This is apparently the latest progressive answer to every perceived problem with social welfare spending. It is usually proposed with such a palpable sense of self-evident truth that you'd think no one had ever thought of it before.
Just for the record, then: It's been thought of before. Many times. And we already do it with refundable tax credits like the EITC, the CTC, and the ACTC, which collectively amount to $100 billion per year. This makes "just give people money" the second biggest social welfare program in the nation after Medicaid.
Should we just cash out everything else and be done with it? Many conservatives think this is a great idea. And maybe it is. But think hard before you decide to agree with a movement that pretty plainly does not have the best interests of poor people at heart.
NOTE: I've been in a bad mood all week, which probably accounts for the tetchiness of some of my posts. Just being transparent here...
Yeah, but some (all?) of those tax credits show up but once a year and are limited by the amount of of taxes you paid. This is the labor scold: You didn't work hard enough so your piece of the pie is smaller.
It's not quite like getting a stimulus check sent to you, or, as is being experimented in different cities, a monthly check AKA a universal basic income.
An appeal to a populist idea of redistributing money directly through checks to the poor and working middle-class -- what a crazy notion.
Aren't there tax credits that end up as negative taxes, creating a net payment to the individuals (i.e., not limited by the amount of taxes paid)?
Yes, but you still have to wait till the end of the year to get the money and get some tax preparer to help you and pay them. Just writing checks instead of relying on the tax code would be significantly better.
"Refundable" when applied to a tax credit--as Kevin did apply it-- means that you are not limited to the amount of tax paid. Also, it is possible to have your withholding reduced to reflect at least some of the refundable tax credits, although possibly that requires more sophistication than the average recipient possesses. Note that, in my experience, many lower-income taxpayers prefer a big refund to a bigger weekly paycheck.
Bad mood? Time for the furry critters to do a little loving.
Ok, how about "Double the current tax credits!" I can see that slogan getting a lot of traction in the frequent marches through Georgetown...
As long as we have belligerents like Marjorie Taylor Greene in the news, it will be difficult to notice when Kevin Drum is feeling tetchy. And she isn't on a regimen of evil Dex, although she could probably use some other pharmaceutical help.
Did you see the latest news about Lady Q's touring partner, Matt Gaetz?
Blowing lines in a hotel room bathroom with an Instagram model & no-show hire of Matty's wingman for a county level job in Florida. & Matty expensed the room to his reelection campaign!
I agree that you should be suspicious when you find a lot of conservatives agreeing with you. But I haven't really heard any noise from any conservatives with actual power on this. I heard Mitt Romney proposed something or other and that is about it.
Obviously you don't want to rush in and change all of the social welfare programs we have without being very careful about it. No reasonable person is proposing this. But I still think the idea of eliminating most complex welfare programs targeted at the poor and replacing them all with a simple monthly check would be much better. Most people will make reasonable decisions with their money. Giving them money instead of vouchers, tax credits, etc with a lot of rules and red tape attached will give the poor greater freedom to live their lives as they need to.
And I know its complex and is easy to do this wrong and make things worse but I also think we need to re-think the very idea of public housing and instead just focus on a) letting builders build low-cost housing and b) giving people enough money to cover rent and letting them choose where to live.
I'm inclined to agree, but I would carve out Medicaid and other health care assistance as an exception. Redistributing that as an equal per-capita cash payment would prove disastrous. The problem is that the distribution of health care costs is so drastically unequal. Many people spend little or nothing. But all it takes is one significant, not even necessarily serious, illness to financially destroy anyone who isn't in Bill Gates' league. Giving that person an equal share of what we spend on health insurance subsidies would do nothing for them.
Clearly. Health care is an entirely different matter.
An interesting post. Maybe Kevin is grouchy.
Since the only agreement we have in this country, basically, is that the government provides a free education through 12th grade, its not hard to understand why the conservative talking point of "giving people money" has taken such hold.
If we ever got to a point where the government provided education, health care, and some sort of housing then I would be a bit, just a bit, mind you, more receptive to this argument that giving things to people is somehow detrimental to both them and me. But we are along way from that.
I completely understand bad-mood grousing, one of the few joys left to an old man, next to waiting for someone you knew in high school to die.
But I put this one in the same box as "Defund the police". It is a three-word-slogan. Which one does Kevin think should be sacrificed for the asterisk pointing to the 70-page position paper explaining the nuance?
