work in practice. There are separate cities that through growth between them combine into the same CSA and then potentially contract out of it over time. If your a city/CSA with municipal government that then gets included in a larger CSA, do you shut down your government, merge everything? What does that look like? Is it optional, or does the state/federal government require it? How many politicians do you think will run for some office promising to undo that?
I’m not analytical enough to dig deep and figure this out but what does BBB do for poor single people without children. The folks at the McD’s window handing you a bag of fries, etc?
Wanted to revist this as a week on, it appears you nailed it. This is being reported as what's being offered to Dems by Biden, agreed to by and with M*nchin. An interesting subtext, the policies offered in the deal did much better when the "tires were kicked" on the actual substance than the ones dropped. A lesson going forward.
Am I missing the Obamacare subsidies increase (to eliminate the UMC cliff) from the Yglesias BBB bill? It's possible it doesn't give as much political bang for buck as some of the other BBB components (I couldn't say). But I'd personally like to see it preserved nonetheless, in that, if there is any goal that has long been (and should continue to be) a core tenet of the Democratic Party, it is the desirability and necessity of truly universal healthcare coverage for all Americans. Eliminating the subsidy cliff would plug one of the remaining and more egregious holes in the healthcare component of America's safety net, and strengthen the ACA itself.
If we want to do redistribution, we should do it through tax rates. Not by punishing parents by pushing all the redistribution through child care rates. Fundamentally not good policy. We should be giving all parents, burdened by additional expenses, a break, not targeting parents to provide all the redistribution.
Just wanted to say thanks for talking about the actual policy merits and issues in the bill instead of just the $ number. Popular discussion of policy has really been in the shitter lately.
Every time Matt writes on money for kids, he asserts that we need this to increase the birth rate, because people don't have kids they can't afford. I understand that makes sense, and people say that in surveys all the time, but we don't really see dramatic increases in birth rates in countries with extensive kid welfare states.
Whether or not we should subsidize reproduction, where is the evidence that people actually don't have kids because of money, as opposed to that being an easy excuse?
It looks like that yes, this can work, but it's expensive.
https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-come-with-a-hefty-price-tag
This is one of Matt's best posts because it directly addresses one of the things I've found most frustrating about the BBB debate: anchoring.
That debate has focused almost entirely on a top-down movement of "what would we have to give up to go down from $3.5T to, say, around $2T?" This is bad because once those delightful $3.5T programs are anchored in supporters' minds, any movement down from that is colored by regret, disappointment and possibly anger.
But imagine if we said, hey, here's $2T to be spent over 10 years of so for (almost) anything you want. How would you spend that money? That's a very different, and far more positive discussion. Roughly $200B/year is a great chunk of change. Progressives would always want more (and might be justified) but with $2T as their anchor, we could focus more clearly on what would work best and satisfy the most people.
This is why I don't like the idea of Biden, or anyone else, going out there and "winning public support" by talking about what's in the BBB. There's nothing in the BBB because no one has agreed to anything yet. So you're talking about vaporware and, worse, risking making supporters mad when what you boosted disappears. And in any case, I have no idea how a Biden speech in Michigan is supposed to affect the thinking of Manchin or Sinema.
Instead, I'd like to see supporters build from the bottom up: here are the things we most like that would cost $2T (or $1.5T or whatever) and make that clear to Manchin/Sinema and congressional leaders. I can see that approach actually helping them make up their minds and, who knows, maybe even being open to adding a bit more.
Looking at recent Canadian political history, I think Matt is right: cash benefits first, other programs later.
In Canada, the debate over subsidized daycare vs. cash benefits was a major theme of the 2006 election, which the Conservatives won. The Conservatives promised to scrap the Liberal daycare plan and replace it with a taxable child benefit, universal rather than means-tested (UCCB). The Liberal quote that made a strong negative impression on the public was "don't give parents cash to spend on beer and popcorn."
Since then, the Liberals have reformed the program (as CCB) to make it more generous and tax-free but means-tested, which cut child poverty by a third. That was in 2015. It's only two election cycles later that the Liberals are adding subsidized $10/day childcare nationwide, with the provinces doing the implementation.
Not the main point of the piece but I wonder if it might be time to revisit the "feds disburse funds--states execute" model of program design as a whole. Not sure about other areas but this child care idea seems like a mess. Unemployment was obviously under a lot of scrutiny lately, the state level health care exchanges went pretty badly. Federal matching grant type programs for transit also seem to drive local agencies just to try to tick the boxes to get free money rather than actually doing a good program, or building what's actually needed. I would be interested in reading a big piece or book on this as a whole...
