True confession: When I consider targeted anti-poverty programs, I want to know if the recipients are in their situation due to bad luck or due to bad decisions. My default is to see individual agency -- as opposed to luck, legacy or environment -- as the cause of poverty.
The benefit of universal programs is it short-circuits this line of thinking.
To me so much of the draw for universal v. Targeted programs is the reduction of administrative friction. Stimulus checks were popular because people like money, but also because they just sort of showed up without any huge lift by the recipient. Sure UI enhancement is technically a better solution, but the delivery method (state implemented distribution systems) were so broken that a ton of laid off Americans never received the UI that they were eligible for. The map with TANF penetration is striking and should really be a bigger part of the policy conversation
When I lived in Germany, I got kindergeld. Basically the same thing as what Matt is talking about. It was awesome. I only had two kids back then.
Now I have five kids, and four step kids. Yep, that’s nine kids.
I sure hope someone out there is having lots of boys, because only one of them is a son.
I have two sister-in-law’s who are 40. Both are trying in vitro to have kids. Neither is having any luck. Both spent much of their adult life saying they didn’t want kids. Or said it was too expensive.
Having lived in Europe for 12 years I saw a gamut of social welfare programs. Holland and Germany did it best. The UK did it the worst. Much of my ex wife’s family was permanently on the dole.
I’m actually a recovering conservative. I’ve come to really appreciate various welfare programs. Mainly because my wife in-laws are in the restaurant industry. Their coworkers and employees have become my social circle. Single moms, Hispanic immigrants (including undocumented). Good people. Many with problems. Single moms, drug problems. I’ve helped several of them negotiate the complicated bureaucracy of getting assistance. I bought presents for their kids, because I know they didn’t have a lot of money.
We should be doing more to help these people. And I say that as someone who makes a good living, winces when it comes to tax time.
Even without the "dysgenic" part of the Bell Curve argument, I worry that monthly cash payments in return for more children *could* increase the number of children in poverty given the incentive it creates. (I grew up among the rural poor, and I definitely knew people who would have two more kids for an extra $500/month.)
I'm on the side of Yang's UBI, which only gave cash to adults but continued to offer services to children - to avoid the incentive problems and the "agent" problem of giving money for kids to their parents.
Critics will say I'm just being mean to the poor and looking down on poor people. But I think that's a big part of what liberals miss about the conservative view - that many centrist/conservative people know poor folks who've gotten there through bad decision-making, and they don't want to support/reward them for that.
This is where I miss Scott Alexander, because I see the barrage of linked studies about the benefits of welfare and I think, "Okay, but would literally any of these replicate? Are there just as many other studies showing no benefits"?
Replacing patchwork programs with universalist direct cash programs that don't have weird disincentives is certainly a good idea. Is spending massively more on welfare a great idea? Surely we think that even if existing programs are strongly positive, each marginal dollar is likely to produce less marginal benefit.
Matt, to what extent do you think the focus on 'inequality' has caused this topic to drift a bit from the situation on the ground?
I've always felt that poverty should be the focus. There are more equal societies that are not great models for us (Yemen, Niger, Ukraine, plenty of others). It's not that inequality is entirely unimportant, but I fear it pulls the focus away from poverty and toward intra-elite debates.
Obviously, an anti-poverty push includes taxing the very wealthy, and there are inequality implications for that. It just seems that it drags us into an us vs. them fight, instead of the simple realization that we would like to live in a society with fewer instances of inter-generational poverty.
Summary of a lot of political dysfunction on the center-left is: "This idea we used to believe is now much more complicated due to [DEBATABLE ELITE POINT OF VIEW] and now we have to convolute our language and fight about rhetoric while doing very little to help everyone else (i.e. most people), who have very little idea what we're talking about."
All I want for Christmas is to replace the existing welfare state with a very generous negative income tax. Set it up so that someone with no income makes $40,000, phase it out over another $30,000, add in some child benefits and baby you got a welfare system going!
The lack of enthusiasm for EITC and Child Tax Credit among Progressives is astounding. From the media, you'd think Marco Rubio is the only supporter of higher Child Tax Credit.
