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America is substantially reducing poverty among children

economist.com

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Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#91

Post by m_ke »

dang wrote: post #84
m_ke wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not partisan, the child tax credit that gives parents $300/month/child that was included in the "American Rescue Plan" expires at the end of the year. [1] The new infrastructure bill was supposed to include free childcare and other benefits but it's looking like it will get killed by Manchin and Sinema. [1] "The American Rescue Plan allows families to opt in to receive the monthly payments from July 15 until Dec…

The last sentence of your GP comment was obviously flamebait. That's what we ask people not to post here. Let's not quibble over what counts as "partisan"—all political flamewar is something we're trying to avoid here.

It was not meant to be flamebait, I'm a democrat and Manchin is clearly a corrupt corporate stooge. Here's an Exxon exec confirming on tape that Manchin is his go to guy and they want the infrastructure deal killed because it would raise corporate taxes: https://youtu.be/xs0xAS2mLtg?t=108

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#92

Post by colinmhayes »

inglor_cz wrote: post #50
encoderer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costs cannot be controlled. That’s not how it works. That’s how you get empty shelves. I think some inflation will happen but not dramatically in food and clothing. We do not have many naked and starving people in America. It’s the premium consumer goods that will see higher demand - think dishwashers not Chanel.

I guess rent will be the one to go up in case of UBI. UBI fundamentally does not solve the problems that: a) some people do not want to live next to some other people, and are willing to pay extra for that privilege - now they have even more money to use for that purpose, b) in the most expensive regions, demand exceeds supply a lot. I even think that a vast majority of UBI would, at the end, accrue to landlords.

It's gotta be combined with YIMBY policies, hopefully LVT.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#93

Post by BeetleB »

wolverine876 wrote: post #70
riboflavin123 wrote: post #59

> depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six or one in five children counted as poor This is an alarmingly high number. I've been primed by media to blame this on an inverse relationship between income and number-of-children (i.e. poor people have many babies, rich people have few babies). Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the surprisingly high child poverty rate?

Could you provide a basis for this theory? I think the burden is on you to establish your claim, not on others to disprove it. So far, it's baseless, supported only by: > I've been primed by media ... The media isn't responsible for what I believe; I am. If I know I'm being "primed", then I don't believe it. Also, I'm not sure what media the parent refers to, but it's much different from what I read.

Commenter's aim is to seek knowledge. He is putting forth a hypothesis, and is seeking alternative theories. If he gets viable ones, he'll put less faith in his hypothesis, or may abandon it altogether.

If one merely finds flaws in his hypothesis, he'll realize he's wrong, but will be no closer to the truth.

Pointing out that he hasn't backed up his theory is reasonable, but it doesn't bring him closer to his goal.

A relevant quote from Carl Sagan:

"If you’re only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything. You become a crotchety misanthrope convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) Since major discoveries at the borderlines of science are rare, experience will tend to confirm your grumpiness. But every now and then a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you’re too resolutely and uncompromisingly skeptical, you’re going to miss (or resent) the transforming discoveries in science, and either way you will be obstructing understanding and progress. Mere skepticism is not enough."

He also gave some good examples from the history of science of theories that eventually turned out to be true, but were originally on shaky (or even faulty) grounds for a long period of time. A culture of skepticism would likely have killed those theories. Unfortunately, I noted only this quote and not the examples.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#94

Post by dang »

m_ke wrote: post #91
dang wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last sentence of your GP comment was obviously flamebait. That's what we ask people not to post here. Let's not quibble over what counts as "partisan"—all political flamewar is something we're trying to avoid here.

It was not meant to be flamebait, I'm a democrat and Manchin is clearly a corrupt corporate stooge. Here's an Exxon exec confirming on tape that Manchin is his go to guy and they want the infrastructure deal killed because it would raise corporate taxes: https://youtu.be/xs0xAS2mLtg?t=108

I believe you, but short, intense, name-calling ("corrupt") political battle comments are flamebait. We have to go by effects rather than by intent.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#95

Post by munk-a »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #87
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they become a shitty musician? And curent researchers get paid even less, because their money goes to a kid who'd rather play his ukulele inestead of working?

That's a valid argument only if you believe that a person only lives a life worth living if they have utility to others.