Better to argue with the best versions of this position rather than the dumbest. There’s lots of discussion on the left about the limits of cash benefits, the drawbacks of tax rebates instead of direct checks, means testing, etc. Why waste your time arguing with the dummies on Twitter rather than the actual wonks on the left? (Who may also be wrong, but at least are more interestingly so.)
I support UBI. Does that put me in the "just give them money" camp? I can't tell.
There's a lot of people out there who need a sort of help that only long-term contact with a human who has enough skill and emotional reserves to do it can provide. I have no idea how to arrange for that to happen, but I'd like to see it happen.
In some sense, the welfare system as currently constituted does some of this but it is constrained both by budget, by politics, and by the nature of bureaucracy itself.
On the topic of spending money, here's a bridge falling down,
https://weather.com/news/video/river-traffic-officially-resumes-under-cracked-i-40-bridge
Viagra for Tim Pawlenty.
cld-
Truth be told that bridge is in very little danger of falling down so long as they keep traffic off the roadbed and the story did say it's closed indefinitely. Once they set a long steel beam in place the 2nd one is attached to the first one and so on. It becomes and integrated structure. Weakened yes but with no weight on it - it should remain very safe - for now. It will be interesting to see what they do in this case
There is some discussion as to how long the crack has been there. DOT says it just appeared since Sept 2020. Private citizens captured it in photographs in SEpt 2019 !!!
Thank goodness it did not collapse. - but river traffic will be safe
Romney's plan was a pretty good start. And he did identify a problem with the myriad of systems we have today--it can be a nightmare and a full time job to navigate.
I don't know all of that plan's details. My worry with Republican plans in general is that they want everything to be sent as block grants to states, with little to no oversight.
Many conservatives think replacing welfare as we knew it with EITC was a great idea. When they claim the $100 billion per year of refundable tax credits is giving people in need money they are not being transparent.
Redistributing "money" is a waste of time. All men in America need a job. Need a purpose. Social Nationalism now. I could see the black man do very well in social nationalism. Their degenerate ways wouldn't simply not be tolerated. Kids would be confiscated and put into boarding schools, where they are educated and taught self-control, driving the black underclass into extinction. West Virginia, would greatly benefit from Social Nationalism as well through mass chelation, estrogen inhibition protocols detoxifying their sick bodies from 7 generations of fossil fuel toxicity. It wouldn't be easy, but 15,000 troops from various special forces groups would be brought together under the executive office, to help install order.
Dude! KD served you up an 85 mph center of the plate fastball and that's the best you could do? C- Lacked effort.
Well, a socialist has to answer like a socialist. redistribution is not socialistic like progressives think, but more christian mother junk. Cosmo capitalism is sickening. Morally degenerating and destroying the planet. Christian consesrvatives and LTGB are the same trash groups to me. Capitalism's excrement.
Whatever happened to the real left wing, even the annoying materialists. That hated bourgeois cosmopolitan society so bad, they would do anything to burn it down to destroy the political order of the day........all property and money would be worthless. A free for all baby!!!!!
Shootie has problems spelling when he's sober, let alone when he's drunk; what he's really talking about is reredistribution.
It's hard enough for him to beg, "Officer, the cuffs are hurting me".
JFC, you're not even pretending not to be a Nazi any more.
Or is this a feeble attempt at satire? I can't tell.
National-Conservatism, you mean.
Hawley-Gabbard 2024: Pat Buchanan* says 'ALOHA'.
*Actually from Missouri, unlike Josh Hawley.
Morality: I don't care.
Efficacy: Probably requires at least two generations. That's tough to sustain.
Could it be done?: That's the interesting question and I think the answer is no. Sparta's pretty much the last time something like this actually worked (for a while). Maybe Shaka's Zulus.
Consider light dictators like Philippines or Brazil or Hungary (or slightly more intense, like Russia). Could they do this? Not as in "would they like to", but as in "could they actually implement this without the entire country turning against them"?
Germany tried and we know how that turned out, within 12 years. Same with Japan.
Russia tried something slightly milder and it's unclear how much of it stuck, actually changed culture.
