Hello my fellow nerds and amateur wonks. Is it weird I get excited when I open my email and see a Slow Boring post about child allowance?
First... so recap of my life history... stationed in Europe for 12-years. While there, married an English girl, lived in German and had 2-kids. Because she was a EU citizen, we qualified for kindergeld, aka child money. This was in the last 90s early 00s.
It was awesome. I think it was around $200 to 300 a month per child (I am sure one of you nerds will fact check me). As a young Sgt with two kids, I qualified for the EIC. The kindergeld was invaluable in paying for some of the necessities. I had a lot less financial stress than some of my peers with kids who didn't qualify for the money.
At the time, I remember thinking that this is a "progressive" idea that conservatives should totally steal.
After all, I think there has been studies that show parents tend to become more conservative in their views.
In my various pro-kid twitter wars, singles or those who plan to not have children, tend to argue that why should they pay taxes to support children. I always counter with the argument that its my 5 children who will be paying the taxes and providing the services of taking care of the them when they reach an advance age.
Having kids is tough... man, me and my wife talk shit about them every night. They make terrible mistakes. They are terribly naïve. (I'm just glad that I was the exception and was always right when I was that age ;-)
It's probably cliché to say, but humankinds whole purpose is to reproduce. Even if people choose not to have kids (cowards), I think we all like to think we try and make the world a better place, for future generations.
Also, lately I have got interested in the subject of homelessness among families. We talk about living wages, but even at $15 an hour, a family of 2 or 3 is still going to struggle.
Anyway, sorry I'm not smarter... my kids did it to me.
I live in the Netherlands, where we don't qualify for any kindergeld (same word in Dutch), but the government subsidizes about 85% of our childcare costs. This system makes a lot of sense, since both parents can work full-time without worrying that childcare will cost more than that they earn. On top of that, healthcare is effectively free for children. Neonatal care, delivery, etc. is all free. Once the kids pop out, you just take them to the consultatiebureau for free checkups, vaccinations, etc. and if your kid needs glasses or whatever, they give you a referral to a specialist / hostpital where further treatment is (for all intents and purposes) also free. I can find a lot of nits to pick about the Dutch tax system, but it comes close to making kid-having free, especially since they keep the price of (non-prepared) food very low. You can alos educate your kids all they way through univeristy for free (more-or-less, the university situation has become complicated). I'm not sure the US can steal these ideas, since they are pretty deeply baked in to the system here, but at the very least it shows that it can be done without all the complicated alphabet soup and commesnurate overhead.
Dude... I lived in The Netherlands for 3 years. My Dutch is terrible and mostly revolves around picking up women and ordering beer. My favorite European country. I also experienced the Dutch Healthcare system which was so far, my favorite. Germany and Scandinavia always get the limelight, but I've always thought that the Dutch system was the best.
On another note, I would kill for a shawarma with some garlic sauce... also that red one with onions. I have traveled all over the world, and no one does shawarma like in Holland.
That and none of the languages we speak at home are Dutch. But what really amazes me is how well young people speak English here, and with American accents.
Impossible... but trying to speak Dutch was always a good pickup line. We use to purposely go to these small out of the way towns, go into the Centrum, pick a bar at random. Make an effort to speak Dutch, we were almost inevitably invited into a group for conversation. Seriously best time of my life.
Much of my experience with Dutch cuisine was precipitated by an experience with Dutch beer, so that might be a contributing factor. Vaar vont ye? (I know I probably fucked up that spelling. It was meant to be where do you live.
Married person not planning to have kids here - happy to pay for your kid cash via taxes. Other context: I live in Boston which is blue and expensive.
I often think about how I generally get paid the same as someone who has one or more kids, as does my spouse. Aside from service and other low wage sectors, I feel like people like me benefit from a wage market that assumes people want and need to support kids. It’s convenient for me that I don’t, and so benefit from the labor market demands of a majority who do.
I will say that I think households without two incomes should potentially be treated differently - I don’t think household expenses scale linearly based on the number of incomes. Two bedroom houses are not twice as expensive as one bedrooms and there are a many other efficiencies like that one. The capital a household can acquire and save - say for a down payment- is dramatically reduced if they have only one income, which effects all kinds of long term things like wealth generation and retirement, etc. In Boston I see this play out all the time - with 2 incomes and no kids I was able to save for and buy a house and now enjoy all the benefits that some with that. Some of my colleagues also with no kids but with no spouse or second income can comfortably pay their rent and living expenses, but struggle to save in a big way for things that would in fact make them better off.
Thanks Lydia, as someone with Kids, I will gladly accept your money. In fact to make it more efficient, I can take venmo donations directly. JK
I am generally in favor of two parent households, despite the irony of multiple divorces. I am read about policies to encourage marriage and keeping parents together, but I suspect there isn't any marginal improvement.
That said, I think the next best option is to encourage family friend policies. Maternal and paternal leave. As far as single people, I think we need to move to European standards which include more vacation and shorter work week.
> my 5 children who will be paying the taxes and providing the services of taking care of the them when they reach an advance age.
So those services likely won't exist in any usable form by the time I reach an advanced age. At best they'll be mean-tested at poverty levels. My peers and I will need to entirely self-fund our retirements. I get the intention of this argument, but it doesn't hold water.
Our taxes are better spent on truly universal programs.
When they limited SALT in TCJA, I was pretty upset. My family pays well more than $10,000 in state taxes in New Jersey, and we also pay an awful lot of mortgage interest. Being relatively high income, I figured I was kind of getting screwed.
But we weren't. We aren't even itemizers anymore. The increase in the standard deduction was massive. I think Democratic politicians haven't grappled with the way the increase in the standard deduction really changed the constituencies for various tax deductions--SALT very much included.
I completely agree. I have to imagine some of the most common deductions are SALT and mortgage interest. With SALT capped and the standard deduction increased, the number of people who will itemize is lower. Take into account what I'm sure have been a lot of refinances the last couple years, and you have even fewer people paying enough mortgage interest to put them over the standard deduction.
Democrats shouldn't worry about potentially losing some high income voters in places repealing SALT would matter the most - NY, CA, NJ, CT since the places with the marginal Democratic voters - GA, AZ, PA, WI, etc probably don't have high enough SALT for those voters to care.
There’s also a “put your money where your mouth is” element to SALT elimination. Pretend to care about oppression everywhere? Dutifully sport a BLM yard sign in front of your high tax suburban home? This is a great way to actually help.
These points are good, but there is a possibility of primary challenges in districts where SALT elimination would be a big deal (suburbs of NYC in 3 states, CA). The upper middle class / wealthy donors to Democrats in these places would also be upset about it.
I also think that the Dem voters in those states are not going to switch party because of the elimination of SALT deductions. So long as the Rs are loony-tunes, it's a captive audience.
IMO, they wanted to deemphasize SALT and the mortgage deduction and did so by increasing the standard deduction. But it shifted tax burden onto parents or I don't see how it couldn't have.
The way I see it, parents with 2 kids got roughly (12,000 standard de+ personal exemptions of roughly $6,000). Now everybody gets $24,000. Parents with more than 2 kids got jobbed. Parents with 2 kids were roughly the same except it was harder to get over the standard deduction. Single people made out like bandits.
Making Biden's plan permanent WOULD be great... but I struggle to understand why people discuss this possibility without mentioning that it won't happen. If it doesn't happen in this stimulus package, which it won't (since they don't seem to be moving from the 1-year effect), then their only opportunity to make that happen would be via another reconciliation in 2022. To be permanent, it will have to be fully financed -- i.e., it will have to raise taxes, presumably on the wealthy and upper-middle class (in the best case scenario). Will moderate Dems want to pass a bill that raises taxes to fund welfare benefits right before the midterms? I'm skeptical. But even beyond that, the party is going to develop a very, very long list of policy priorities that can only happen via a 2022 reconciliation measure, and many of those will also have to be funded via tax increases in order to be permanent. Does CTC expansion make the cut? The very fact that it's not being made permanent *in this bill* suggests probably not.