And honestly - the internet has democratized content creation to such an extent that a lot of really niche interests can attract funding (just, not very much).

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#96

Post by com2kid »

encoderer wrote: post #38
markus_zhang wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cost is not controlled I'd expect expenses of food, clothed and renting to rise after UBI being implemented.

Costs cannot be controlled. That’s not how it works. That’s how you get empty shelves. I think some inflation will happen but not dramatically in food and clothing. We do not have many naked and starving people in America. It’s the premium consumer goods that will see higher demand - think dishwashers not Chanel.

> Costs cannot be controlled. That’s not how it works. That’s how you get empty shelves.

Many types of food in America are massively subsidized, including dairy[1], beef[2], and corn.

Government policies can certainly drive down prices. Direct price controls don't work, but subsidizing production most certainly works.

Though an economist would argue that a dollar saved at the market cost tax payers more than a dollar to get, due to inefficiencies, counter argument is that people who are poor pay less taxes and benefit more from reduced food prices. (At which points arguments about corn subsidizes and long term harm to the health of the citizenry are brought up.)

[1] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings...

[2] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings...

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#97

Post by droopyEyelids »

riboflavin123 wrote: post #59

> depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six or one in five children counted as poor This is an alarmingly high number. I've been primed by media to blame this on an inverse relationship between income and number-of-children (i.e. poor people have many babies, rich people have few babies). Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the surprisingly high child poverty rate?

"Poor people have more children" gets by without enough examination.

It's a weird, tautological statement. Only workin adults provide income to a family unit. Children and the disabled members of a household divide that income.

Given the same income, a family with more dependents is sent into poverty by the mathematics of division.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#98

Post by silver-arrow »

rubyist5eva wrote: post #82

Wait until you start to really feel the effects of inflation. The tone of this article is very pravda-esque.

Agreed. Simply a changing unit of measurement. Wait until this finishes out, you will see decimation of the middle class

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#99

Post by lkbm »

DonnyV wrote: post #20

This is just PR from the Economists, so that we think everything is fine. Its NOT! Just Google and find the mountain of evidence how the US fails its children and families.

We don't need to Google to find the mountain of evidence. The article starts out by saying the US has exceptionally high child poverty and spends relatively little trying to solve it:

> America has long tolerated an anomalously high rate of poverty among children relative to other advanced countries—depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six or one in five children counted as poor. The reason why is not mysterious. The safety-net has always been thinnest for the country’s youngest: America spends a modest 0.6% of GDP on child and family benefits compared with the OECD average of 2.1%.

It criticizes the roll-out of the program:

> That does not mean that the roll-out has been flawless. To reduce administrative barriers, the credits are supposed to flow automatically from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to family bank accounts. However, a significant minority of American families have not filed tax returns in the past two years—meaning that eligible children are missing out.

And reports that it's currently scheduled to expire despite great success:

> All this progress is currently slated to be time-limited, though. Democrats in Congress only agreed to implement the enhanced payments for one year.

No one read this article and thought "everything is fine". It's about how things are terrible and making it clear that we need to fund programs that help.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#100

Post by m_ke »

jimbob45 wrote: post #89
m_ke wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing that some people don't realize is that this reconciliation bill could be the last attempt at Biden passing any meaningful legislation. If it fails dems are guaranteed to lose seats in the midterms, giving up their slim majority and effectively turning Biden into a lame duck president.

I'm happy to disagree with you on that one. Consider the actual Senate elections[0]. There are 20 R seats up vs 14 D seats. The R side is mathematically on the defense. In addition, if you look at the forecasts, most of the seats are foregone conclusions - we're down to ~5 seats that will be actual contests. This isn't to say one side will or will not win but neither side is likely to get the decisive win that each w…

I hope you're right but:

1. His approval numbers are tanking https://news.gallup.com/poll/354872/biden-approval-rating-hi...

2. Summer is just ending and we're up to 2000 Americans dying from COVID a day, once cold weather hits the northern states we'll probably see those numbers rise even more.

3. Thanks to the filibuster reconciliation is the only chance democrats have at passing anything through the senate. If the infrastructure deal fails we'll see none of the campaign promises pass.

4. Depending on how China handles Evergrande, there's a decent chance that we'll see the stock market tank in the next 6 months.

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