Current Events > Bipartisan bill to slash child poverty

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/12/16/21024222/mitt-romney-michael-bennet-basic-income-kids-child-allowance

On Sunday, Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) announced a bipartisan plan to do something pretty extraordinary: establish a basic income for children in the United States.

The plan is relatively modest. Parents would get a guaranteed $1,500 in cash every year per child under the age of 6, no matter their income, and $1,000 per child aged 6 to 17. Another $1,000 in benefits per child, regardless of age, would phase in with income, as occurs under the Child Tax Credit already in the federal tax code.

Right now the Child Tax Credit is only refundable for people earning at least $2,500 per year, and even then, phases in gradually with earnings and is limited to only some of the credit. The result is that the poorest Americans like disabled parents, or parents who dont have any cash income are cut off from the benefit, and parents working for low wages or low hours dont get the full benefit.

Under Bennet/Romney, the full benefit would still be reserved for working parents. But for the first time in American history, the poorest parents would be guaranteed a benefit whether or not they are employed...

Romney and Bennet would pay for the change in part by repealing stepped-up basis. Thats a federal tax rule that greatly reduces the taxability of inherited property. It says that if, say, wealthy art collector Milburn Pennybags Sr. buys a painting for $10 that is worth $1 million when he dies years later, then Milburn Pennybags Jr. can sell it for $1.1 million and only pay capital gains tax on the $100,000 its appreciated between inheriting it and selling it. Under Romney and Bennets proposed change, the younger Pennybags would have to pay tax on the nearly $1.1 million in value the painting gained since his father bought it.

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Nice

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Balrog0 posted...

The plan is relatively modest. Parents would get a guaranteed $1,500 in cash every year per child under the age of 6, no matter their income, and $1,000 per child aged 6 to 17. Another $1,000 in benefits per child, regardless of age, would phase in with income, as occurs under the Child Tax Credit already in the federal tax code.

its a nice gesture and i hope it will help some, but thats not much money.

shit, daycare alone for 1 month will net a grand

Snickers_Pls posted...

its a nice gesture and i hope it will help some, but thats not much money.

shit, daycare alone for 1 month will net a grand

it's a lot of money if you have no income! the fact that it isn't conditioned on work is a huge deal

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Only up to age 6? Wtf!
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dolomedes posted...

so this will encourage people to have more children, which is the opposite of what would be helpful for humanity as a whole.

This isn't going to create a significant increase in people having kids.

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konokonohamaru posted...

Only up to age 6? Wtf!

It's $1500 for each kid under 6 years old and $1000 for each kid aged 6 to 17 years old.

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Is this replacing WIC, or going right over the top?

dolomedes posted...

so this will encourage people to have more children, which is the opposite of what would be helpful for humanity as a whole.

you're crazy man

Questionmarktarius posted...

Is this replacing WIC, or going right over the top?

right on top

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Balrog0 posted...

right on top

That's unfortunate.

It's actually great

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Questionmarktarius posted...

That's unfortunate.

the program it modifies already goes on top

this just makes that program less work dependent, which more or less cancels out the changes to SNAP

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Sackgurl posted...

the program it modifies already goes on top

this just makes that program less work dependent, which more or less cancels out the changes to SNAP

well the SNAP changes removed about 700k households from SNAP, whereas this would help tens of millions of households

granted not all of those tens of millions would be getting the entire credit (i.e., they already get a partial refund based on income so this would give them a bigger one) but still I assume this helps way more people

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Sackgurl posted...

the program it modifies already goes on top

this just makes that program less work dependent, which more or less cancels out the changes to SNAP

WIC is a "strings attached" program, which just ends up making it more convoluted than it needs to be, and somehow even more prone to fraud and abuse.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/wic-only-stores-and-competitive-pricing-in-the-wic-program

Nonetheless, competitive pricing has long been the basis for WIC food costs. Since regular retail food stores need to attract a wide customer base, market forces induce them to keep prices for WIC food items low enough to attract non-WIC shoppers; if a store prices these items too high, it is likely to lose customers to other stores. But WIC-only stores have no need to attract non-WIC customers and thus no need to keep prices for WIC foods in line with the amounts charged at comparable stores that serve non-WIC customers. It therefore should not be surprising that WIC-only stores tend to have higher shelf prices than regular competitive stores.

shockthemonkey posted...