Once 2023 rolls around, there's very little chance Dems will still control both houses of Congress, meaning any CTC plan is dead in the water. The Romney plan is ideal because it can be slotted into this reconciliation package and immediately become a permanent feature of the U.S. welfare landscape, giving Biden (and Mitt) a legacy of massive reductions in child poverty.
Dems should 100% jump on the Romney bill - on its own terms it's a policy win, relative to the non-permanent Biden plan it's a mild win, and even compared to a hypothetical permanent version it's only mildly worse. Imagine being able to go into the 2022 midterms talking about the direct benefits voters are getting because of the "Romney-Biden Child Allowance Act" or whatever they call it - keep Romney's name on there because independents will recognize it with no issue and it gives the thing a bipartisan brand, backing up Biden's rhetoric about unity and whatnot.
Unfortunately, 99% of policy talk is always just going to be talk because of the handful of Democrats that refuse to get rid of the filibuster. Imagine the conversations we could be having right now if we lived in a world where Congress would actually regularly pass legislation instead of only one big, awkward spending bill a year.
Good column. I tip my hat to Romney for paying this through elimination of SALT. In addition to being regressive and disproportionately beneficial to wealthy blue staters like myself, SALT has a profoundly deleterious impact on accountability of local government. One will care less about his/her local government's competence and value delivered, if there is no cost, because of SALT deductions.
So far in these comments we've had "parents will just quit their jobs and raise 6 kids on $15,000 a year" and "$15,000 a year is so little money that it's just an insidious waste of time".
I apologize if it sounds patronizing to say this, but people are really bad at thinking on the margin. It is of course true that there are very large numbers of people in the country that would say, "Hahahaha what you want to pay me $15k a year to have *six children* are you insane?" while simultaneously there are very large numbers of people in the country who are like, "Woah, $3k a year if I have another kid? That's a game-changer!"
People rely on their intuitions too much about this kind of thing, and your intuition tends to imagine that everyone is a lot like you or a few people you know.
Some people will absolutely have more children if there is a $3k/year child allowance. Matt has cited survey data a few times showing that lots of people wish they had more kids, if only they could afford them. Making it more affordable to have children allows people to achieve their actual goals.
I would go farther: encouraging people to have that marginal extra child -- because with $3k extra they CAN save for college, or move into that 2-bedroom apartment, or cut back on hours at work -- is one of the major BENEFITS of such a program. Help people have the kids they want to have! One Billion Americans!
That marginal child is likely a money-losing proposition even with a child allowance. Even at the maximum benefit, it would not be enough to replace labor income. But it's not nothing! And insofar as it enables families to choose to have children, and to raise those children without want, it is a big win in my book.
I think almost nobody would find having their first child for $3k a year as money-gaining proposition. A lot of people might find having their second or third child for $3k per year a money-gaining proposition (because they already have childcare that can absorb another child with no real monetary impact, ie one parent has already dropped out of the workforce or a grandparent is doing it or whatever).
Like you, I am not saying that this is a bad thing!
There will also be some scenarios in which that marginal 3rd or 4th child is enough to actually pull a parent out of the labor market as the delta between low-wage income and child care costs rises, and the child allowance provides a cushion. Parents who would prefer to stay home may well find that this makes it affordable to do so at larger family sizes, basically amplifying an effect that is already present.
I call the third child the SAH kid. In my social group a third kid is a signal that the wife (and it is always the wife) has no plans of returning to the workforce until all the kids are out of school. And even then it's not likely.
At a certain income level, a stay-at-home wife is a status symbol. I'm not sure $3k a year is a dealmaker at that level, but it's not going to hurt.
Well, I'm here to say that I think the child allowance is a great idea to improve society somewhat and that it won't ruin society but we should not do pay-fors that leave poor people worse off. Nuance!
Lyman Stokey has done some modeling that shows that, even with the pay-fors, virtually every recipient would be net better off w/ Romney's plan than in the status quo, including both parent and childless EITC recipients. Replacing a less-generous, administratively onerous benefit with a more-generous, administrative-simple one is a clear win for recipients -- especially the sizable minority of EITC-eligible people who don't actually get the benefit today!
I think there are VERY narrow income bands where that is partially true depending on marital status -- lots of complicated factors at play! -- but I'd encourage you to read the thread and see.
I agree that if the pay-fors do leave poor recipients worse off, they should be retooled until they do not.
Yeah, I saw that and it's encouraging. Another thing I don't get: Stone presents encouraging marriage as a worthy policy goal. I get that we wouldn't want to penalize marriage but what's the benefit of encouraging it? Not all partnerships are marriages, not all marriages are happy, and I would assume not every single parent wants to marry the mother/father.
1. Research consistently shows that children do better when raised in stable two-parent homes, and that married parents provide that much more frequently than cohabiting parents do. (link below)
There is plenty of debate as to whether that is really causation or merely correlation, and whether encouraging "the types of parents who cohabit" to get married instead would make any meaningful difference. But there is definitely research that says "marriage is better for kids" and while there are mitigating arguments, there is really nothing with which I'm familiar that suggests the opposite.
2. He is a social conservative, so I imagine that on a personal level he sees marriage itself as a good thing, and its normalization as a public good. There is value for individual families, but also, value in a social expectation that family formation is tied to long-term, til-death-do-us-part commitment. You don't have to share that view!
3. With so many tax and benefit programs intersecting in so many complicated ways, it may be impossible to be 100% neutral in all cases. So, if you "get that we wouldn't want to penalize marriage," but find that complex policy will inevitably create rewards or penalties in different contexts, the impulse is to /err on the side of not penalizing it/. Thus, it's not that we should explicitly subsidize marriage as a policy goal, but that if we are to avoid penalizing it, then it will inevitably be fairly neutral in most cases, with slight incentives in others.
Could Romney's proposal boil down to: Increase taxes on the rich to pay for something that disproportionately benefits poor children, while simplifying the benefit system overall. Seems great to me. For progressives to oppose it seems like siding with the social-welfare bureaucracy over its intended beneficiaries.
I'm going to talk my book a little and defend the SALT deduction. On a basic fairness level, the idea of paying taxes on taxes is just unjust. What the SALT does is favor local taxes over federal taxes. This does encourage states to provide better and more services to their citizens. It incentivizes more local control which conservatives should be in favor of if they weren't solely focused on slashing tax burden wherever it occurs.
And while it hits blue states the hardest (in fact it seems specifically designed to punish blue states almost exclusively) it doesn't hit everybody hardest. For one, the $10k cap is per household, not per taxpayer, so it affects married couples the hardest. A divorced couple could get $20k in total deductions on two houses which makes it disguised marriage tax.
Also, since it targets taxes but does not limit mortgage interest deduction, the household living in a paid-off property is hurt more than someone in a lower cost property but with a large mortgage. This affects senior citizens who have lived a long time in areas which have seen massive property appreciation over the course of their ownership to the point it could price them out of the neighborhood on tax burden alone.
All of this can be offset by other policy options but that is just piling complexity on complexity.
"On a basic fairness level, the idea of paying taxes on taxes is just unjust."
Out of curiosity, does anybody know if New York or California allow you to deduce State Sales Tax from your State Income Tax liability?
A quick Google search of NY suggests that it does not -- that NY makes you pay tax on tax at a State level -- but I'm not a resident and could be missing something!
I'm pretty sure the person who owns their home will be hurt LESS because they will just take the standard deduction of $12k (or $24k for a married couple) rather than the $10k max from their taxes. Whereas the person who is paying on their mortgage will take the $10k max + their interest for deductions.
As for separate or divorced, I don't see any penalty, unless maybe you assume the married couple would have a second house anyway? Just look at it as one deduction per house.