Britain, for a few hundred years operated like this for the upper and (some of) the middle class, in the form of shipping young kids off to noble houses of other families, then to boarding school. Alan MacFarland has plenty of good things to say about this in the context of English Exceptionalism (and I agree with him), even so, the system is mostly dead now (and raises horrified responses when you describe it to Americans). Of course those who actually run the world still use it -- public boarding schools are still a thing. But the middle class and the celebrity class (as opposed to the actual ruling class) have made it quite clear they'd rather childhood be a time of puppies and flowers than a time for learning how to become an adult, and that ain't gonna change. Your proposal will not be treated as "we're giving you the life skills that are what make the ruling class the rulers!", it will be treated as "you're taking away our puppies and flowers" -- like home work is treated.
The desire for the rapid fix is always with us. And it's pretty much always a failure.
The only thing that works to change culture is slow boring. You do not not by killing people who disagree with you, but by pointing out, day after day after day, the contradictions, the ugliness, the lack of success of their program. That's why Woke is so big on cancel culture and public shaming -- because if you can shut down common knowledge, shut down this discussion of where the program is ugliest and continues to fail, then you suppress the biggest threat against them.
So things will go on as the always have:
The rulers will rule -- because they ARE actually more competent.
The chatterers will chatter -- but won't rule, because they're not competent, and they're too incompetent to even understand the degree of self-discipline required to be a ruler. They will, as always, continue to complain about anyone else who shows more self discipline than themselves. And they will continue to sabotage themselves and anyone else they can, by tearing down any structures that might help others learn the tools of self-discipline.
It’s ok to spend $ trillion in death, destruction, and war, but god forbid we help actual Americans in need. They are undeserving of any consideration. What perverse priorities.
If by "spend $ trillion in death, destruction, and war," you mean spending trillions on a jobs program for white males who otherwise could make some serious trouble as guys outside the system, why, then I'd agree with you.
A bizarre comment unless you are posting from an alternate universe. Last I checked in this one our military includes plenty of females, and a pretty significant number of non-white people, both male and female?
The way I see it, any welfare proposal should be considered in light of "What would happen if we just gave people money instead?" It is the simplest, most straightforward approach, and that is usually a good starting point.
Sometimes the answer will be, "Just giving people money is not a good solution here." As someone upthread pointed out, health care is an example of this. You *can* get people good health care by just giving them money, but the amount of money required is insane; a more sophisticated approach is needed if you want to have room in the budget for anything else.
But you should always have to demonstrate that any given intervention is superior to just giving money.
Conservatives only want to turn them into cash when they can remove public goods. Like schools, hospitals, parks, etc.
Cash works. But only when rentiers cannot capture these checks: There needs to be a fair market they can access... Like generally, there's no problem with access to food or water or transportation.
But shelter can be hoarded. And health care can have its rates jacked up. We have to watch out for this. These checks are supposed to be doing a good, not going into rentiers' pockets.
"Just give them money" as a plan is rooted in so many fauxgressives's lived experiences as the scions of megawealthy (& usually MAGA) corporatists who indulge their indolent offspring's Marxist pantomime with regular trustfund disbursements.
These are people who, for lack of a better phrase, are just given money, so it's all they know.
"think hard before you decide to agree with a movement that pretty plainly does not have the best interests of poor people at heart."
Kevin, leave it to the commenters to make such stupid and ignorant claims; that statement is unworthy of you and you know it.
There are multiple different strands of thought that can be called "conservative".
Some, like the Libertarians, are all for giving money with no strings.
Some, like Catholics, are all for giving some money with some strings.
Some, like "traditionalists, let's call them", are against giving money under most circumstances.
All of these have a logic and a reasoning behind them. You may not agree with the logic. You may not agree with the views of what counts as human and societal flourishing that motivate the logic. But so claim that these views are driven by not having the best interests of poor people at heart is the sort of mindlessness that leads me to avoid most of the internet while continuing to read you.
I might equally say that "as long as the government refuses to hand out as much free heroin as anyone wants, it does not have the best interests of the population at heart". Is this a reasonable statement? Well, it depends on your views regarding human flourishing and the purpose of life. People can disagree about what "best interests" are...
It would be worth looking at what other wealthy countries do. As a number of people have noted, health care programs should not be replaced by individual cash payments; universal health care can be accomplished a number of different ways, but they all involve government either paying for health care or heavily regulating and subsidizing insurance companies that pay for health care.
On the other hand SNAP is unusual; most countries just give poor people money that they can use to buy food. Housing is another matter. Many countries subsidize housing for poor people, but they tend to also give people money with which to pay rent. The same applies across the board; the US is much more prone than other countries to directly provide for specified needs rather than giving people money with which they can buy things for themselves.