Very interesting read. Scott Walker's "sales tax refund" framing actually seems to make sense to me. With the giant caveat that I don't actually know anything about the program other than what was in the article, it seems to me like the framing nicely sidesteps the 'handouts' problem where no-one wants to give anyone a handout and no-one actually wants to receive (what they perceive to be) a handout either. So, a rebate as framing makes a lot of sense from that perspective.
The other part here that I think is interesting is the focus on sales tax. If it had been an income tax rebate or a property tax rebate, it would have had to apply only to those people who actually paid those taxes (again, I'm just assuming a whole host of things here). Sales tax, however, is completely universal; everyone pays some amount of sales tax. Therefore, a rebate based on sales tax can also be universal in a way that a rebate based on other taxes presumably couldn't be.
Have economists ever calculated the increase in productivity if people, particularly young people and young parents, are relieved to a degree of the financial dangers of taking risks in their professional life, pursuing dreams, etc.? I would guess it would be substantial. Scandinavia should yield some evidence?
It’s so hard to not feel a massive level of resentment at all your natalist ideas. I don’t think they’re bad ideas but the selection of parents as in the deserving box and childless as undeserving feels awfully cruel.
I think the race central or not issue is wrongly joined. Republics make "otherism" an issue all the time. The question for Democrats is how to meet it. I like the Stacy Abrams approach, "Don't let Republicans use race (otherness) as a way to divide us who want to level up society." I think the big novelty will be to talk a lot more about voter suppression, gerrymandering that make coalition building across race/class/ethnic/religions/gender lines more difficult.
To your other point, one thing to remember was the dramatic post war surge in crime due to lead in gasoline. That occurred at the same time as The Great Society programs of the 60s and people mistaken concluded that welfare was causing crime. I wonder how much further along we'd be in we didn't have the lead/crime issue?
I particularly appreciate your gimlet-eyed case for the efficacy of social assistance programs. But, um, can't help noting: there's only one "t" in "Bennet."
True confession: When I consider targeted anti-poverty programs, I want to know if the recipients are in their situation due to bad luck or due to bad decisions. My default is to see individual agency -- as opposed to luck, legacy or environment -- as the cause of poverty.
The benefit of universal programs is it short-circuits this line of thinking.
To me so much of the draw for universal v. Targeted programs is the reduction of administrative friction. Stimulus checks were popular because people like money, but also because they just sort of showed up without any huge lift by the recipient. Sure UI enhancement is technically a better solution, but the delivery method (state implemented distribution systems) were so broken that a ton of laid off Americans never received the UI that they were eligible for. The map with TANF penetration is striking and should really be a bigger part of the policy conversation
When I lived in Germany, I got kindergeld. Basically the same thing as what Matt is talking about. It was awesome. I only had two kids back then.
Now I have five kids, and four step kids. Yep, that’s nine kids.
I sure hope someone out there is having lots of boys, because only one of them is a son.
I have two sister-in-law’s who are 40. Both are trying in vitro to have kids. Neither is having any luck. Both spent much of their adult life saying they didn’t want kids. Or said it was too expensive.
Having lived in Europe for 12 years I saw a gamut of social welfare programs. Holland and Germany did it best. The UK did it the worst. Much of my ex wife’s family was permanently on the dole.
I’m actually a recovering conservative. I’ve come to really appreciate various welfare programs. Mainly because my wife in-laws are in the restaurant industry. Their coworkers and employees have become my social circle. Single moms, Hispanic immigrants (including undocumented). Good people. Many with problems. Single moms, drug problems. I’ve helped several of them negotiate the complicated bureaucracy of getting assistance. I bought presents for their kids, because I know they didn’t have a lot of money.
We should be doing more to help these people. And I say that as someone who makes a good living, winces when it comes to tax time.
Anyway, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.
Even without the "dysgenic" part of the Bell Curve argument, I worry that monthly cash payments in return for more children *could* increase the number of children in poverty given the incentive it creates. (I grew up among the rural poor, and I definitely knew people who would have two more kids for an extra $500/month.)
I'm on the side of Yang's UBI, which only gave cash to adults but continued to offer services to children - to avoid the incentive problems and the "agent" problem of giving money for kids to their parents.
