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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

#131

Post by NineStarPoint »

sam0x17 wrote: post #115
WalterBright wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a legitimate domestic experiment on UBI The pandemic spending is unsustainable.

The amount we've spent on child tax credits and toe-dipping into UBI is a drop in the bucket compared to spending $300m/day for 20 years in Afganistan without even breaking a sweat. Clearly we can handle this kind of spending, and more, especially if we increase tax enforcement on the top 1% of earners and gasp actually re-assess the capital gains tax to ensure that people like Jeff Bezos are paying at least 28% tax…

Assuming we count the $1,800 dollars of total stimulus last year as one years worth of UBI, that alone costs 5 times yearly (1.5 billion per day) what the Afghanistan war cost. Which is both much less money than what I would consider necessary for a useful UBI, and not even universal. Sure, we could have given out a $300 a year “UBI” instead of funding the war on terror (and that would have been a much more reasonable use of the money) but the scale of how much a true UBI would cost is preposterous. We are just not yet productive enough as a society to make it work, no amount of taxing the 1% could reasonably pay for a UBI.

We definitely can and should be doing more and taxing the wealthy more than we are, but even then some things are out of reach.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#132

Post by sam0x17 »

NineStarPoint wrote: post #131
sam0x17 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount we've spent on child tax credits and toe-dipping into UBI is a drop in the bucket compared to spending $300m/day for 20 years in Afganistan without even breaking a sweat. Clearly we can handle this kind of spending, and more, especially if we increase tax enforcement on the top 1% of earners and gasp actually re-assess the capital gains tax to ensure that people like Jeff Bezos are paying at least 28% tax…

Assuming we count the $1,800 dollars of total stimulus last year as one years worth of UBI, that alone costs 5 times yearly (1.5 billion per day) what the Afghanistan war cost. Which is both much less money than what I would consider necessary for a useful UBI, and not even universal. Sure, we could have given out a $300 a year “UBI” instead of funding the war on terror (and that would have been a much more reasonabl…

This is true, but I think when the tabulations are all finished, we'll discover that the war in Afghanistan really cost something north of $100 trillion -- we just aren't including everything we should be including in the tabulation currently. In these types of situations, it is very easy to exclude things like personnel and research going on at home supporting the war effort. It's also been politically convenient to fudge Afghanistan spending numbers for 20 years up until a few months ago, so we have no reason to expect the reported numbers are the full story. I say this as an ex-DOD civilian.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#133

Post by rootusrootus »

srj wrote: post #40
rootusrootus wrote: post #7

Mostly because the pandemic caused panic stimulus spending, not because of permanent, structural changes to fiscal policy.

Not sure if you're aware but the US recently started sending checks to families every month.

I am aware. However, any reduction in child poverty that was observed in July cannot be due to the rebate checks currently being sent out.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#134

Post by lkbm »

iammisc wrote: post #125
lkbm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While the Child tax credit has been increased, it's been on a steady increase for a while, and the net amount hasn't changed that much. From what I can tell, it increased by 80%[0], from $2,000 to $3,600. (It varies for different household structures/incomes, but in general the poorest get the most.) > If the claim is that the timing of payments is reducing poverty.. that's quite the claim. As someone who's got som…

Is the claim that 1600 dollars made the difference between poverty and subsistence? I have nothing against the child tax credit. I think it's great. But I am hard pressed to believe 1600 dollars has eliminated poverty. If it did... Great that's a really cheap way to do it!

Jeez, how'd I get $1200? $1600, yeah, thanks.

If your monthly bills are $100 below what you make, then it makes sense that an extra $133 will shift you from "guess I'll skip dinner" to "I don't have to skip dinner", at least until costs change or some financial shock like a car repair comes up. Still others hopefully went from just being able to cover the monthly bills to that + saving for unexpected expenses.

Some people are fine with none, some people need much more, but across a large set of people, some percentage of people will go from below the bar we've defined to above, or above more often than before.

We definitely haven't come close to fully eliminated poverty, but if measurably fewer children are undernourished (or whatever metric we use) that's pretty nifty.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#136

Post by gwright »

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?

It might help to understand a bit more about poverty statistics (at least as they manifest themselves in the US):

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/annals-of-poverty

Basically the "poverty rate" that makes it to the headlines is a very misleading metric. On particular flaw is that it excludes the value of many anti-poverty programs, for example the value of food stamps and public housing is not counted! So you could double cash outlays for those programs and the "poverty rate" wouldn't change.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#138

Post by tastyfreeze »

UncleMeat wrote: post #113
SomaticPirate wrote: post #58

I’m a bit surprised by these comments. This seems like data driven evidence of a government policy working quite well. Yet there are people complaining about this causes inflation and is “printing money”. The article clearly points out that most of the spending is on essentials and directly contributing to the children’s quality of life. Not the article I would expect to see fiscal hawks on.

A lot of people don't care much about the poor and instead care primarily about their own wallet. Whether it works or not is irrelevant to some folks.

I care enough about the poor to donate my time and money voluntarily. But I absolutely despise government welfare which amounts to theft and forced donation for something the government is not chartered to do.

Most people's protest of federal welfare has nothing to do with insensitivity to the plight of our fellow man.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#139

Post by wolverine876 »

BeetleB wrote: post #93
wolverine876 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sagan's quote doesn't apply; Sagan also didn't invest time in baseless claims. If you told Sagan you had a theory of chemical composition of Saturn but had no basis, Sagan wouldn't continue the conversation. Sagan would (I imagine) want to hear novel theories based on evidence and solidly reasoned. And if you said you have no basis, but will believe it unless Sagan proved otherwise ...

Sagan also didn't write in an age of massive disinformation and misinformation. It's one of the critical issues of our time; it's important to do something about it, which includes pointing it out when it's happening.

Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children

#140

Post by wolverine876 »

mikeg8 wrote: post #116
wolverine876 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then perhaps the question is, 'what causes the high rate of child poverty in the US, can anyone provide some substantive information?' The claim is baseless and thus not relevant; posting it just spreads a baseless claim, which we have plenty of on the Internet! > In the instances where they DO cite sources (which is rare) If it helps, try higher-quality news. The journalism I read always cites sources; it's a rule o…

Your comments is condescending and counter productive to what was a generally inquisitive question by OP. Try shedding light instead of nit-picking. Your proposed question is not as superior to OPs as you think.

You seem to be the expert in condescension.

There was an inquisitive part of the question, but also part that was just misinformation, and the latter was unnecessary to the former.

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