Based on relative fertility rates it seems the child allowance would, on average, disproportionately benefit people in red states compared to people in blue states:
Moreover, it looks like the cost of living (and presumably of raising children) is lower in red states than in blue states, making the allowance -- which is the same nationally -- go a lot further for folks in the former:
I just want to point out: your point 1 is at least partially the result of point 2. Yes, on some level, red states tend to be more religious, and religious people tend to have more kids. But it’s also just a lot more expensive to raise a kid in most of California than it is to raise one in Alabama. So because cost of living is higher, people in blue states are probably choosing to have fewer kids than they would if they lived elsewhere. So I imagine you’d probably see that fertility gap close a bit if a plan like Romney’s passes. (Though of course it probably wouldn’t close completely.)
One part of these discussions that always annoys me is the failure to distinguish between jobs and useful, socially beneficial activity. If I take a job that pays $40,000 and cut wages to the point that it only pays $20,000, I can hire two people and I've doubled the number of jobs. I'm a jobs creator. But the fact is that shitty jobs keep people from doing things like paying attention to their children, helping out their neighbors, and spending more time advancing their skills. Americans are working more hours than in years past and more by far than folks in other countries and, as a society, we are paying a heavy price. Isabel Sawhill, Richard Reeves and others at Brookings have done a lot of work on the middle class time squeeze. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/The-Middle-Class-Time-Squeeze_08.18.2020.pdf
100%. I just want to say that in addition to things like paying attention to their children, helping out their neighbors, and advancing their skills, more leisure time is a good thing in and of itself. If you spend less time working, that's more time for fun things as well, not just things that are coded as "productive" and valued in society. Leisure, itself, is good and Americans should have more of it.
I totally agree. In some cases, having people cut back on work is a good thing b/c it frees up more family time and probably promotes better physical and mental health.
I've been waiting days for Matt's twitter beef with Scott Winship to finally make Slow Boring. Too much of conservative economic theory is faith based. It's all seen as some sort of ecumenical argument between Keynsians and Austrians or salt water schools versus fresh water schools. It is theology with graphs. Only Winship doesn't even bother with the graphs.
For a soft pseudo-science, economics can get extremely dorky with its profusion of complicated mathematical models. Even having a surface level knowledge of obscure economic jargon is what lets charlatans like Paul Ryan flourish. Ryan managed to parlay an undergrad degree in Econ from Ohio's third most prestigious university into a reputation as a serious wonk. A development I still blame on the credulity of Vox cofounder Ezra Klein. That serious real experts like Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman have to waste their time refuting the neo-Randian nonsense conservatives spout without a scintilla of evidence is embarrassing.
I think that liberals and progressives, in their enthusiasm for the principle of Romney’s plan, ignore the incentive effects of having a large number of children in a family eligible for benefits.
Cap it at six children, and you’ll please religious Mormon, Christian, and Orthodox Jewish voters, but you’ll also have created a strong incentive for some parents to effectively live off the government benefits of their children. Given the motivations of parents who would do that, it is likely that many of these children will not be raised with care, and will become a problem to society when they grow up. Poverty will decline on paper, but some of the effects of poverty will be magnified.
I would say: cap it at three. This would make it possible for parents to have more children that they want and can raise with care, without the bad incentives, because you couldn’t live off the benefits of only three children. It will incentivize having kids at greater than the replacement rate, without creating social and religious divisions that would torpedo and stunt the program from the cradle.
It’s a detail that matters. This incentive effect was an issue with the old kind of welfare (going beyond AFDC) which resulted in the Scrooge-like moralistic system that we have today. Ignore this history, and you’ll bring back those very problems that we were trying to solve.
No offense but this is a bad take. Living on 1,500 (which btw would be very difficult to get and would only last ~1 year. Kids take time to make afterall) with 6 kids is insane, and that family would be living in poverty.
You can reject the assessment of incentives ("we're just paying those people to have babies!"), while agreeing to the lower cap on the number of children. I'd rather have more parents having 3 kids than a few having 6; I don't think very many parents should have 6 at all.
I'm a boomer, from the era of 6-kid families, and there was a ton of pathology in that. Basically, no parents have the emotional resources to parent that many kids. At some point, you are incentivizing neglect and abuse.
"I'm a boomer, from the era of 6-kid families, and there was a ton of pathology in that. Basically, no parents have the emotional resources to parent that many kids. At some point, you are incentivizing neglect and abuse. "
Is there any research to show this? Most of the families I know with 5 or more kids are actually much more about their kids and family than the people who have one or two. They have made a conscious decision to focus their life on that instead of other things. My experience is anecdotal so certainly could be wrong, so would be curious if you know research showing that large families are more likely to have neglect and abuse?
Do you really think ~$1500/month is a strong incentive to birth and raise six unwanted children? It's hard to live off $1500/month as a single person in most parts of the country, let alone as a family of 7-8. It just seems like kind of a long con (at least six years to get the full benefit) with high costs/risks.
My mother worked in California's CASA program, which basically got volunteers to act as a sort of advocate for children in the foster program. The girl that my mother advocated for had six siblings, each of which has been taken by the government from her mother in turn due to neglect.
People tend to think of incentive effects not on the margin. Does someone who's basically middle class think, after this policy goes into effect, "Hey, maybe I'll quit my job and have six kids?" No. Are there people who already are in a bad situation, have several kids, and might say, "Sure, now I'll have more?"
I mean, yes, there are. Is that a very significant number of people? My gut says no, but it'd be interesting to see some data.
Isn't part of that concern mitigated by reducing the marriage penalty? I can understand concerns with people having multiple children and no one taking care of them (the conservative argument that welfare reduces marriage and replaces the breadwinner, etc) but if its just a married but low-income family of 4 that decides to have one or more two kids, is that still a concern?
I suspect that in general the people who are on this particular margin are not very likely to get married even if there is no marriage penalty at all, and their spouses if they do get married are not likely to bring in a ton of money.
I do think that this proposal might disincentivize work for your example of a married, low-income family. Like, the mom's already home, taking care of the kids, and the kind of job she can get basically doesn't really pay for itself with the increased childcare costs she'd be incurring. So... if they can feed and clothe the new kid on less than the child allowance, they don't really incur any more childcare costs by having three or four kids rather than two...
But that also is not obviously a terrible thing? Like, more kids in a stable, low-income family, okay, why not? More kids to ultra-low-income people who have serious personal problems where the kids are actually or borderline neglected (or worse)... that sounds to me like a bad thing. But my suspicion is that there are just few enough people in that situation that this would do more good than harm.
I didn’t say that. All the child allowance has to do is to exceed (in the short run) the marginal cost of the 4th, 5th or 6th child, and it becomes the kind of incentive I’m talking about. The family will be better off financially from having children up to the limit. Children can be very cheap if you don’t feel the need to spend much money on them. Old-style welfare had this incentive built in, and it produced exactly those results.
The base income can come from anywhere. For example, a UBI of even $1,000 per month plus child allowances of $1,500 per month amounts to $30K per year (basically untaxed) which is more than a lot of people make in this country. Add another $1,000 for a partner's UBI and some part time work at $15 an hour and you’ve got something approaching a middle-class income, without working or paying taxes very much at all. I don’t see how it can be sustainable, or, frankly, be tolerable to the taxpaying public.
That’s not even really the most important reason to cap at 3. The cap at 3 would also ensure broader (and I’d argue fairer) distribution of the child allowance money. Many families would want to have three children. Many fewer would want six. If the cap is six, it seems more like a subsidy for religious and incentivized poor families, and less like a universal benefit that gives a broad number of working families a leg up on raising their children. It is more likely to be accepted and supported the more evenly distributed its benefits.
I don’t want to see this great idea go down because of bad design and lack of willingness to make judgments about what is and is not essential. I don’t see the child allowance as an anti-poverty program. I see it as a fair shake for working- and middle-class families, though that may well help a lot of poor families too and that would be great.
