Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 126 posts

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#71

Post by neilwilson »

wolverine876 wrote: post #16
bglazer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 million children lifted out poverty but chicken wings are now more expensive. Impossible to say if it was a good policy. Seriously, how do weigh the consequences of actions like this? On the one hand you have a certainty: many children plunged into deprivation by an unavoidable pandemic. On the other hand you have an almost unknowable risk of influencing worldwide macroeconomic trends. Is the second worth more to y…

Sorry if you are being sarcastic, but to respond literally, there is almost no inflation impact from this amount of money. Are we going to ask that for every expense? I imagine some people will - a great way to push small government and against any investment in our country. > almost unknowable We know quite a lot about economics, especially inflation and the money supply. > many children plunged into deprivation Man…

"We know quite a lot about economics, especially inflation and the money supply."

That isn't the case. There's an awful lot of beliefs and curve fitting to them. Hence why QE didn't cause the 2% inflation they believed it would.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#72

Post by supernova87a »

zozbot234 wrote: post #48
supernova87a wrote: post #42

I have to admit I'm a confused mix of beliefs right now. I agree that funding for children is among the best return on investment [1] (to the point that I think we should rank initiatives and spend on kids first before anyone else gets their turn in line for the same ROI), but I can see that purely dumping money into people's bank accounts is a rough tool to do it. In fact, our recent history has shown that any kind…

Giving money to households with no strings attached is the polar opposite of "private enterprise just sucking at the teat of free government money". I'm not sure why you think one would follow from the other. Public services have even poorer incentives than subsidized private ones (which again, this is not), they're only acceptable when the private sector alone will absolutely never provide that service under competi…

I don't think you got what I'm saying. I mean that when you simply give money to people where there may not be efficient markets for some needed good (which you wanted the money spent on), private enterprise often will just exploit the infusion of money to jack up prices and not actually provide more of the service desired.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#73

Post by kevin__ »

ip26 wrote: post #33
kevin__ wrote: post #27

The fact that this article even needed to be written says a lot about the state of politics in America. I don't think I will ever wrap my head around the fact that there are politicians who seem to sincerely believe that the best way to decrease poverty is to give tax cuts to the rich and huge corporations, instead of actions like what's described in the article.

I think you are straw-man'ing a bit. Of course giving people money results in them having more money. News at 11. But it's reasonable to question whether that's a good solution, a band-aid, or perhaps a short-term hack with future blowback, etc. Direct cash transfers are not exactly some foolproof, no-brainer solution to poverty. We've made a real mess in some third world countries with the cash spigot.

The thing is, we have actual data on a lot of these policies. And we know what works and doesn't work.

1 dollar spent on increasing food stamps increases GDP by something like $1.75. For something like an expanded child tax credit, it's more like $1.25. And for tax cuts for top earners, it's around $0.30. Even just looking at it from a purely economic standpoint, one policy is drastically better than the other. But more importantly, the first two policies also have enormous positive and direct benefits - they drastically decrease things like child poverty.

These are some of the most obvious public policy choices for any wealthy country, and for whatever reason we just refuse to take action until there's a massive recession or a global pandemic, and even then it's for like 6 months or a year.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#74

Post by supernova87a »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #47
supernova87a wrote: post #42

I have to admit I'm a confused mix of beliefs right now. I agree that funding for children is among the best return on investment [1] (to the point that I think we should rank initiatives and spend on kids first before anyone else gets their turn in line for the same ROI), but I can see that purely dumping money into people's bank accounts is a rough tool to do it. In fact, our recent history has shown that any kind…

>but I can see that purely dumping money into people's bank accounts is a rough tool to do it. Why? We do it with social security and that seems like a well liked program. Individuals are generally pretty good at deciding what they need

I commented in reply also above. Giving money to people who are reasonably well equipped to spend it on things that there are mature and reasonably efficient markets for is fine. No one has trouble finding groceries and standard items needed for living with their SS checks.

