does work define us?
What time of year! The last few days have been the beginning of the NCAA College Basketball tournament. Starting at 10 am everyday, there is high level, really fun, college basketball on for around twelve hours every day, over the weekend. People who don’t even watch basketball tune in to see how their work bracket is doing. Did the mascot they picked to make it all the way win? How are the teams with their favorite color doing? College teams that had no spotlight on them all year, suddenly find themselves thrust into the lime light like David after his defeat of Goliath. Before I started this little newsletter, I was spending my writing time covering the NBA Draft and potential prospects. So March Madness was crucial as we got an opportunity to see lots of prospects all close together. This really is one of my favorite times of the year.
So this week is going to be a little different. Something else, besides basketball, I have become curious and passionate about is political policy. Surely you are rolling your eyes about efficacy of any government plan, how basically nothing the government can do is good, and they’re all corrupt anyway. And even if none of those are true, you remember government class in high school and it was boring!
While most of those thoughts I do slightly disagree with, my government class in high school was boring too! Besides that I really do believe simpler, efficient government programs are a good thing, and genuinely help people. They benefits those who for a variety of reasons cannot make ends meet. I remember seeing this Noam Chomsky, the famous linguist, documentary a few years ago where argued tax day should be a celebration because it is the day that we as Americans come together to fund the civic programs that we agreed on, or rather in practice the officials that we elected agreed upon. Don’t hear me wrong, I certainly am not throwing a party every April 15th, but I agree with Chomsky that when we take ownership of the programs that we are funding together, our response and responsibility shift as we find ourselves looking for real ways to make an impact.
While we as hard working, educated, Americans decry any form of welfare, it’s incredibly important to help working, often single parents all across the country buy diapers, get female healthcare products, and just put food on the table. We currently have to ways of helping those lower income parents, who are often working low wage jobs, both through tax credits. One is a child tax credit, that is complicated to file for, mostly due to taxes being complicated to file for, but tops out at $2,000 a year, per child. The other is an earned income tax credit where workers receive a credit equal to a percentage of their earnings up to a maximum credit. Again, complicated to receive every year. On top of this both come around, and are tied to, filing taxes.
One senator is looking to dramatically shift the way, we as a country, help those who can’t make ends meet. It is a little surprising to me too, but it is none other than 2012 Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. Romney recently proposed a new bill, called The Family Security Act, that essentially does a way with the child tax credit, simplifies the earned income tax credit and then replaces the child tax credit with a much simpler cash benefit plan. Simply put a parent receives $350 a month for child under the age of 5, $250 a month for children that are ages 5-18, and the phaseout for who receives this benefit is $200,000 for single filing parents, and $400,000 for couples filing together. Say what you want about “no one should be receiving handouts” because if you are still reading I am about to pivot to my real topic anyway. Also we already provide a similar benefit, and this is by and large just simplifying the process and ensuring that money for diapers, the ability to take a day off work to stay with a sick child, or to buy supplies for school gets to the people who need it. Generous estimates of the impact of this proposal say that it will cut child poverty by 30% here in America. Thats worth fighting for.
In response to this bill Romney’s former chief domestic policy writer, Oren Cass, published this response in the New York Times Op-Ep page. Also a little trick, if you don’t subscribe to the Times, is to open the article in private browsing and then you’ll always get a “free trial.” You don’t have to even read the article to see the concern that Cass has with Romney’s bill. He says it right there in the subtitle “A policy that sustains people in joblessness is not ultimately anti-poverty.”
However what Cass is missing here is that this bill isn’t aimed at parents, or adults, it is aimed at helping children. A benefit for kids no matter how lucky or unlucky they happened to get in the parent lottery. The way to help kids whose parents don’t have enough money is to give their parents money. The way to help kids who need parents who aren’t impoverished if they are to get what they need to avoid the hunger and toxic stress of poverty, develop their capacities, and become well-adjusted, productive adults.