"it produced exactly those results." Did it? Where is this evidence that lots of people were having kids because they could get welfare? I mean where besides the fever dreams of Republicans?
Nobody has kids and thinks... "wow, can't wait to see how this gives me more government income". Poor people don't do that, middle class people don't do that.
I think if a poor family has 6 children and the government caps the benefits at 4 then those kids will ve living in poverty. We shouldn't be so obsessed with incentives that we create crushing poverty. Also there are many middle class families that would like to have five kids and Romney's plan would make that possible. You should think that is a good thing even if the preferences of Mormans are a bit weird to you.
Mormons are not weird to me. I just think that most Americans who restrain their families to 2 or 3 children because that's how many they can raise with care, will not respect or support a policy that turns into a subsidy for very large families, religious and/or impoverished, particularly if the perception is that those children are neglected and will outnumber their own responsibly raised children. The difference between 3 kids and 6 is the difference between a workable program and a disastrous one.
Utah is one of the most socially functional places in the Western world, with some of the most successful children, and has very high natural population growth. Very small families are a recent phenomenon in human history, there's nothing wrong with having 4-6 kids.
Ah, the exception that proves the rule. I admit the Mormons have the large-family thing well in hand. I couldn't do what they do, and I bet very few other Americans could do it either. So start with three kids, consider more at a later date if there's any political desire for it. Maybe the state of Utah would be willing to kick in for more, but I doubt it, because the Mormons are really good about helping each other already.
I think that "more children" incentive a huge feature! This idea is almost lifted perfectly from $1 Billion Americans, Matt's book.
I think actually this idea is more about boosting the birth rate, but Romney can't say so because he will get hit with a bunch of Handmaid's Tale memes.
So, in that spirit, a high cap (which very few will ever really reach) is better than a low one.
I guess it comes down to my prejudice. I don't think that parents can raise as many as six kids with care no matter how much money they have. Three kids with parental attention = well-being for all. Six kids sharing the same parental attention = poverty for all. One billion Americans is all very well, but I'm not enthusiastic if two-thirds of them are raised and educated in suboptimal circumstances.
I think you’ve demonstrated a fine talent for snark. Now I’d like to hear why you think public policy should support six children (versus capping at three).
Interesting segueway to SALT at the end there. One thing I wish wonks discussed more is *state* welfare politics/tax-credit schemes. Like, when you add both federal *and* state support, how much more does a poor California family receive from the gov’t than a poor Texas family? Because I could see an argument that, if you axe SALT, you (likely) reduce progressive-state welfare programs. And so, in turn, when computing the net benefit of the Romney plan you should include the difference between the new increased federal benefit *and* any resulting *decreased* state benefit. (At least in blue states.)
Do you think this kind of reasoning makes sense? Or is the amount of fed money so overwhelming as compared to even the most generous state schemes, that it makes no difference to poor families if the fed hand giveth and the state hand taketh away?
How would eliminating SALT affect the tax income of state governments? It would increase someone's federal tax liability but not make them pay less in state taxes.
I assume what AT is arguing is that if SALT is eliminated, upper-income taxpayers may strongly pushback more on their state and local taxes, leading to a decline in state and local taxation, and ergo smaller smaller state budgets. I think it is tenuous, but that's the theory.
I think people should be more worried about the quality of state/local government services than the size of those budgets. It seems MA has better services than NY yet pays considerably less in taxes, after all.
A great and important feature of this plan: it’s simple and understandable. In this low-trust era, the impact of easy-to-understand is huge. I barely understand the various existing tax programs Matt outlined and I’ve spent time trying. I’d likely get it wrong trying to explain to someone what’s available and what not. This, I could explain on a napkin to anyone in 60 seconds flat.
Why does no one ever mention the reason for the SALT deduction? Isn't there supposed to be a concept that income taxes are based on net and not gross income. While property taxes reflect individual's decisions about the value of the houses people chose to live in, local income taxes do not.
The decision to live in a high-tax jurisdiction is a consumption choice. It's a high-friction choice, to be sure, but that is no reason for people who choose to live in low-tax jurisdictions to subsidize those who choose to live in high-tax jurisdictions, let alone reason for those with less expensive homes to subsidize the taxes of those with more expensive ones!
No, incomes taxes are totally based on gross income, plus a bunch of subsidies for a special class of behaviors. The entire debate is just "what do and don't we want to subsidize?"
If "Net Income" is "What I earn minus what I spend" then I would only owe taxes on the money that I save/invest. That's much closer to the definition of gross vs net income you see in corporate taxes, with some expenses explicitly disallowed to prevent abuse.
In reality, I can't deduct the money I spent on food, or entertainment, or clothes. Or transportation (unless I buy an electric car, because we want to subsidize that). Or housing (except mortgage interest, because we want to encourage home ownership. Or energy-efficient windows, because we want to encourage green jobs.)
Instead, we just pick and choose to subsidize certain classes of expenses as not taxable in order to achieve totally unrelated goals. They are regressive and distortionary. The less dumb social engineering we try to do through complicated tax subsidies, the better.
Thoughtful article. Using Matt's forecasting principle I am 70 percent if Romney's plan were to get a vote in the Senate, with little or no alterations it would get more Republican votes than Democratic votes. On the left end of the spectrum, eliminating TANF, even though it is less generous than AFDIC, will be anathema. More moderate members of the Democratic Party, especially in states where Dems now rely on high-income suburbanites, will find eliminating the SALT cap to be toxic.
I don't think Romney's plan was just a "own the libs" trolling, but I can't see Dems going near those pay-fors because it is toxic to their constituencies, even if net-net, the distribution is progressive, and not regressive.
"More moderate members of the Democratic Party, especially in states where Dems now rely on high-income suburbanites, will find eliminating the SALT cap to be toxic."
Politically speaking, this was already eliminated by the Smash and Grab Act of 2017. I lamented it then, and blamed it on the Rs. I am used to its absence now.
So, no -- Dems would not pay a major political cost for this.
This post depressed me because it's a well-reasoned and well-argued exploration of a vital issue in our national life and it was dropped into the policy desert that is and will continue to be that national life for some time.
The dynamic of that time is: an anti-policy Republican party all of whose energy is directed at -- well, I'm not quite sure what it's directed at; a razor-thin margin between the parties which means that marginal changes in electoral outcomes drive huge swings in political power; a Democratic party bursting with interesting ideas and debates none of which matter except to the extent that Joe Manchin and the Senate parliamentarian agree with them.
I think it's great that Matt is tilling the policy soil for that blessed day when the heavens open up, the rain cascades down, and grasses and flowers flourish on the valley floor. I admire his perseverance. I couldn't do it.
Hello my fellow nerds and amateur wonks. Is it weird I get excited when I open my email and see a Slow Boring post about child allowance?
First... so recap of my life history... stationed in Europe for 12-years. While there, married an English girl, lived in German and had 2-kids. Because she was a EU citizen, we qualified for kindergeld, aka child money. This was in the last 90s early 00s.
It was awesome. I think it was around $200 to 300 a month per child (I am sure one of you nerds will fact check me). As a young Sgt with two kids, I qualified for the EIC. The kindergeld was invaluable in paying for some of the necessities. I had a lot less financial stress than some of my peers with kids who didn't qualify for the money.
At the time, I remember thinking that this is a "progressive" idea that conservatives should totally steal.
After all, I think there has been studies that show parents tend to become more conservative in their views.
In my various pro-kid twitter wars, singles or those who plan to not have children, tend to argue that why should they pay taxes to support children. I always counter with the argument that its my 5 children who will be paying the taxes and providing the services of taking care of the them when they reach an advance age.
