The problem with your argument is that the "new study" you base your hopeful thoughts on is bunk. Scott Alexander has a deep study on it in Astral Codex Ten, with the summary conclusion "it’s basically a typical null-result-having study. The authors should not have reported their result as positive, and the media should have challenged their decision to do so rather than uncritically signal-boosting it." In other words, wouldn't it be pretty to imagine that CTC would help baby cognitive development . . . but it does not, so pretending it does is not really helpful.
I read the ACT article and adjusted the first sentence (which already included a "may") to link to it. Still, the study isn't key here -- it's a news peg that I used to launch into a riff about babies being helpless that ended with a moose doing close-up magic.
Well, okay, but if the study is not the "key" it as least is the lead peg on which you hang the essay. And I would be happy if CTC did help babies and young children be warm, dressed, fed, and safe--whether or not it improved their cognitive ability. The problem then becomes, you still got the same parents/caretakers, just with more money. It seems unlikely, based on human nature as it actually exists, that much of the extra money would actually wind up for the children's benefits rather than the parents' pleasures. Again, it is pretty to imagine more caring parents, but just more money does not, I regret, have a direct link to that.
There are, certainly, a few parents out there who will take the money straight to the dog track, and fuck them, I'm not totally sure what to do about that (though there are thoughts in this area -- food stamp-type stuff). But you have to concede that there are also many poor parents who would spend it on their kids, plus a lot of lower-middle-class working families for whom a bit of extra money would provide a welcome buffer (make it so that if the water heater breaks, they don't turn to the kid and say "sorry, no summer camp this year" -- that type of thing).
If there are better ways to help child development, I'm all ears. The CTC does seem like a quite good way. "Directly providing nutrition" sounds to me like food stamps, which I also support, and I think that the flexibility of CTC money is a feature, not a bug. FWIW, I'm 100% on board with your thoughts about not taxing wages below a certain threshold; I've never liked the payroll tax, but it's a relic we're stuck with, and the politics of changing it are tough because people think that if we get rid of it, we'd also be getting rid of Social Security. That isn't really true, of course, but it's what people think.
My argument isn't "based on" that study; there are many reasons why aid to families with kids might be good even if that particular study doesn't tell us anything.
Well, the humor might have to wait for another time -- writing jokes is hard and takes time! I spent 20 minutes last night muttering "dildo made of gingerbread...dildo made of saltines...dildo made of Jell-O...(etc.)." Also, I don't have a graphics guy -- I'm making these graphics myself using the three credits in Photoshop that I have from the Evergreen State College.
But, basically, I see transfer payments -- in whatever form you want to put them in (Social Security, the CTC, the EITC) -- as insurance. None of us know exactly where we'll end up on the income spectrum, and many of us will occupy different points at different times (I have -- I worked at Wendy's, I worked construction, I was a temp, but I also got a fancy Hollywood job once). With this being the case, I think it makes sense to create an "insurance" system so that if you're at the low end of the spectrum, things aren't so bad. I see no real need to try to equilibrate the wage scale -- you'll almost never hear me talk about "income inequality", because absolutes are far more important than relative wealth. You'll also only rarely hear me stump for "front-end" economic measures because I think that market distortions are a serious problem, I think they frequently abrogate agreements between consenting adults, so I generally think that "back end" stuff works better. Beyond the moral case, there's a lot of evidence suggesting that a solid consumer spending base is one of the secrets to the American economy's success, and that propping that up is a hedge against some bad things like deflationary spirals. Plus, some of this spending is investment in a very real way -- if a parent spends on a kid in a way that helps that kid become a healthy, productive member of society, that's a win for everyone, and if a person spends money on themselves in a way that boosts their prospects (e.g. education, capital investment), that's also a win.
Long story short: We're rich enough to be able to afford an "insurance" system in which anyone who's making a reasonable effort can earn a ticket to a decent, middle-class life. We can design that system so that the incentive arrows always point in the direction of work. We can use this "insurance" to help mitigate the business cycle. And we can make it so that pretty much every kid -- basically every kid except the extremely unlucky few whose parents are egregious pieces of shit (and I feel like those kids are likely to end up in foster care anyway) -- has the essential things they need. If we were living in...I don't know...Somalia, I might feel differently, I might say "unfortunately, the money just isn't in the budget". But we're blessed to be very rich, we have the money, so in this case, a transfer that boosts middle-class and lower-middle-class families seems like money well spent.
Well done! Clear enough to be enjoyable and persuasive, but not so clear that people will immediately recognize that it's basically an argument for UBI.
Terrific article! One quick clarification: it is true that Swiss voters recently rejected a UBI, but they already have a robust social safety net, including a child tax credit. This credit comes automatically to everyone who lives here and has a child living here, including foreigners (like our family). The tax credit isn’t means-tested either. Until our daughter returned to the US for college, we got cash back for her from the Swiss government every year. It makes sense: families will just put that cash back into the economy. Child tax credits like this are considered totally normal and uncontroversial here—and as a good way to encourage people to have kids by removing a bit of the financial burden. Given that Switzerland is much richer than the US, the child tax credit doesn’t appear to have held them back.
Glad you liked the article! And interesting to get the perspective from Switzerland, which I think perhaps supports one of my main points: Cash aid is likely to work better (or, phrased another way: "be popular") if it's basically a supplement to income, not a replacement for income. The proposal was SO generous ($2,525 a month!), even by European standards, that I'm not surprised that it failed.
Excellent piece. I just may have to become a subscriber!
