6 ms·

The main feature of that image is "childcare" which seems to be a fixed subsidy of $16k (and "CHIP", ~$4k related to child health care). I don't know what the

The main feature of that image is "childcare" which seems to be a fixed subsidy of $16k (and "CHIP", ~$4k related to child health care). I don't know what the former means and how these are calculated, but if you don't have children, this graph would look a lot less exciting.

autoexec 3y ago
The ones I've known with kids all seem to have it far worse. If they were getting a $16k tax credit or whatever it must not have been making up for the other costs involved with raising children.
- danaris 3y ago
  That graph is also showing an ideal situation—that is, you fully qualify for and fully receive all of the benefits listed. That means you have to also know that you qualify for them, apply for them, prove that you qualify, oh, nope, whoops, you missed one piece of proof there—that means you have to start all over. You have to apply for each one, prove that you qualify, jump through all the hoops, you start receiving benefits! Now it's time to apply for the next one, get the slightly different proofs together, send them all in—oh, what's that? someone gave you just enough money that you went over one of the limits? you get nothing this year! A new year, you have to apply for each one, prove that you qualify....
  - GolfPopper 3y ago
    So, are you going to go for that 14th job interview, or are you going to go spend four hours making sure you have childcare next month? Do you finish the online test, or do you fill out the form on the benefits website for the fifth time this month?
  - UncleEntity 3y ago
    In my cab driving days I hauled around a bunch of people to/from medical appointments and they talk on the phone a lot... Some people are absolute experts at navigating the bureaucracy to the point I expect they know the rules better than the people that work at the various government agencies. It was quite impressive to be honest. One example off the top of my head; this lady was talking on the phone with a friend (or whoever) explaining how their benefits would be impacted if they declared the father of the children resided in the household and how it was much better to just lie and claim to be a single mother. No judgement from me as it was quite the education on governmental programs. As an added bonus I also learned a bunch of methods on how to steal groceries from walmart since people are surprisingly candid on these things when they're just having a conversation with some random cab driver they probably won't ever see again.
    - danaris 3y ago
      If you've got the mental bandwidth and dedication to learn these kinds of things, it can be very impressive. This is obviously a much less dramatic example, but when my wife worked for a costume wholesaler over a decade ago, she had to learn how customs regulations worked in order to design costumes that would be able to be imported without the higher duty associated with "wearable garments", and by the time she left that job, she knew the regulations better than at least some of the customs agents she had to interact with. I have great respect for people who can learn to navigate government bureaucracies well enough to avoid getting caught up on all the deliberate snares and thorns—all the moreso if they can do so while also being poor, working 3 jobs, raising kids as a single parent, etc.
      - eru 3y ago
        > I have great respect for people who can learn to navigate government bureaucracies well enough to avoid getting caught up on all the deliberate snares and thorns—all the moreso if they can do so while also being poor, working 3 jobs, raising kids as a single parent, etc. Yes, the latter is a very peculiar combination, because not many people with the mental skills required to navigate a bureaucracy like that stay poor (because some employers are willing to pay a lot for those skills). Or to flip the statement: in order to fully benefit from the programs designed to help poor people, you need skills that few poor people have. (Of course, this is all about averages and aggregates. There are certainly people who manage to be both poor and have the skills and mentality required to navigate the bureaucracy.) My 'flipped' statement is one of the best arguments for a UBI-style simplification of means testing that I know of.
        danaris 3y ago
        > Yes, the latter is a very peculiar combination, because not many people with the mental skills required to navigate a bureaucracy like that stay poor (because some employers are willing to pay a lot for those skills). Whooo boy that's a lot of assumptions there. Sorry, but it just doesn't hold up in practice. If you're working at McDonald's, your employer has very little interest in your ability to navigate a complex bureaucracy. Especially when the manager is the manager because he's the franchise owner's nephew. Unfortunately, in most low-level jobs, that kind of skill—and, more importantly, the initiative required to obtain the skill—is not only not valued, it is punished. I've seen a number of people I know who are very bright, very talented people stuck in low-end jobs for exactly those reasons. (Plus the good old standbys of "can't take time off to do job interviews, too exhausted each night to spend hours sending out applications", etc.)
- RhodesianHunter 3y ago
  16k wouldn't cover daycare in much of the US let alone food, clothes, etc.
  - wizerdrobe 3y ago
    What are you imagining the typical rate is in much of America. When we lived in the city we had a range of about 225 to 300 per week as of last year. Outside of the city we pay 160 per week. The real issue was the waiting list…
    - ok_computer 3y ago
      Lol, over 400/week is standard in eastern PA, US. Many daycares sampled in our search. Medium cost of living suburban area. Also over 1 year wait list.
    - Wolfenstein98k 3y ago
      If you have a wait list, the price isn't high enough
      - fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
        Or maybe you value the consistency of full enrollment that comes with a waitlist over the additional revenue you could earn with higher prices. Could be the case if there are high costs to changing the size of the business. Imagine there’s a law that you can only have 4 children per caregiver. Your capacity is 8. Lose one and your revenue is down 12.5%
      - truckerbill 3y ago
        A good example of where free market ideology falls flat
        eru 3y ago