Having kids is tough... man, me and my wife talk shit about them every night. They make terrible mistakes. They are terribly naïve. (I'm just glad that I was the exception and was always right when I was that age ;-)
It's probably cliché to say, but humankinds whole purpose is to reproduce. Even if people choose not to have kids (cowards), I think we all like to think we try and make the world a better place, for future generations.
Also, lately I have got interested in the subject of homelessness among families. We talk about living wages, but even at $15 an hour, a family of 2 or 3 is still going to struggle.
Anyway, sorry I'm not smarter... my kids did it to me.
Have a great day!
I live in the Netherlands, where we don't qualify for any kindergeld (same word in Dutch), but the government subsidizes about 85% of our childcare costs. This system makes a lot of sense, since both parents can work full-time without worrying that childcare will cost more than that they earn. On top of that, healthcare is effectively free for children. Neonatal care, delivery, etc. is all free. Once the kids pop out, you just take them to the consultatiebureau for free checkups, vaccinations, etc. and if your kid needs glasses or whatever, they give you a referral to a specialist / hostpital where further treatment is (for all intents and purposes) also free. I can find a lot of nits to pick about the Dutch tax system, but it comes close to making kid-having free, especially since they keep the price of (non-prepared) food very low. You can alos educate your kids all they way through univeristy for free (more-or-less, the university situation has become complicated). I'm not sure the US can steal these ideas, since they are pretty deeply baked in to the system here, but at the very least it shows that it can be done without all the complicated alphabet soup and commesnurate overhead.
Dude... I lived in The Netherlands for 3 years. My Dutch is terrible and mostly revolves around picking up women and ordering beer. My favorite European country. I also experienced the Dutch Healthcare system which was so far, my favorite. Germany and Scandinavia always get the limelight, but I've always thought that the Dutch system was the best.
On another note, I would kill for a shawarma with some garlic sauce... also that red one with onions. I have traveled all over the world, and no one does shawarma like in Holland.
My Dutch is terrible and I’ve lived here for 12 years.
I agree with you about healthcare system. It’s quietly super-good, as are a lot of things here, but all anyone talks about is Denmark for some reason.
You are literally the first person I’ve heard say something nice about Dutch cuisine : )
Yeah, Dutch cuisine like...shawarma.
I imagine it's hard to learn Dutch when the Dutch tend to speak much better English than one does (my experience while being a tourist there).
That and none of the languages we speak at home are Dutch. But what really amazes me is how well young people speak English here, and with American accents.
Impossible... but trying to speak Dutch was always a good pickup line. We use to purposely go to these small out of the way towns, go into the Centrum, pick a bar at random. Make an effort to speak Dutch, we were almost inevitably invited into a group for conversation. Seriously best time of my life.
Much of my experience with Dutch cuisine was precipitated by an experience with Dutch beer, so that might be a contributing factor. Vaar vont ye? (I know I probably fucked up that spelling. It was meant to be where do you live.
Er gaat niets boven Groningen!
Also, it turns out that we do get kindergeld, or something like that. It’s paid quarterly.
My favorite Dutch food is the Italian food I get at the market on Saturday (I am actually making pizza right this very moment).
Married person not planning to have kids here - happy to pay for your kid cash via taxes. Other context: I live in Boston which is blue and expensive.
I often think about how I generally get paid the same as someone who has one or more kids, as does my spouse. Aside from service and other low wage sectors, I feel like people like me benefit from a wage market that assumes people want and need to support kids. It’s convenient for me that I don’t, and so benefit from the labor market demands of a majority who do.
I will say that I think households without two incomes should potentially be treated differently - I don’t think household expenses scale linearly based on the number of incomes. Two bedroom houses are not twice as expensive as one bedrooms and there are a many other efficiencies like that one. The capital a household can acquire and save - say for a down payment- is dramatically reduced if they have only one income, which effects all kinds of long term things like wealth generation and retirement, etc. In Boston I see this play out all the time - with 2 incomes and no kids I was able to save for and buy a house and now enjoy all the benefits that some with that. Some of my colleagues also with no kids but with no spouse or second income can comfortably pay their rent and living expenses, but struggle to save in a big way for things that would in fact make them better off.
Thanks Lydia, as someone with Kids, I will gladly accept your money. In fact to make it more efficient, I can take venmo donations directly. JK
I am generally in favor of two parent households, despite the irony of multiple divorces. I am read about policies to encourage marriage and keeping parents together, but I suspect there isn't any marginal improvement.
That said, I think the next best option is to encourage family friend policies. Maternal and paternal leave. As far as single people, I think we need to move to European standards which include more vacation and shorter work week.
> my 5 children who will be paying the taxes and providing the services of taking care of the them when they reach an advance age.
So those services likely won't exist in any usable form by the time I reach an advanced age. At best they'll be mean-tested at poverty levels. My peers and I will need to entirely self-fund our retirements. I get the intention of this argument, but it doesn't hold water.
Our taxes are better spent on truly universal programs.
When they limited SALT in TCJA, I was pretty upset. My family pays well more than $10,000 in state taxes in New Jersey, and we also pay an awful lot of mortgage interest. Being relatively high income, I figured I was kind of getting screwed.
But we weren't. We aren't even itemizers anymore. The increase in the standard deduction was massive. I think Democratic politicians haven't grappled with the way the increase in the standard deduction really changed the constituencies for various tax deductions--SALT very much included.
I completely agree. I have to imagine some of the most common deductions are SALT and mortgage interest. With SALT capped and the standard deduction increased, the number of people who will itemize is lower. Take into account what I'm sure have been a lot of refinances the last couple years, and you have even fewer people paying enough mortgage interest to put them over the standard deduction.
Democrats shouldn't worry about potentially losing some high income voters in places repealing SALT would matter the most - NY, CA, NJ, CT since the places with the marginal Democratic voters - GA, AZ, PA, WI, etc probably don't have high enough SALT for those voters to care.
There’s also a “put your money where your mouth is” element to SALT elimination. Pretend to care about oppression everywhere? Dutifully sport a BLM yard sign in front of your high tax suburban home? This is a great way to actually help.
The problem isn't people switching parties. The problem is these high worth individuals leaving the state and seriously eroding the tax base.
Isn't the solution for the impacted states to lower their top marginal brackets, if they have a progressive state income tax?
These points are good, but there is a possibility of primary challenges in districts where SALT elimination would be a big deal (suburbs of NYC in 3 states, CA). The upper middle class / wealthy donors to Democrats in these places would also be upset about it.
I also think that the Dem voters in those states are not going to switch party because of the elimination of SALT deductions. So long as the Rs are loony-tunes, it's a captive audience.
Especially since the Rs are the ones pushing their elimination in the first place!
IMO, they wanted to deemphasize SALT and the mortgage deduction and did so by increasing the standard deduction. But it shifted tax burden onto parents or I don't see how it couldn't have.
How would this shift the tax burden onto parents?
The way I see it, parents with 2 kids got roughly (12,000 standard de+ personal exemptions of roughly $6,000). Now everybody gets $24,000. Parents with more than 2 kids got jobbed. Parents with 2 kids were roughly the same except it was harder to get over the standard deduction. Single people made out like bandits.
Making Biden's plan permanent WOULD be great... but I struggle to understand why people discuss this possibility without mentioning that it won't happen. If it doesn't happen in this stimulus package, which it won't (since they don't seem to be moving from the 1-year effect), then their only opportunity to make that happen would be via another reconciliation in 2022. To be permanent, it will have to be fully financed -- i.e., it will have to raise taxes, presumably on the wealthy and upper-middle class (in the best case scenario). Will moderate Dems want to pass a bill that raises taxes to fund welfare benefits right before the midterms? I'm skeptical. But even beyond that, the party is going to develop a very, very long list of policy priorities that can only happen via a 2022 reconciliation measure, and many of those will also have to be funded via tax increases in order to be permanent. Does CTC expansion make the cut? The very fact that it's not being made permanent *in this bill* suggests probably not.