The problem with your argument is that the "new study" you base your hopeful thoughts on is bunk. Scott Alexander has a deep study on it in Astral Codex Ten, with the summary conclusion "it’s basically a typical null-result-having study. The authors should not have reported their result as positive, and the media should have challenged their decision to do so rather than uncritically signal-boosting it." In other words, wouldn't it be pretty to imagine that CTC would help baby cognitive development . . . but it does not, so pretending it does is not really helpful.
I read the ACT article and adjusted the first sentence (which already included a "may") to link to it. Still, the study isn't key here -- it's a news peg that I used to launch into a riff about babies being helpless that ended with a moose doing close-up magic.
Don't undersell this, I love close-up magic and had no idea moose came to it so early. Just really impressive
Well, okay, but if the study is not the "key" it as least is the lead peg on which you hang the essay. And I would be happy if CTC did help babies and young children be warm, dressed, fed, and safe--whether or not it improved their cognitive ability. The problem then becomes, you still got the same parents/caretakers, just with more money. It seems unlikely, based on human nature as it actually exists, that much of the extra money would actually wind up for the children's benefits rather than the parents' pleasures. Again, it is pretty to imagine more caring parents, but just more money does not, I regret, have a direct link to that.
There are, certainly, a few parents out there who will take the money straight to the dog track, and fuck them, I'm not totally sure what to do about that (though there are thoughts in this area -- food stamp-type stuff). But you have to concede that there are also many poor parents who would spend it on their kids, plus a lot of lower-middle-class working families for whom a bit of extra money would provide a welcome buffer (make it so that if the water heater breaks, they don't turn to the kid and say "sorry, no summer camp this year" -- that type of thing).
If there are better ways to help child development, I'm all ears. The CTC does seem like a quite good way. "Directly providing nutrition" sounds to me like food stamps, which I also support, and I think that the flexibility of CTC money is a feature, not a bug. FWIW, I'm 100% on board with your thoughts about not taxing wages below a certain threshold; I've never liked the payroll tax, but it's a relic we're stuck with, and the politics of changing it are tough because people think that if we get rid of it, we'd also be getting rid of Social Security. That isn't really true, of course, but it's what people think.
My argument isn't "based on" that study; there are many reasons why aid to families with kids might be good even if that particular study doesn't tell us anything.
Well, the humor might have to wait for another time -- writing jokes is hard and takes time! I spent 20 minutes last night muttering "dildo made of gingerbread...dildo made of saltines...dildo made of Jell-O...(etc.)." Also, I don't have a graphics guy -- I'm making these graphics myself using the three credits in Photoshop that I have from the Evergreen State College.
But, basically, I see transfer payments -- in whatever form you want to put them in (Social Security, the CTC, the EITC) -- as insurance. None of us know exactly where we'll end up on the income spectrum, and many of us will occupy different points at different times (I have -- I worked at Wendy's, I worked construction, I was a temp, but I also got a fancy Hollywood job once). With this being the case, I think it makes sense to create an "insurance" system so that if you're at the low end of the spectrum, things aren't so bad. I see no real need to try to equilibrate the wage scale -- you'll almost never hear me talk about "income inequality", because absolutes are far more important than relative wealth. You'll also only rarely hear me stump for "front-end" economic measures because I think that market distortions are a serious problem, I think they frequently abrogate agreements between consenting adults, so I generally think that "back end" stuff works better. Beyond the moral case, there's a lot of evidence suggesting that a solid consumer spending base is one of the secrets to the American economy's success, and that propping that up is a hedge against some bad things like deflationary spirals. Plus, some of this spending is investment in a very real way -- if a parent spends on a kid in a way that helps that kid become a healthy, productive member of society, that's a win for everyone, and if a person spends money on themselves in a way that boosts their prospects (e.g. education, capital investment), that's also a win.
Long story short: We're rich enough to be able to afford an "insurance" system in which anyone who's making a reasonable effort can earn a ticket to a decent, middle-class life. We can design that system so that the incentive arrows always point in the direction of work. We can use this "insurance" to help mitigate the business cycle. And we can make it so that pretty much every kid -- basically every kid except the extremely unlucky few whose parents are egregious pieces of shit (and I feel like those kids are likely to end up in foster care anyway) -- has the essential things they need. If we were living in...I don't know...Somalia, I might feel differently, I might say "unfortunately, the money just isn't in the budget". But we're blessed to be very rich, we have the money, so in this case, a transfer that boosts middle-class and lower-middle-class families seems like money well spent.
Well done! Clear enough to be enjoyable and persuasive, but not so clear that people will immediately recognize that it's basically an argument for UBI.
Terrific article! One quick clarification: it is true that Swiss voters recently rejected a UBI, but they already have a robust social safety net, including a child tax credit. This credit comes automatically to everyone who lives here and has a child living here, including foreigners (like our family). The tax credit isn’t means-tested either. Until our daughter returned to the US for college, we got cash back for her from the Swiss government every year. It makes sense: families will just put that cash back into the economy. Child tax credits like this are considered totally normal and uncontroversial here—and as a good way to encourage people to have kids by removing a bit of the financial burden. Given that Switzerland is much richer than the US, the child tax credit doesn’t appear to have held them back.
Glad you liked the article! And interesting to get the perspective from Switzerland, which I think perhaps supports one of my main points: Cash aid is likely to work better (or, phrased another way: "be popular") if it's basically a supplement to income, not a replacement for income. The proposal was SO generous ($2,525 a month!), even by European standards, that I'm not surprised that it failed.