        How so? This doesn't have much to do with a free market. The same applies if eg the government provides a service for a fee, or otherwise gates access to something. Eg H-1B visas to the US should arguably be auctioned off.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > The ones I've known with kids all seem to have it far worse. If they were getting a $16k tax credit or whatever it must not have been making up for the other costs involved with raising children. Worse than someone who doesn't have to pay raise a kid isn't the same thing as worse than someone else with kids who makes $8000 more and therefore loses the $16,000 credit. And the cliffs are only half the problem. Did you get a childcare subsidy? Only if you use approved providers, which charge more than your older niece would to watch the kids, and now the money goes to some bureaucratic corporation with lawyers and lobbyists instead of your own family, and you see your niece less often and don't talk to her dad as much and now he's less likely to offer to do you a favor when you need one or realize that you do. You also get a housing subsidy, but only for particular housing, which isn't as close to your job or doesn't allow you to pool resources with roommates, so now you have to pay more for transportation or most of the subsidy gets eaten by higher rents etc. The entire welfare system should be vaporized and replaced with a tax credit for the poor (i.e. a UBI).
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > The entire welfare system should be vaporized and replaced with a tax credit for the poor (i.e. a UBI). Yep, call it a negative income tax if it goes down better than UBI, but many other things would be better than the system we have now.
    - Aerroon 3y ago
      The problem with UBI isn't so much the politics, it's the feasibility of the cost. $12k a year over 300 million people is 80% of the US government's tax revenue. A negative income tax might work out a lot better on the numbers, but it won't help the people that need it the most (the ones that can't get a job). But hey, maybe it can work. The US has a deficit spending of $1.7 trillion in 2023, $1.4 in 2022, $2.7 in 2021. That $1.7 would cover almost half of a $12k ubi. But how long could that last?
      - advael 3y ago
        This is nonsensical for numerous reasons 1. The federal government doesn't have tax revenue. It issues a currency and then taxes go toward countering inflation. The notion that a currency-issuing government needs to "balance its budget" in its own currency is a political fiction. Also, policies that benefit people at the lower end of the income spectrum disproportionately actually move money around in the economy, which generally speaking is less inflationary than allowing it to accumulate in various silos like hedge funds 2. A "negative income tax" doesn't have to require employment. You can make zero dollars in income as a self-employed person, and the self-employed still track their income for taxation purposes 3. There are many unnecessary-to-malicious subsidies and inefficient welfare programs that could easily have their rationale subsumed by UBI, and doing so would save considerable cost that is mostly the overhead of all the means-testing personnel and in some cases (like SNAP) completely separate financial machinery necessary to maintain them Even setting all that aside, you could make considerably more "tax revenue" by funding the IRS or reversing some of the nakedly corrupt corporate tax breaks that have been created over the last several decades. There always seems to be more money to subsidize artificially lowering the price of certain goods, fund incredibly inefficient private government contractors to do things that once cost considerably less for the government to do itself, fund drug research only to then allow the resulting breakthroughs to be patented by a private firm and then gouge people for treatment, or buy ludicrously expensive weapons for militarized police forces, but propose anything that actually benefits people and suddenly everyone's worried about the costs. Not to put too fine a point on it, but all this "Well have you considered the cost?" handwringing people do when UBI comes up just drastically misunderstands how governments use money, while claiming to be "responsible" and "realistic"
- kaitai 3y ago
  In my Midwestern area, infant care is ~$2000/month or more at a center and you get down to ~$1200 a month if you're at the right kind of center by age 4. So there are still some thousands to contribute to childcare even with $16k "off" and then that doesn't count diapers or clothes or formula (breastfeeding is great but you can't do it forever, some can't do it at all, and it is very hard to do on a practical level if you've got an hourly/service job).
hammock 3y ago
The chart (2012) is from Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare - so take note the commenters who are trying to suggest this is libertarian propaganda. Pennsylvania has a substantial program to pay for child care for many of its residents: https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Children/Pages/Child-Care-Works-Program.aspx https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Children/Pages/Child-Care-Wo...
- amanda99 3y ago
  It is not: it's inspired by it. If you look carefully, the numbers are different. In Gary's picture, the cliff is from $29k to $69k or so; the one above is much wider. Also direct link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140205020059im_/http://www.aei-ideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/071212welfare.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20140205020059im_/http://www.aei... (It is funny though, the picture above seems to be very much from a serious libertarian.)
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Does their political philosophy category make their argument more or less legitimate in some way?
    - lobocinza 3y ago
      Emotionally, yes. Rationally, no.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > The chart (2012) is from Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare - so take note the commenters who are trying to suggest this is libertarian propaganda. In fairness, the linked image is sourced to a libertarian's blog and Gary Alexander is also a conservative who was appointed to Corbett's administration and was often criticized for extensive cuts to Pennsylvania’s welfare programs which he characterized as fighting fraud and waste until he resigned after a few scandals (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2380594/ex-pennsylvania-lawmaker-to-lead-corbetts-welfare-agency/ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2380594/ex-penns...) including the fact that he was still living in Rhode Island and was charging tax payers for his travel/commute expenses.
albrewer 3y ago
CHIP -> Child Health Insurance Program.