When you give money to people to spend on say, childcare, and there is not the built up social / labor infrastructure to do it, private enterprise often will just exploit the infusion of money to jack up prices and not actually provide more of the service desired.

Come to think of it, if you go back to the Social Security example, giving people more money because they can't afford housing is not going to magically create housing on its own. It will just produce more expensive housing as people try to outbid each other. We've all seen how that plays out.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#75

Post by CasperDern »

User23 wrote: post #64
ip26 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are straw-man'ing a bit. Of course giving people money results in them having more money. News at 11. But it's reasonable to question whether that's a good solution, a band-aid, or perhaps a short-term hack with future blowback, etc. Direct cash transfers are not exactly some foolproof, no-brainer solution to poverty. We've made a real mess in some third world countries with the cash spigot.

The real issue is that the ledger game is a dynamic system. Just because the currency issuer credits certain persons’ accounts in one round doesn’t mean that those accounts won’t sooner or later be depleted in future rounds. The obvious example is how a UBI will assuredly drive up rents as landlords move to capture the additional capacity to pay. Frankly, the day that UBI passes Congress will be the day the rentier c…

This can argument can be made for all essential products/services, what you are arguing seems to be effectively UBI causes additional inflation, which may or may not be true.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#76

Post by refurb »

js2 wrote: post #30
bandyaboot wrote: post #25

Sorry kids, Joe Manchin is concerned about entitlements.

He’s even worse than that: > Publicly, his biggest gripes are about the cost of the bill. But privately, Manchin has told his colleagues that he essentially doesn’t trust low-income people to spend government money wisely. > In recent months, Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, accordin…

According to “two sources familiar with js2’s” comments, he feels like babies would benefit from regular doses of cocaine.

See how easy it is to make things up about your enemies?

Not shocked the HuffPost publishes it though.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#77

Post by refurb »

wonderwonder wrote: post #50
tamaharbor wrote: post #2

I wonder how much of an impact the printing of additional money to fund this experiment had on inflation.

The 2008 bank bailout cost 700 billion. Almost all of that money went to rich banks and bankers. The child tax credit costs ~100 billion a year. The payments cut monthly child poverty by roughly 30%. We have direct evidence that growing up in poverty dramatically reduces your odds of graduating high school, going to college or getting a well paying job later in life. So I would posit that pulling kids out of poverty…

The $700B in bank bailouts were paid back and the government profited.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#78

Post by heavyset_go »

ip26 wrote: post #33
kevin__ wrote: post #27

The fact that this article even needed to be written says a lot about the state of politics in America. I don't think I will ever wrap my head around the fact that there are politicians who seem to sincerely believe that the best way to decrease poverty is to give tax cuts to the rich and huge corporations, instead of actions like what's described in the article.

I think you are straw-man'ing a bit. Of course giving people money results in them having more money. News at 11. But it's reasonable to question whether that's a good solution, a band-aid, or perhaps a short-term hack with future blowback, etc. Direct cash transfers are not exactly some foolproof, no-brainer solution to poverty. We've made a real mess in some third world countries with the cash spigot.

> Direct cash transfers are not exactly some foolproof, no-brainer solution to poverty. We've made a real mess in some third world countries with the cash spigot.

There's a huge difference between giving poor people some money with no strings attached, versus giving governments and ruling classes money with or without expectations, or IMF and World Bank-style economic imperialism.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#80

Post by dlp211 »

js2 wrote: post #30
bandyaboot wrote: post #25

Sorry kids, Joe Manchin is concerned about entitlements.

He’s even worse than that: > Publicly, his biggest gripes are about the cost of the bill. But privately, Manchin has told his colleagues that he essentially doesn’t trust low-income people to spend government money wisely. > In recent months, Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, accordin…

While this is terrible, let's remember that there are 50 Republican Senators, many who profess the need for the US government to help everyday American families, who also don't support the expanded CTC.
Post reply on HN