Critics will say I'm just being mean to the poor and looking down on poor people. But I think that's a big part of what liberals miss about the conservative view - that many centrist/conservative people know poor folks who've gotten there through bad decision-making, and they don't want to support/reward them for that.
This is where I miss Scott Alexander, because I see the barrage of linked studies about the benefits of welfare and I think, "Okay, but would literally any of these replicate? Are there just as many other studies showing no benefits"?
Replacing patchwork programs with universalist direct cash programs that don't have weird disincentives is certainly a good idea. Is spending massively more on welfare a great idea? Surely we think that even if existing programs are strongly positive, each marginal dollar is likely to produce less marginal benefit.
Great read! Hasn't there been a lot of pushback on the "Americans living on under $2 a day" research in regards to deep poverty?
Matt, to what extent do you think the focus on 'inequality' has caused this topic to drift a bit from the situation on the ground?
I've always felt that poverty should be the focus. There are more equal societies that are not great models for us (Yemen, Niger, Ukraine, plenty of others). It's not that inequality is entirely unimportant, but I fear it pulls the focus away from poverty and toward intra-elite debates.
Obviously, an anti-poverty push includes taxing the very wealthy, and there are inequality implications for that. It just seems that it drags us into an us vs. them fight, instead of the simple realization that we would like to live in a society with fewer instances of inter-generational poverty.
Summary of a lot of political dysfunction on the center-left is: "This idea we used to believe is now much more complicated due to [DEBATABLE ELITE POINT OF VIEW] and now we have to convolute our language and fight about rhetoric while doing very little to help everyone else (i.e. most people), who have very little idea what we're talking about."
All I want for Christmas is to replace the existing welfare state with a very generous negative income tax. Set it up so that someone with no income makes $40,000, phase it out over another $30,000, add in some child benefits and baby you got a welfare system going!
The lack of enthusiasm for EITC and Child Tax Credit among Progressives is astounding. From the media, you'd think Marco Rubio is the only supporter of higher Child Tax Credit.
Very interesting read. Scott Walker's "sales tax refund" framing actually seems to make sense to me. With the giant caveat that I don't actually know anything about the program other than what was in the article, it seems to me like the framing nicely sidesteps the 'handouts' problem where no-one wants to give anyone a handout and no-one actually wants to receive (what they perceive to be) a handout either. So, a rebate as framing makes a lot of sense from that perspective.
The other part here that I think is interesting is the focus on sales tax. If it had been an income tax rebate or a property tax rebate, it would have had to apply only to those people who actually paid those taxes (again, I'm just assuming a whole host of things here). Sales tax, however, is completely universal; everyone pays some amount of sales tax. Therefore, a rebate based on sales tax can also be universal in a way that a rebate based on other taxes presumably couldn't be.
Anyway, I should stop making stuff up now.
Have economists ever calculated the increase in productivity if people, particularly young people and young parents, are relieved to a degree of the financial dangers of taking risks in their professional life, pursuing dreams, etc.? I would guess it would be substantial. Scandinavia should yield some evidence?
It’s so hard to not feel a massive level of resentment at all your natalist ideas. I don’t think they’re bad ideas but the selection of parents as in the deserving box and childless as undeserving feels awfully cruel.
I think the race central or not issue is wrongly joined. Republics make "otherism" an issue all the time. The question for Democrats is how to meet it. I like the Stacy Abrams approach, "Don't let Republicans use race (otherness) as a way to divide us who want to level up society." I think the big novelty will be to talk a lot more about voter suppression, gerrymandering that make coalition building across race/class/ethnic/religions/gender lines more difficult.
"core potential workers"
Can you define that?
To your other point, one thing to remember was the dramatic post war surge in crime due to lead in gasoline. That occurred at the same time as The Great Society programs of the 60s and people mistaken concluded that welfare was causing crime. I wonder how much further along we'd be in we didn't have the lead/crime issue?
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/
I particularly appreciate your gimlet-eyed case for the efficacy of social assistance programs. But, um, can't help noting: there's only one "t" in "Bennet."
How do you deal with people who say child benefits encourages people having children just to collect checks? I don't agree with this fwiw