autoexec 3y ago

The ones I've known with kids all seem to have it far worse. If they were getting a $16k tax credit or whatever it must not have been making up for the other costs involved with raising children.

danaris 3y ago
That graph is also showing an ideal situation—that is, you fully qualify for and fully receive all of the benefits listed. That means you have to also know that you qualify for them, apply for them, prove that you qualify, oh, nope, whoops, you missed one piece of proof there—that means you have to start all over. You have to apply for each one, prove that you qualify, jump through all the hoops, you start receiving benefits! Now it's time to apply for the next one, get the slightly different proofs together, send them all in—oh, what's that? someone gave you just enough money that you went over one of the limits? you get nothing this year! A new year, you have to apply for each one, prove that you qualify....
- GolfPopper 3y ago
  So, are you going to go for that 14th job interview, or are you going to go spend four hours making sure you have childcare next month? Do you finish the online test, or do you fill out the form on the benefits website for the fifth time this month?
- UncleEntity 3y ago
  In my cab driving days I hauled around a bunch of people to/from medical appointments and they talk on the phone a lot... Some people are absolute experts at navigating the bureaucracy to the point I expect they know the rules better than the people that work at the various government agencies. It was quite impressive to be honest. One example off the top of my head; this lady was talking on the phone with a friend (or whoever) explaining how their benefits would be impacted if they declared the father of the children resided in the household and how it was much better to just lie and claim to be a single mother. No judgement from me as it was quite the education on governmental programs. As an added bonus I also learned a bunch of methods on how to steal groceries from walmart since people are surprisingly candid on these things when they're just having a conversation with some random cab driver they probably won't ever see again.
  - danaris 3y ago
    If you've got the mental bandwidth and dedication to learn these kinds of things, it can be very impressive. This is obviously a much less dramatic example, but when my wife worked for a costume wholesaler over a decade ago, she had to learn how customs regulations worked in order to design costumes that would be able to be imported without the higher duty associated with "wearable garments", and by the time she left that job, she knew the regulations better than at least some of the customs agents she had to interact with. I have great respect for people who can learn to navigate government bureaucracies well enough to avoid getting caught up on all the deliberate snares and thorns—all the moreso if they can do so while also being poor, working 3 jobs, raising kids as a single parent, etc.
    - eru 3y ago
      > I have great respect for people who can learn to navigate government bureaucracies well enough to avoid getting caught up on all the deliberate snares and thorns—all the moreso if they can do so while also being poor, working 3 jobs, raising kids as a single parent, etc. Yes, the latter is a very peculiar combination, because not many people with the mental skills required to navigate a bureaucracy like that stay poor (because some employers are willing to pay a lot for those skills). Or to flip the statement: in order to fully benefit from the programs designed to help poor people, you need skills that few poor people have. (Of course, this is all about averages and aggregates. There are certainly people who manage to be both poor and have the skills and mentality required to navigate the bureaucracy.) My 'flipped' statement is one of the best arguments for a UBI-style simplification of means testing that I know of.
      - danaris 3y ago
        > Yes, the latter is a very peculiar combination, because not many people with the mental skills required to navigate a bureaucracy like that stay poor (because some employers are willing to pay a lot for those skills). Whooo boy that's a lot of assumptions there. Sorry, but it just doesn't hold up in practice. If you're working at McDonald's, your employer has very little interest in your ability to navigate a complex bureaucracy. Especially when the manager is the manager because he's the franchise owner's nephew. Unfortunately, in most low-level jobs, that kind of skill—and, more importantly, the initiative required to obtain the skill—is not only not valued, it is punished. I've seen a number of people I know who are very bright, very talented people stuck in low-end jobs for exactly those reasons. (Plus the good old standbys of "can't take time off to do job interviews, too exhausted each night to spend hours sending out applications", etc.)
RhodesianHunter 3y ago
16k wouldn't cover daycare in much of the US let alone food, clothes, etc.
- wizerdrobe 3y ago
  What are you imagining the typical rate is in much of America. When we lived in the city we had a range of about 225 to 300 per week as of last year. Outside of the city we pay 160 per week. The real issue was the waiting list…
  - ok_computer 3y ago
    Lol, over 400/week is standard in eastern PA, US. Many daycares sampled in our search. Medium cost of living suburban area. Also over 1 year wait list.