It does seem like there's probably a better way for the federal government to redistribute money from one region to another than how it's done now. Some programs might be better all-federal, and others all-state with no federal role or just a federal block grant with a minimal list of conditions, otherwise there're too many chefs in the kitchen and too much push-pull between supporters and opponents in federal and state govts working at cross-purposes.
how do you do a parental leave program that doesn't require work? What are you taking leave from?
That confused me as well.
“The Biden preschool proposal…was conceived of as an extension of K-12 public schools in the United States…”
“Extension” is doing some very heavy lifting in that sentence. So much so that it feels like a lie.
The issue is a little too technical for me, but I believe that your perspective reflects that you're a parent. I don't think child-free pundits are in a good position to evaluate issues like this.
They are in a position to evaluate it from their own angle, in the same way Matt sees it from the point of view of a parent.
If a non-parent wants to argue (for example) that the government should not support children's needs, I disagree but acknowledge their right and standing to express that opinion. I however, think that non-parents are in general not in a good position to judge the best ways that children can be supported and nurtured, and should usually avoid contributing to that discussion.
I understand this is my pet-issue and I was awarded the worst-comment-in-SB-history related to it but given some of these plans will require tax increases ... I'd just like to remind everyone how fucking gross and unjust these billionaire tax-avoidance trust schemes are. I remain convinced aggressive prosecution of tax cheats is a winning platform. I would cheer on a simple Biden tweet "Fuck Phil Knight".
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/how-billionaires-pass-wealth-to-heirs-tax-free-2021/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-27/richest-americans-fear-biden-will-close-their-favorite-tax-loopholes
WEll put. More on your basic point - look at "our" childcare proposal in BBB - talk about an implementation nightmare. How much better to just give parents the money letting them decide what's best for their kids and their family - you could have all kinds of new models including kinship care shared parenting etc. ((which often exists and could thrive with parent based funding) .
But no - instead we get a complex Rube Goldberg model ripe for fraud and abuse. Let's see - you set higher wages, matched to school salaries (so childcare competes with schools and assume the workforce is there) that may sound good, but really hard to figure and/or game. Then reimburse parents for costs above a percentage of family income, again think about implementation. So labor costs will rise and low income people will be reimbursed for their outlays (done with all their disposable cash on hand ? )
How will providers estimate labor costs to cover expenses given that many providers, especially the good ones, serving low income neighborhoods are non profits. All providers can now charge whatever they want since the the feds will pay an estimated 90% of salaries (and how will those checks arrive in time to meet payrolls) - you can easily imagine large for profit chains dominating this new market because they can upfront increased cost to more readily use the federal subsidies.
and families who choose to work less or share childcare get - nothing??
It would cost less and be so much fairer to just give parents the money
Then again think of all the investigative journalists who'd be employed analyzing the abuses easily foreseen in this mess
Very disappointing that replacing deductions with partial tax credits and raising marginal rates on personal income is not in there instead of corporate rates. Taxing business profits is just a bad way of taxing owners' incomes.
Cash is an ok idea but it’s a bit disappointing. I favor it in all kinds of spots but for the liberal party to just give up on state institutions for its signature piece of legislating would be sad. If states can’t be trusted to set up the institutions then the federal govt should. If the federal govt can’t be trusted to set up the institutions either then what are we doing? Why have a web of taxes lower and middle income people pay and also a web of transfers they get to offset their tax burden? This poorly thought out tangle of nudges amounts to an incomprehensible mess for me and I imagine the average person feels the same way.
Especially since we are mostly concerned about childcare, healthcare, education; areas where purely juicing demand can be at least somewhat self defeating.
Polarization has made more rural areas hard for democrats to win. So let’s lean into that and build out free federal institutions in high density areas. These can be ‘universal’ in the sense that anyone could use them but practically we can get a lot of bang for our buck by trying to build efficient service delivery out in high population, low and middle income areas. And if more rural states / areas want in then their senators / reps can vote for more money to fund similar, less efficient, institutions in lower population areas.
If we’re being realistic, state institutions in the US are absolute garbage and we should give up on them. If you want to build state capacity, find ways to reform the structure of state institutions before handing them 10’s of billions of dollars. Alternatively, we can replicate the “success” of the CDC.
CSA are census measurements that "represent multiple metropolitan or micropolitan areas that have an employment interchange of at least 15%." I'm not sure how these being the natural unit of local governance would work in practice. There are separate cities that through growth between them combine into the same CSA and then potentially contract out of it over time. If your a city/CSA with municipal government that then gets included in a larger CSA, do you shut down your government, merge everything? What does that look like? Is it optional, or does the state/federal government require it? How many politicians do you think will run for some office promising to undo that?
Thought you were talking about farmers markets for a second.
And I thought he was a Confederate revanchist...