Once 2023 rolls around, there's very little chance Dems will still control both houses of Congress, meaning any CTC plan is dead in the water. The Romney plan is ideal because it can be slotted into this reconciliation package and immediately become a permanent feature of the U.S. welfare landscape, giving Biden (and Mitt) a legacy of massive reductions in child poverty.
Dems should 100% jump on the Romney bill - on its own terms it's a policy win, relative to the non-permanent Biden plan it's a mild win, and even compared to a hypothetical permanent version it's only mildly worse. Imagine being able to go into the 2022 midterms talking about the direct benefits voters are getting because of the "Romney-Biden Child Allowance Act" or whatever they call it - keep Romney's name on there because independents will recognize it with no issue and it gives the thing a bipartisan brand, backing up Biden's rhetoric about unity and whatnot.
Unfortunately, 99% of policy talk is always just going to be talk because of the handful of Democrats that refuse to get rid of the filibuster. Imagine the conversations we could be having right now if we lived in a world where Congress would actually regularly pass legislation instead of only one big, awkward spending bill a year.
Good column. I tip my hat to Romney for paying this through elimination of SALT. In addition to being regressive and disproportionately beneficial to wealthy blue staters like myself, SALT has a profoundly deleterious impact on accountability of local government. One will care less about his/her local government's competence and value delivered, if there is no cost, because of SALT deductions.
So far in these comments we've had "parents will just quit their jobs and raise 6 kids on $15,000 a year" and "$15,000 a year is so little money that it's just an insidious waste of time".
It's truly wild.
I apologize if it sounds patronizing to say this, but people are really bad at thinking on the margin. It is of course true that there are very large numbers of people in the country that would say, "Hahahaha what you want to pay me $15k a year to have *six children* are you insane?" while simultaneously there are very large numbers of people in the country who are like, "Woah, $3k a year if I have another kid? That's a game-changer!"
People rely on their intuitions too much about this kind of thing, and your intuition tends to imagine that everyone is a lot like you or a few people you know.
Some people will absolutely have more children if there is a $3k/year child allowance. Matt has cited survey data a few times showing that lots of people wish they had more kids, if only they could afford them. Making it more affordable to have children allows people to achieve their actual goals.
I would go farther: encouraging people to have that marginal extra child -- because with $3k extra they CAN save for college, or move into that 2-bedroom apartment, or cut back on hours at work -- is one of the major BENEFITS of such a program. Help people have the kids they want to have! One Billion Americans!
That marginal child is likely a money-losing proposition even with a child allowance. Even at the maximum benefit, it would not be enough to replace labor income. But it's not nothing! And insofar as it enables families to choose to have children, and to raise those children without want, it is a big win in my book.
I think almost nobody would find having their first child for $3k a year as money-gaining proposition. A lot of people might find having their second or third child for $3k per year a money-gaining proposition (because they already have childcare that can absorb another child with no real monetary impact, ie one parent has already dropped out of the workforce or a grandparent is doing it or whatever).
Like you, I am not saying that this is a bad thing!
Sure -- I can see that.
There will also be some scenarios in which that marginal 3rd or 4th child is enough to actually pull a parent out of the labor market as the delta between low-wage income and child care costs rises, and the child allowance provides a cushion. Parents who would prefer to stay home may well find that this makes it affordable to do so at larger family sizes, basically amplifying an effect that is already present.
But, again, I'd see that as a feature!
I call the third child the SAH kid. In my social group a third kid is a signal that the wife (and it is always the wife) has no plans of returning to the workforce until all the kids are out of school. And even then it's not likely.
At a certain income level, a stay-at-home wife is a status symbol. I'm not sure $3k a year is a dealmaker at that level, but it's not going to hurt.
Well, I'm here to say that I think the child allowance is a great idea to improve society somewhat and that it won't ruin society but we should not do pay-fors that leave poor people worse off. Nuance!
Lyman Stokey has done some modeling that shows that, even with the pay-fors, virtually every recipient would be net better off w/ Romney's plan than in the status quo, including both parent and childless EITC recipients. Replacing a less-generous, administratively onerous benefit with a more-generous, administrative-simple one is a clear win for recipients -- especially the sizable minority of EITC-eligible people who don't actually get the benefit today!
https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1357680478380261377
Thanks for sharing that. I have heard that it does leave some people with less money but I don't fully understand it so I don't know.
I think there are VERY narrow income bands where that is partially true depending on marital status -- lots of complicated factors at play! -- but I'd encourage you to read the thread and see.
I agree that if the pay-fors do leave poor recipients worse off, they should be retooled until they do not.
Yeah, I saw that and it's encouraging. Another thing I don't get: Stone presents encouraging marriage as a worthy policy goal. I get that we wouldn't want to penalize marriage but what's the benefit of encouraging it? Not all partnerships are marriages, not all marriages are happy, and I would assume not every single parent wants to marry the mother/father.
A few factors, I guess --
1. Research consistently shows that children do better when raised in stable two-parent homes, and that married parents provide that much more frequently than cohabiting parents do. (link below)
There is plenty of debate as to whether that is really causation or merely correlation, and whether encouraging "the types of parents who cohabit" to get married instead would make any meaningful difference. But there is definitely research that says "marriage is better for kids" and while there are mitigating arguments, there is really nothing with which I'm familiar that suggests the opposite.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/cohabiting-parents-differ-from-married-ones-in-three-big-ways/
2. He is a social conservative, so I imagine that on a personal level he sees marriage itself as a good thing, and its normalization as a public good. There is value for individual families, but also, value in a social expectation that family formation is tied to long-term, til-death-do-us-part commitment. You don't have to share that view!
3. With so many tax and benefit programs intersecting in so many complicated ways, it may be impossible to be 100% neutral in all cases. So, if you "get that we wouldn't want to penalize marriage," but find that complex policy will inevitably create rewards or penalties in different contexts, the impulse is to /err on the side of not penalizing it/. Thus, it's not that we should explicitly subsidize marriage as a policy goal, but that if we are to avoid penalizing it, then it will inevitably be fairly neutral in most cases, with slight incentives in others.
Could Romney's proposal boil down to: Increase taxes on the rich to pay for something that disproportionately benefits poor children, while simplifying the benefit system overall. Seems great to me. For progressives to oppose it seems like siding with the social-welfare bureaucracy over its intended beneficiaries.
Don't underestimate how much upper-middle-class Democratic primary voters love the SALT deduction... that's a big factor in Congressional support.
I'm going to talk my book a little and defend the SALT deduction. On a basic fairness level, the idea of paying taxes on taxes is just unjust. What the SALT does is favor local taxes over federal taxes. This does encourage states to provide better and more services to their citizens. It incentivizes more local control which conservatives should be in favor of if they weren't solely focused on slashing tax burden wherever it occurs.
And while it hits blue states the hardest (in fact it seems specifically designed to punish blue states almost exclusively) it doesn't hit everybody hardest. For one, the $10k cap is per household, not per taxpayer, so it affects married couples the hardest. A divorced couple could get $20k in total deductions on two houses which makes it disguised marriage tax.
Also, since it targets taxes but does not limit mortgage interest deduction, the household living in a paid-off property is hurt more than someone in a lower cost property but with a large mortgage. This affects senior citizens who have lived a long time in areas which have seen massive property appreciation over the course of their ownership to the point it could price them out of the neighborhood on tax burden alone.
All of this can be offset by other policy options but that is just piling complexity on complexity.
This is the best defense of the SALT deduction I've seen, thank you!
"On a basic fairness level, the idea of paying taxes on taxes is just unjust."
Out of curiosity, does anybody know if New York or California allow you to deduce State Sales Tax from your State Income Tax liability?
A quick Google search of NY suggests that it does not -- that NY makes you pay tax on tax at a State level -- but I'm not a resident and could be missing something!