  - Wolfenstein98k 3y ago
    If you have a wait list, the price isn't high enough
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 3y ago
      Or maybe you value the consistency of full enrollment that comes with a waitlist over the additional revenue you could earn with higher prices. Could be the case if there are high costs to changing the size of the business. Imagine there’s a law that you can only have 4 children per caregiver. Your capacity is 8. Lose one and your revenue is down 12.5%
    - truckerbill 3y ago
      A good example of where free market ideology falls flat
      - eru 3y ago
        How so? This doesn't have much to do with a free market. The same applies if eg the government provides a service for a fee, or otherwise gates access to something. Eg H-1B visas to the US should arguably be auctioned off.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> The ones I've known with kids all seem to have it far worse. If they were getting a $16k tax credit or whatever it must not have been making up for the other costs involved with raising children. Worse than someone who doesn't have to pay raise a kid isn't the same thing as worse than someone else with kids who makes $8000 more and therefore loses the $16,000 credit. And the cliffs are only half the problem. Did you get a childcare subsidy? Only if you use approved providers, which charge more than your older niece would to watch the kids, and now the money goes to some bureaucratic corporation with lawyers and lobbyists instead of your own family, and you see your niece less often and don't talk to her dad as much and now he's less likely to offer to do you a favor when you need one or realize that you do. You also get a housing subsidy, but only for particular housing, which isn't as close to your job or doesn't allow you to pool resources with roommates, so now you have to pay more for transportation or most of the subsidy gets eaten by higher rents etc. The entire welfare system should be vaporized and replaced with a tax credit for the poor (i.e. a UBI).
- gottorf 3y ago
  > The entire welfare system should be vaporized and replaced with a tax credit for the poor (i.e. a UBI). Yep, call it a negative income tax if it goes down better than UBI, but many other things would be better than the system we have now.
  - Aerroon 3y ago
    The problem with UBI isn't so much the politics, it's the feasibility of the cost. $12k a year over 300 million people is 80% of the US government's tax revenue. A negative income tax might work out a lot better on the numbers, but it won't help the people that need it the most (the ones that can't get a job). But hey, maybe it can work. The US has a deficit spending of $1.7 trillion in 2023, $1.4 in 2022, $2.7 in 2021. That $1.7 would cover almost half of a $12k ubi. But how long could that last?
    - advael 3y ago
      This is nonsensical for numerous reasons 1. The federal government doesn't have tax revenue. It issues a currency and then taxes go toward countering inflation. The notion that a currency-issuing government needs to "balance its budget" in its own currency is a political fiction. Also, policies that benefit people at the lower end of the income spectrum disproportionately actually move money around in the economy, which generally speaking is less inflationary than allowing it to accumulate in various silos like hedge funds 2. A "negative income tax" doesn't have to require employment. You can make zero dollars in income as a self-employed person, and the self-employed still track their income for taxation purposes 3. There are many unnecessary-to-malicious subsidies and inefficient welfare programs that could easily have their rationale subsumed by UBI, and doing so would save considerable cost that is mostly the overhead of all the means-testing personnel and in some cases (like SNAP) completely separate financial machinery necessary to maintain them Even setting all that aside, you could make considerably more "tax revenue" by funding the IRS or reversing some of the nakedly corrupt corporate tax breaks that have been created over the last several decades. There always seems to be more money to subsidize artificially lowering the price of certain goods, fund incredibly inefficient private government contractors to do things that once cost considerably less for the government to do itself, fund drug research only to then allow the resulting breakthroughs to be patented by a private firm and then gouge people for treatment, or buy ludicrously expensive weapons for militarized police forces, but propose anything that actually benefits people and suddenly everyone's worried about the costs. Not to put too fine a point on it, but all this "Well have you considered the cost?" handwringing people do when UBI comes up just drastically misunderstands how governments use money, while claiming to be "responsible" and "realistic"
kaitai 3y ago
In my Midwestern area, infant care is ~$2000/month or more at a center and you get down to ~$1200 a month if you're at the right kind of center by age 4. So there are still some thousands to contribute to childcare even with $16k "off" and then that doesn't count diapers or clothes or formula (breastfeeding is great but you can't do it forever, some can't do it at all, and it is very hard to do on a practical level if you've got an hourly/service job).