Thats a fucking awesome bill, so I assume it has no chance to pass?

actually it's also carrying the technical changes required for the 2017 tax bill to do what it was intended to do (because it was passed without being read, there are drafting errors that prevent businesses making capital expenditures from being able to take the deduction in the year they did them)

and it repeals the obamacare medical device tax

so it probably passes

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RoadsterUFO posted...

At whos expense?

did you read the OP?

Balrog0 posted...

Romney and Bennet would pay for the change in part by repealing stepped-up basis. Thats a federal tax rule that greatly reduces the taxability of inherited property. It says that if, say, wealthy art collector Milburn Pennybags Sr. buys a painting for $10 that is worth $1 million when he dies years later, then Milburn Pennybags Jr. can sell it for $1.1 million and only pay capital gains tax on the $100,000 its appreciated between inheriting it and selling it. Under Romney and Bennets proposed change, the younger Pennybags would have to pay tax on the nearly $1.1 million in value the painting gained since his father bought it.

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RoadsterUFO posted...

At whos expense?

If it's like any other spending bill ever, your grandchildren.

Is there any accountability that this will go towards feeding their children or is this just cash to do whatever with?

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Sackgurl posted...

actually it's also carrying the technical changes required for the 2017 tax bill to do what it was intended to do (because it was passed without being read, there are drafting errors that prevent businesses making capital expenditures from being able to take the deduction in the year they did them)

and it repeals the obamacare medical device tax

so it probably passes

the health care industry is really powerful, but rich people also really love the stepped-up basis

I personally don't know what to expect

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Kolibri X posted...

Is there any accountability that this will go towards feeding their children or is this just cash to do whatever with?

it is cash

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Kolibri X posted...

Is there any accountability that this will go towards feeding their children or is this just cash to do whatever with?

This. Its a good idea but I'd want some guarantee that it can only be spent on kids and not mother's 12th gucci bag.

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Balrog0 posted...

the health care industry is really powerful, but rich people also really love the stepped-up basis

I personally don't know what to expect

my guess is senate cuts out the 'how we will pay for it' part and makes it temporary (but the device tax cut permanent)

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FabIemaster posted...

This. Its a good idea but I'd want some guarantee that it can only be spent on kids and not mother's 12th gucci bag.

too bad!

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If the parents aren't feeding or taking care of their children, that's a job for CPS. I don't see any good reason we need to control what people do with money meant to lift burdens due to not earning enough money.

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Kolibri X posted...

Is there any accountability that this will go towards feeding their children or is this just cash to do whatever with?

How much benefit is there to gluing on convoluted rules and rules enforcement, and the expense of rules enforcement, just to make damn sure someone isn't buying cigarettes?

Assuming we need entitlements at all, the whole thing can be streamlined for significant public savings by minimizing the attached bureaucracy and just throwing money at people. If you starve anyway, that's on you.

Questionmarktarius posted...

just to make damn sure someone isn't buying cigarettes?

we could just tax cigarettes more, too!

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Look at what happened when people proposed we raise federal min wage to $15. People bitched.

Corporations aren't paying employees enough money to live on and so now the government is forced to provide.

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Balrog0 posted...

we could just tax cigarettes more, too!

There's always money for cigarettes, even if it means junior has to go to bed hungry tonight.

Increase the taxes too much, and you end up spending more on preventing people from buying a carload at a reservation than you'd actually collect in those taxes.

dolomedes posted...

keeping the poor poor, one useless tax at a time

you're crazy man

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dolomedes posted...

while i agree with you, that just makes me more cynical of proposals like this one - why not attempt to change the system that keeps so many americans struggling to pay their bills despite full-time jobs?

this is an attempt to do that

unless by "the system" you mean the mismatch between cost of living in america and worker market value

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Balrog0 posted...

you're crazy man

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120913091914.htm

Questionmarktarius posted...