I'm pretty sure the person who owns their home will be hurt LESS because they will just take the standard deduction of $12k (or $24k for a married couple) rather than the $10k max from their taxes. Whereas the person who is paying on their mortgage will take the $10k max + their interest for deductions.
As for separate or divorced, I don't see any penalty, unless maybe you assume the married couple would have a second house anyway? Just look at it as one deduction per house.
Based on relative fertility rates it seems the child allowance would, on average, disproportionately benefit people in red states compared to people in blue states:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/fertility_rate/fertility_rates.htm
Moreover, it looks like the cost of living (and presumably of raising children) is lower in red states than in blue states, making the allowance -- which is the same nationally -- go a lot further for folks in the former:
https://meric.mo.gov/data/cost-living-data-series
Finally, incomes also seem lower in red states compared to blue states, making it more likely that families with children will qualify:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income
More Republicans should get on board!
I just want to point out: your point 1 is at least partially the result of point 2. Yes, on some level, red states tend to be more religious, and religious people tend to have more kids. But it’s also just a lot more expensive to raise a kid in most of California than it is to raise one in Alabama. So because cost of living is higher, people in blue states are probably choosing to have fewer kids than they would if they lived elsewhere. So I imagine you’d probably see that fertility gap close a bit if a plan like Romney’s passes. (Though of course it probably wouldn’t close completely.)
One part of these discussions that always annoys me is the failure to distinguish between jobs and useful, socially beneficial activity. If I take a job that pays $40,000 and cut wages to the point that it only pays $20,000, I can hire two people and I've doubled the number of jobs. I'm a jobs creator. But the fact is that shitty jobs keep people from doing things like paying attention to their children, helping out their neighbors, and spending more time advancing their skills. Americans are working more hours than in years past and more by far than folks in other countries and, as a society, we are paying a heavy price. Isabel Sawhill, Richard Reeves and others at Brookings have done a lot of work on the middle class time squeeze. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/The-Middle-Class-Time-Squeeze_08.18.2020.pdf
100%. I just want to say that in addition to things like paying attention to their children, helping out their neighbors, and advancing their skills, more leisure time is a good thing in and of itself. If you spend less time working, that's more time for fun things as well, not just things that are coded as "productive" and valued in society. Leisure, itself, is good and Americans should have more of it.
I totally agree. In some cases, having people cut back on work is a good thing b/c it frees up more family time and probably promotes better physical and mental health.
I've been waiting days for Matt's twitter beef with Scott Winship to finally make Slow Boring. Too much of conservative economic theory is faith based. It's all seen as some sort of ecumenical argument between Keynsians and Austrians or salt water schools versus fresh water schools. It is theology with graphs. Only Winship doesn't even bother with the graphs.
For a soft pseudo-science, economics can get extremely dorky with its profusion of complicated mathematical models. Even having a surface level knowledge of obscure economic jargon is what lets charlatans like Paul Ryan flourish. Ryan managed to parlay an undergrad degree in Econ from Ohio's third most prestigious university into a reputation as a serious wonk. A development I still blame on the credulity of Vox cofounder Ezra Klein. That serious real experts like Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman have to waste their time refuting the neo-Randian nonsense conservatives spout without a scintilla of evidence is embarrassing.
It reminds me of climate denial. I really think the Republican Party is just evidence free at this point tbh
#1 is Case Western, #2 is OSU?
Whenever I use that line, I leave the top two to the imagination of the reader. Oberlin may or may not be in the mix.
I graduated from UC so I'm gonna say that is one of the top 2 lol
I think that liberals and progressives, in their enthusiasm for the principle of Romney’s plan, ignore the incentive effects of having a large number of children in a family eligible for benefits.
Cap it at six children, and you’ll please religious Mormon, Christian, and Orthodox Jewish voters, but you’ll also have created a strong incentive for some parents to effectively live off the government benefits of their children. Given the motivations of parents who would do that, it is likely that many of these children will not be raised with care, and will become a problem to society when they grow up. Poverty will decline on paper, but some of the effects of poverty will be magnified.
I would say: cap it at three. This would make it possible for parents to have more children that they want and can raise with care, without the bad incentives, because you couldn’t live off the benefits of only three children. It will incentivize having kids at greater than the replacement rate, without creating social and religious divisions that would torpedo and stunt the program from the cradle.
It’s a detail that matters. This incentive effect was an issue with the old kind of welfare (going beyond AFDC) which resulted in the Scrooge-like moralistic system that we have today. Ignore this history, and you’ll bring back those very problems that we were trying to solve.
No offense but this is a bad take. Living on 1,500 (which btw would be very difficult to get and would only last ~1 year. Kids take time to make afterall) with 6 kids is insane, and that family would be living in poverty.
This is not a problem at all.
You can reject the assessment of incentives ("we're just paying those people to have babies!"), while agreeing to the lower cap on the number of children. I'd rather have more parents having 3 kids than a few having 6; I don't think very many parents should have 6 at all.
I'm a boomer, from the era of 6-kid families, and there was a ton of pathology in that. Basically, no parents have the emotional resources to parent that many kids. At some point, you are incentivizing neglect and abuse.
"I'm a boomer, from the era of 6-kid families, and there was a ton of pathology in that. Basically, no parents have the emotional resources to parent that many kids. At some point, you are incentivizing neglect and abuse. "
Is there any research to show this? Most of the families I know with 5 or more kids are actually much more about their kids and family than the people who have one or two. They have made a conscious decision to focus their life on that instead of other things. My experience is anecdotal so certainly could be wrong, so would be curious if you know research showing that large families are more likely to have neglect and abuse?
What's the evidence that the amount of money Romney is proposing incentivises people to have kids?
You meant to ask Rock_M, not me, right?
Ah yeah sorry.
Do you really think ~$1500/month is a strong incentive to birth and raise six unwanted children? It's hard to live off $1500/month as a single person in most parts of the country, let alone as a family of 7-8. It just seems like kind of a long con (at least six years to get the full benefit) with high costs/risks.
My mother worked in California's CASA program, which basically got volunteers to act as a sort of advocate for children in the foster program. The girl that my mother advocated for had six siblings, each of which has been taken by the government from her mother in turn due to neglect.
People tend to think of incentive effects not on the margin. Does someone who's basically middle class think, after this policy goes into effect, "Hey, maybe I'll quit my job and have six kids?" No. Are there people who already are in a bad situation, have several kids, and might say, "Sure, now I'll have more?"
I mean, yes, there are. Is that a very significant number of people? My gut says no, but it'd be interesting to see some data.
Isn't part of that concern mitigated by reducing the marriage penalty? I can understand concerns with people having multiple children and no one taking care of them (the conservative argument that welfare reduces marriage and replaces the breadwinner, etc) but if its just a married but low-income family of 4 that decides to have one or more two kids, is that still a concern?
I suspect that in general the people who are on this particular margin are not very likely to get married even if there is no marriage penalty at all, and their spouses if they do get married are not likely to bring in a ton of money.
I do think that this proposal might disincentivize work for your example of a married, low-income family. Like, the mom's already home, taking care of the kids, and the kind of job she can get basically doesn't really pay for itself with the increased childcare costs she'd be incurring. So... if they can feed and clothe the new kid on less than the child allowance, they don't really incur any more childcare costs by having three or four kids rather than two...
But that also is not obviously a terrible thing? Like, more kids in a stable, low-income family, okay, why not? More kids to ultra-low-income people who have serious personal problems where the kids are actually or borderline neglected (or worse)... that sounds to me like a bad thing. But my suspicion is that there are just few enough people in that situation that this would do more good than harm.
I didn’t say that. All the child allowance has to do is to exceed (in the short run) the marginal cost of the 4th, 5th or 6th child, and it becomes the kind of incentive I’m talking about. The family will be better off financially from having children up to the limit. Children can be very cheap if you don’t feel the need to spend much money on them. Old-style welfare had this incentive built in, and it produced exactly those results.