hammock 3y ago

The chart (2012) is from Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare - so take note the commenters who are trying to suggest this is libertarian propaganda. Pennsylvania has a substantial program to pay for child care for many of its residents: https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Children/Pages/Child-Care-Works-Program.aspx https://www.dhs.pa.gov/Services/Children/Pages/Child-Care-Wo...

amanda99 3y ago
It is not: it's inspired by it. If you look carefully, the numbers are different. In Gary's picture, the cliff is from $29k to $69k or so; the one above is much wider. Also direct link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140205020059im_/http://www.aei-ideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/071212welfare.jpg https://web.archive.org/web/20140205020059im_/http://www.aei... (It is funny though, the picture above seems to be very much from a serious libertarian.)
- tomrod 3y ago
  Does their political philosophy category make their argument more or less legitimate in some way?
  - lobocinza 3y ago
    Emotionally, yes. Rationally, no.
autoexec 3y ago
> The chart (2012) is from Gary Alexander, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Public Welfare - so take note the commenters who are trying to suggest this is libertarian propaganda. In fairness, the linked image is sourced to a libertarian's blog and Gary Alexander is also a conservative who was appointed to Corbett's administration and was often criticized for extensive cuts to Pennsylvania’s welfare programs which he characterized as fighting fraud and waste until he resigned after a few scandals (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2380594/ex-pennsylvania-lawmaker-to-lead-corbetts-welfare-agency/ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2380594/ex-penns...) including the fact that he was still living in Rhode Island and was charging tax payers for his travel/commute expenses.

albrewer 3y ago

CHIP -> Child Health Insurance Program.