Unfortunately you can’t teach a toddler to appreciate the principles of durable social reciprocity, one of Cass’ critiques is that the universality of the bill “violates the principle of reciprocity at the heart of a durable social compact” by forcing her to toddle around in dirty diapers drinking filthy tap water instead of milk. The ideals of American enterprise as a cooperative endeavor for mutual advantage does not imply that we must be willing to punish children because their parents AutoZone or Burger King.
I would even go further and say that the U.S. does not really have the “durable social compact” Cass believes us to have anyway. It’s been falling apart for decades, though it is not because we let free-riders soak up benefits without working a 9-5 at Dollar General. I would argue it is because we have allowed for the creation of a market economy that makes it easy for the relatively well-off to get even better-off while exposing the rest of Americans to the dislocations of globalized trade, the “disruptions” of innovation, and the rising prices of daily goods, but without a functioning system of social insurance that puts a floor on the miseries of poverty.
Cass does a propose a follow up bill, and in doing so ties the amount, and the ability of any benefit to the earned market income of the parent.The way the plan is structured basically requires, at the baseline, a single parent to work the equivalent of a minimum wage job through out the course of a year. Or no help with your child. Can you imagine if we required work for disability assistance? Probably not, because the point of the assistance is for those who cannot work to make ends meet! This plan would let an incredible amount of the children fall through the cracks, stranding them in poverty. Here is a passage in Cass’s own words.
This structure will frustrate fans of an unconditional benefit, who see payments to households with no earnings of their own as a potent weapon in fighting poverty. Certainly, giving cash to families so that their incomes rise above the poverty line could lower the poverty rate measured by the government. But that rate is an abstract statistic, which uses household income as a proxy for identifying the population living in conditions of poverty.
Money itself does little to address many of poverty’s root causes, like addiction and abuse; unmanaged chronic- and mental- health conditions; family instability; poor financial planning; inability to find, hold or succeed in a job; and so forth. Effective anti-poverty policy provides resources in ways that also help resolve such problems and push the recipient toward resolving them himself. [emphasis added]
Frankly I find this absurd. Let’s look at that list, every single one of those things money helps in addressing. In effect what Cass argues is while its great that the Romney plan would cut child poverty by 1/3 doesn’t really count in its favor because poverty measures measure money and a lack of money isn’t what makes people poor. A real evident example of cognitive dissonance here.
Truthfully I have enjoyed Cass’s work over the last few years. He puts a lot of time and thought into pro family policies. But I find the ethos of his logic far off base here. Our social definition for worth should not be, and theoretically has never been, can you punch the time clock every week. But tying the rearing of a future generation to that requirement can set a dangerous, and isolating ideal; one that your worth is what you provide to the market. If we are to grow as a society, both federally and locally, we need the ideal to be that your worth is evident in your being. The irony, and one of the flaws, in Cass’s logic is that most people want to work. He is right that work is a fulling act for us as humans. But child care is work. Learning is work. Chasing your dreams is work. And tying the ability to give yourself to those things for a season in the name of upholding the “social contract” doesn’t benefit those who need the help, we can all mutually provide them.
These parents who get a little extra cash each month to help them raise kids aren’t hoodwinking the system and receiving something for nothing. They have created new human beings, brought new life into the world. While this is another topic for another time, the persistence of human life is one of the things we are best at as humans. And we do it best together. While our economy and society need people to do this, the reproduction and growth of our communities, is likely to be most fruitful if we make certain that none of our parents raise their precious bundles of raw human potential in a context of material and developmental squalor.
This weeks interview is with Reed Klass. Reed is a long time friend of mine, a beautiful photographer, and a videographer in Washington D.C. We talk about the importance of humility with yourself, in conversation with others, the okay-ness with taking your time through life. Realizing you do not have to have everything figured out, and it's ok with sitting; and being. As well as Reed's first hand experience at the January 6th Capitol protests.
Thank you for joining this foray into this merriment, love, and sorrow. This view that life holds that ordinary and the unique. The common and the uncommon. Thank you and I’ll see you next Monday.
ℹ️ Read more about Monday’s Don’t Suck here.
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