There's always money for cigarettes, even if it means junior has to go to bed hungry tonight.

people are very price sensitive to tobacco products

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20160919.471471/full/

While the price elasticity of tobacco demand varies depending on the demographic, the rule of thumb in the United States is that a 10 percent price increase on a pack of cigarettes results in anywhere from a 2.5 percent to a 5.0 percent overall decline in smoking, with most studies showing an average 4.0 percent drop.

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dolomedes posted...

yeah, crazy from years of living in poverty maybe

I was homeless from the ages of 4 to 13, what desperate poverty are you gonna teach me about?

You're crazy man

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actually didn't you just inherit land @dolomedes ??

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Balrog0 posted...

While the price elasticity of tobacco demand varies depending on the demographic, the rule of thumb in the United States is that a 10 percent price increase on a pack of cigarettes results in anywhere from a 2.5 percent to a 5.0 percent overall decline in smoking, with most studies showing an average 4.0 percent drop.

with the remaining 95-97.5% apparently paying the tax anyway.

Questionmarktarius posted...

How much benefit is there to gluing on convoluted rules and rules enforcement, and the expense of rules enforcement, just to make damn sure someone isn't buying cigarettes?

Assuming we need entitlements at all, the whole thing can be streamlined for significant public savings by minimizing the attached bureaucracy and just throwing money at people. If you starve anyway, that's on you.

Then saying this will slash child poverty is misleading. If you want to give poor people with kids free money then just say it. Otherwise this is just a hope and dream. Blind faith that they will do the right thing with it instead of buying scratchers or something.

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Questionmarktarius posted...

with the remaining 95-97.5% apparently paying the tax anyway.

Yeah, that's what that means

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Sackgurl posted...

unless by "the system" you mean the mismatch between cost of living in america and worker market value

Affordable housing isn't affordable.

http://www.businessnorth.com/minnesota_public_radio/
constructing-affordable-starter-homes-nearly-impossible/
article_335608ee-6124-11e9-a7b8-8f00a170c32d.html

Heuer said he thinks the labor and lumber costs will eventually come down. What he's really worried about is the cost of regulation.

Heuer said some regulations are very important, like the ones that protect lakes from storm water runoff or that increase a home's energy efficiency. The problem, he said, is that municipalities often add regulations, but seldom remove regulations they've already put in place. Over time, building codes just become more and more complex.

Cities across the metro set their own density restrictions, which limit how many homes can be built on any given piece of land. They also determine how small a house is allowed to be. Many of those small, post-war houses that were affordable to the country's growing population after World War II wouldn't be allowed to be built today.

Kolibri X posted...

Then saying this will slash child poverty is misleading. If you want to give poor people with kids free money then just say it.

Those are two ways of saying the same thing

Kolibri X posted...

Otherwise this is just a hope and dream. Blind faith that they will do the right thing with it instead of buying scratchers or something.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w21101

Perhaps the most surprising effects in our expenditure results are for spending in so-called risky categories. We find large and significant decreases in both alcohol and tobacco spending among families in the full sample. For the full sample, tobacco expenditures decline by 6 cents per dollar of benefit income and alcohol purchases decline by 7 cents. We additionally find a 3 percentage point decrease (off a base probability of 33 percent) in the likelihood of purchasing any alcohol products in licensed establishments among the low-income sample. These coefficients, presented in Table 7, are among the largest changes in spending that we find in non-major categories.

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Questionmarktarius posted...

Affordable housing isn't affordable.

i think we're way past the issue of people owning homes

and more to the issue of people going bankrupt just trying to pay rent while providing minimum standards of healthcare and nutrition to their kids

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Sackgurl posted...

i think we're way past the issue of people owning homes

The issues with building a post-war shoebox are multiplied a couple hundred times when building an apartment tower.

Tmaster148 posted...

Look at what happened when people proposed we raise federal min wage to $15. People bitched.

Corporations aren't paying employees enough money to live on and so now the government is forced to provide.

A child subsidy and a minimum wage do very different things. $15 minimum wage is not going to help a single mother out of poverty. $15/hr isn't enough to raise a child anyway, and what the mother really needs is better training so she can get a better job---but that means she needs money for someone to take care of her child while she studies, and money for the training itself.
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