101–110 of 540 posts
Medicare should cover children. Then we'd be covering children and the elderly. I think that seems fair--children deserve healthcare (just like education) as a fundamental right. It shouldn't be dependent on their parents.
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Then do it today so mothers can continue to work and help the economy.
If the tax man can't see it, it doesn't exist. . Scenario A: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. Max stays home with them, and Alex has a job with a coworker named Avery. Scenario B: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. They both work, and hire Avery to watch the kids. The same total work gets done by the same group of people in both cases, but the second measures as "better" for "the economy".
In scenario A, the labor of watching the kids is untaxed.
In Scenario B is Avery watches many kids and the effort per kid is reduced, but you get taxed.
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I wonder how many people would start businesses if we had UBI and free health care as a safety net.
Several of the UBI pilot studies included new venture creation (including solo self-employment, not just classic business creation) as part of their measurements. The last few I looked at had zero difference in new business creation between recipients and control group. A lot of the UBI trials have actually had disappointing results. The arguments usually claim that it’s not a valid test because it wasn’t guaranteed…
Or cutting other things to pay for it, in addition to smaller tax increases. And the costs go down once it's bootstrapped long enough to obtain the long-term economic benefits that grow the economy (which will take a while to materialize).
Honestly, my biggest concern with it is that people will (rightfully) worry that it won't last more than 4-8 years because the subsequent administration will attack it with everything they have, and thus treat it as temporary.
Given the negative world wide trend with birthrates, this should be a priority with every developed country even if it eventually comes at the expense of elderly socialized healthcare.
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You shouldn’t be downvoted, kind of a lame part of HN lately. I disagree that it’s a recipe for disaster - there are many valid kinds of holistic experiences of how a product is priced / sold, that don’t change the positivist economics of what is happening. As long as childcare is economically positive, I think it is, it doesn’t really matter whatever you call it. And perhaps, it’s free in a way that matters most: re…
It’s not just redistribution from the very rich. It’s redistribution from every tax payer, and you can bet your tax dollars aren’t used very efficiently.
Any kind of "funded by the rich" program will mostly come from that group. That's why it's hard to pass these thing.
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Then do it today so mothers can continue to work and help the economy.
If the tax man can't see it, it doesn't exist. . Scenario A: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. Max stays home with them, and Alex has a job with a coworker named Avery. Scenario B: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. They both work, and hire Avery to watch the kids. The same total work gets done by the same group of people in both cases, but the second measures as "better" for "the economy".
I mean what, 10ish% of our entire GDP in the US, and IIRC that’s generously low, is being throwing in a fire from excessive spending on healthcare for effectively no actual benefit, versus peer states. And that’s just one fake-productivity issue (though one that affects the US more than most). But our GDP would drop if we fixed that!
This is one of my pet peeves. If you believe in the welfare state concept, you should never refer to anything that’s subsidized as “free.” It’s a recipe for disaster. As a European who was uprooted and settled in the US, I’ve become painfully aware of how little we Europeans comprehend the workings of the economy. I believe this is partly due to the propaganda surrounding the welfare state as “free.” Of course, nothi…
Looking at USA right now, I just do not see how is that superior.
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Then do it today so mothers can continue to work and help the economy.
If the tax man can't see it, it doesn't exist. . Scenario A: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. Max stays home with them, and Alex has a job with a coworker named Avery. Scenario B: Max and Alex are a couple and have kids. They both work, and hire Avery to watch the kids. The same total work gets done by the same group of people in both cases, but the second measures as "better" for "the economy".
Part of the reason it’s not included in GDP is just that it’s not reliable to measure precisely so it’s not as valuable as a statistic for making monetary and fiscal policy decisions.
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Totally agree. However, this only works in a high trust society, which we no longer have.
Trust is irrelevant, families gain the after tax income of working mothers but society gains not just the pretax value but the actual value of work generated. Thus subsidizing childcare and moving the needle to align society’s benefits and family benefits is a net gain without the issue of trust being involved. The same is true of quality public education etc, however creating US vs THEM narratives are politically po…
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Yeah, it turns out that things like free health care, adequate food, good schools, and all that other socialist mumbo jumbo is actually good for productivity and the economy, too.
I wonder how many people would start businesses if we had UBI and free health care as a safety net.
Though the studies seem to show roughly zero net effect so perhaps these cancel out.