The base income can come from anywhere. For example, a UBI of even $1,000 per month plus child allowances of $1,500 per month amounts to $30K per year (basically untaxed) which is more than a lot of people make in this country. Add another $1,000 for a partner's UBI and some part time work at $15 an hour and you’ve got something approaching a middle-class income, without working or paying taxes very much at all. I don’t see how it can be sustainable, or, frankly, be tolerable to the taxpaying public.
That’s not even really the most important reason to cap at 3. The cap at 3 would also ensure broader (and I’d argue fairer) distribution of the child allowance money. Many families would want to have three children. Many fewer would want six. If the cap is six, it seems more like a subsidy for religious and incentivized poor families, and less like a universal benefit that gives a broad number of working families a leg up on raising their children. It is more likely to be accepted and supported the more evenly distributed its benefits.
I don’t want to see this great idea go down because of bad design and lack of willingness to make judgments about what is and is not essential. I don’t see the child allowance as an anti-poverty program. I see it as a fair shake for working- and middle-class families, though that may well help a lot of poor families too and that would be great.
"it produced exactly those results." Did it? Where is this evidence that lots of people were having kids because they could get welfare? I mean where besides the fever dreams of Republicans?
Nobody has kids and thinks... "wow, can't wait to see how this gives me more government income". Poor people don't do that, middle class people don't do that.
I think if a poor family has 6 children and the government caps the benefits at 4 then those kids will ve living in poverty. We shouldn't be so obsessed with incentives that we create crushing poverty. Also there are many middle class families that would like to have five kids and Romney's plan would make that possible. You should think that is a good thing even if the preferences of Mormans are a bit weird to you.
Mormons are not weird to me. I just think that most Americans who restrain their families to 2 or 3 children because that's how many they can raise with care, will not respect or support a policy that turns into a subsidy for very large families, religious and/or impoverished, particularly if the perception is that those children are neglected and will outnumber their own responsibly raised children. The difference between 3 kids and 6 is the difference between a workable program and a disastrous one.
Utah is one of the most socially functional places in the Western world, with some of the most successful children, and has very high natural population growth. Very small families are a recent phenomenon in human history, there's nothing wrong with having 4-6 kids.
Ah, the exception that proves the rule. I admit the Mormons have the large-family thing well in hand. I couldn't do what they do, and I bet very few other Americans could do it either. So start with three kids, consider more at a later date if there's any political desire for it. Maybe the state of Utah would be willing to kick in for more, but I doubt it, because the Mormons are really good about helping each other already.
I think that "more children" incentive a huge feature! This idea is almost lifted perfectly from $1 Billion Americans, Matt's book.
I think actually this idea is more about boosting the birth rate, but Romney can't say so because he will get hit with a bunch of Handmaid's Tale memes.
So, in that spirit, a high cap (which very few will ever really reach) is better than a low one.
I guess it comes down to my prejudice. I don't think that parents can raise as many as six kids with care no matter how much money they have. Three kids with parental attention = well-being for all. Six kids sharing the same parental attention = poverty for all. One billion Americans is all very well, but I'm not enthusiastic if two-thirds of them are raised and educated in suboptimal circumstances.
You may need to work through some personal family issues before using that as a basis for setting public policy.
I think you’ve demonstrated a fine talent for snark. Now I’d like to hear why you think public policy should support six children (versus capping at three).
I agree with a cap of 3 or 4 but not really the reasoning here.
You said it more concisely than I did.
Interesting segueway to SALT at the end there. One thing I wish wonks discussed more is *state* welfare politics/tax-credit schemes. Like, when you add both federal *and* state support, how much more does a poor California family receive from the gov’t than a poor Texas family? Because I could see an argument that, if you axe SALT, you (likely) reduce progressive-state welfare programs. And so, in turn, when computing the net benefit of the Romney plan you should include the difference between the new increased federal benefit *and* any resulting *decreased* state benefit. (At least in blue states.)
Do you think this kind of reasoning makes sense? Or is the amount of fed money so overwhelming as compared to even the most generous state schemes, that it makes no difference to poor families if the fed hand giveth and the state hand taketh away?
How would eliminating SALT affect the tax income of state governments? It would increase someone's federal tax liability but not make them pay less in state taxes.
I assume what AT is arguing is that if SALT is eliminated, upper-income taxpayers may strongly pushback more on their state and local taxes, leading to a decline in state and local taxation, and ergo smaller smaller state budgets. I think it is tenuous, but that's the theory.
I think people should be more worried about the quality of state/local government services than the size of those budgets. It seems MA has better services than NY yet pays considerably less in taxes, after all.
A great and important feature of this plan: it’s simple and understandable. In this low-trust era, the impact of easy-to-understand is huge. I barely understand the various existing tax programs Matt outlined and I’ve spent time trying. I’d likely get it wrong trying to explain to someone what’s available and what not. This, I could explain on a napkin to anyone in 60 seconds flat.
Why does no one ever mention the reason for the SALT deduction? Isn't there supposed to be a concept that income taxes are based on net and not gross income. While property taxes reflect individual's decisions about the value of the houses people chose to live in, local income taxes do not.
The decision to live in a high-tax jurisdiction is a consumption choice. It's a high-friction choice, to be sure, but that is no reason for people who choose to live in low-tax jurisdictions to subsidize those who choose to live in high-tax jurisdictions, let alone reason for those with less expensive homes to subsidize the taxes of those with more expensive ones!
No, incomes taxes are totally based on gross income, plus a bunch of subsidies for a special class of behaviors. The entire debate is just "what do and don't we want to subsidize?"
If "Net Income" is "What I earn minus what I spend" then I would only owe taxes on the money that I save/invest. That's much closer to the definition of gross vs net income you see in corporate taxes, with some expenses explicitly disallowed to prevent abuse.
In reality, I can't deduct the money I spent on food, or entertainment, or clothes. Or transportation (unless I buy an electric car, because we want to subsidize that). Or housing (except mortgage interest, because we want to encourage home ownership. Or energy-efficient windows, because we want to encourage green jobs.)
Instead, we just pick and choose to subsidize certain classes of expenses as not taxable in order to achieve totally unrelated goals. They are regressive and distortionary. The less dumb social engineering we try to do through complicated tax subsidies, the better.
Thoughtful article. Using Matt's forecasting principle I am 70 percent if Romney's plan were to get a vote in the Senate, with little or no alterations it would get more Republican votes than Democratic votes. On the left end of the spectrum, eliminating TANF, even though it is less generous than AFDIC, will be anathema. More moderate members of the Democratic Party, especially in states where Dems now rely on high-income suburbanites, will find eliminating the SALT cap to be toxic.
I don't think Romney's plan was just a "own the libs" trolling, but I can't see Dems going near those pay-fors because it is toxic to their constituencies, even if net-net, the distribution is progressive, and not regressive.
"More moderate members of the Democratic Party, especially in states where Dems now rely on high-income suburbanites, will find eliminating the SALT cap to be toxic."
Politically speaking, this was already eliminated by the Smash and Grab Act of 2017. I lamented it then, and blamed it on the Rs. I am used to its absence now.
So, no -- Dems would not pay a major political cost for this.
This post depressed me because it's a well-reasoned and well-argued exploration of a vital issue in our national life and it was dropped into the policy desert that is and will continue to be that national life for some time.
The dynamic of that time is: an anti-policy Republican party all of whose energy is directed at -- well, I'm not quite sure what it's directed at; a razor-thin margin between the parties which means that marginal changes in electoral outcomes drive huge swings in political power; a Democratic party bursting with interesting ideas and debates none of which matter except to the extent that Joe Manchin and the Senate parliamentarian agree with them.
I think it's great that Matt is tilling the policy soil for that blessed day when the heavens open up, the rain cascades down, and grasses and flowers flourish on the valley floor. I admire his perseverance. I couldn't do it.