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Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

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Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#101
post #98
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and most of the covid relief money the poors spent went back into the economy.

Right, but OP’s analogy was false.

Was it? Roi may be a longer time frame but willing to bet that if allowed to continue and enough kids are lifted out of poverty; % wise the returns will be greater than what was returned in TARP.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#102

To phrase child welfare in terms of a capitalist mindset: if you care about expanding your business and keeping labor costs down, you care about the size and quality of the domestic labor pool, and thus you care about the access to education, the stable living arrangements, and mental welfare of your fellow country people and their families, and thus you support welfare to your poorest country people. To do otherwise…

Unless your business is extracting something from the ground, like oil, diamonds or gold, without the help of the majority of the population. From "The Rules for Rulers" by CGP Grey, an adaptation of "The Dictator's Handbook" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Mining and extraction does seem to have a Baumol effect, and it's a problem for those countries to justify expenses like health, education and housing when easy money is being made.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#103
post #99
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wall Street Journal reports the same thing and it’s entirely consistent with what he says publicly. > The West Virginia Democrat has raised concerns that the no-strings attached benefit fuels opioid use, according to people familiar with his views. Some other Democrats and outside advocates have argued that the payments help prevent opioid use in hopes of changing his mind on work requirements. West Virginia has the…

Slightly different comment, no?

[deleted]

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#104
post #83
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That [some] child poverty exists in a capitalist society does not mean that capitalism creates child poverty.

If we kept the threshold for poverty at the same threshold it was 200 years ago, we'd probably say that capitalism reduces poverty. But as the standard of living moves upward, the threshold for poverty moves up too.

Poverty (in addition to staggering population increase) is a consequence of mercantilism and civilisation, thus recent technological advances in quality life that reduce poverty are bringing those people back to square one. It's hard to say if those technological advances would not have emerged under alternative economies.

Edit: Communist countries did have extensive well-functioning public health care systems (Cuba is an extant example) but that has to be balanced with the central planning in some larger communist states (namely China/Russia) that caused unprecedented famine and misery. Perhaps in an alternate timeline, if communist states weren't living in a world that was economically hostile (sanctions etc.) they might have thrived and focused on quality of life as a technology driver

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> That isn't the case. It is absolutely the case; we just don't know everything. Using modern economics, we have managed inflation and other economic phenomena highly effectively. High inflation (well beyond what is happening now - look at history and at places that ignore economics), depressions, bank runs, etc. are a thing of the past. Look at economic history before the post-war era; look at places that ignore eco…

Just the view of someone whose family is from Argentina, and who lived there during two bouts of severe inflation of >50%. To me, it's never "solved" and one thing I really fear is that the US is starting to look more and more like Argentina in both its populist political rhetoric and its abuse of institutions to produce short-term political gains at the expense of longer-term prosperity. You could say that the Roman Republic had inflation solved for several hundred years before it became an empire, and emperors started debasing the currency out of what they viewed, myopically, as political necessity. I think there's a deep irony in the interplay between political trends, monetary policy, and inflation. The more populist the government, left or right, (or in Argentina, Peronist) the more it chases its own economic tail. Inflation is a regressive tax on the poor, because anyone with foreign bank accounts and property can ride it out. Inflation is a funnel that sucks money from the poor to the wealthy. But it's one that's aggravated by populist policies that seemed initially designed to help the poor (or at least to get their votes). On a social level, the cost of the instability it causes is also a bad bet for the rich, because like a tornado it eats everything in its path. No sane rich person wants inflation for their country, even if they would get richer by playing it correctly. It can happen in America, now, because we've crossed a bunch of red lines. We're in an almost unprecedented position as a teetering economic superpower in world history and there is nowhere to go but down. The more politicians pile onto policies that inflate the currency, like the $16/hr minimum wage, the more quickly those small decisions will turn into a spiral.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#106
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the capitalist mindset you described were accurate, then we would have the kind of society you described because we’ve had a very capitalist economy from the start. But that’s not what we see, so unfortunately what you assert cannot be true. However, you’re right that we live in capitalism. And it creates child poverty.

I'm couching a problem in a capitalist frame, I made no assertion that we live in a perfectly capitalist economy. The irony is that China understands the economic value of quality of life better than the US, with the latter making a lot of fuss about the primacy of economy in decision making.

So you're saying that if we did live under perfect capitalism, these problems wouldn't exist. But it's impossible to live under perfect anything, so it seems that instead of trying to become more capitalist, we ought to pick the system that works best while imperfect. Today I handed out survival kits at a homeless encampment. People are cold, tired and hungry. Child poverty, homelessness....this system is not working.

Anyway agreed on China. They've pulled 800 million people out of poverty.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#107
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are ignoring his first test. "Are they committing genocide?"

Well wasn't clear whether there's a logical AND or OR between the two. In case it's OR, would you say that interventions in china[1], iraq[2], Somalia[3], Kosovo[4], Cambodia[5] would be justified? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_of_Yazidis_by_the_Isl... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaaq_genocide [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War…

American intervention in other genocides (e.g. Kosovo) led to genocide being kicked into high gear.

Arguably it did in WW2 as well. The Nazis originally planned to dump the Jews in Africa, not kill them. The plans for the Nazis industrial slaughter were approved shortly after the US entered the war and the Nazis were slowly being boxed in.

The fact that Germany reacted to the US entering the war with industrial slaughter doesnt mean that the US was wrong to go to war of course, but it underscores the fact that by default military intervention makes everything worse - especially for the most vulnerable.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#108
post #43
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If not, then what definition/test of it are you using that the wars you don't like count, but that one doesn't? 1) Are they committing genocide? 2) Did they attack you?

So you'd be cool with the US sitting out ww2 if japan didn't bomb pearl harbor?

More or less, yeah. And it did until it happened.

Should Japan have sent troops over in the Mexican-American war of 1846 to stop America's imperial expansion into California and Texas?

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#109
post #9

And then the government stopped it and now it will go back up.

Not only that, the administration overpaid ($1500 on a $1000 increase per child 6+, $1800 on a $1600 increase per child 5 and under) so most will see a much smaller refund in the coming months.

Re: Expanded Child Tax Policy Slashed Child Poverty

#110
post #80
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Republicans doubled the child tax credit under Trump with no support from Democrats.
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