"If you are CEO of a giant globalist corporation, after all, do you really care that much if there's a bigger or smaller "underclass?" You just tell your driver to avoid bigger parts of the city. On the other hand, a universal dole—preferably a UBI, but if necessary a mini-UBI-for-Parents-- is your friend. It relieves you, and those governing the country in your interest, of pressure to actually provide jobs for Americans. You can source your production overseas -- hey, the Americans who lose manufacturing jobs will have the UBI to fall back on. You can hire inexpensive immigrants, legal or illegal, to take the jobs that are left; — and the Americans who are displaced or never hired won't starve. They've got the UBI! Support for a check-sending dole isn't a laudable reaction to the mindless free trade/free movement global “neoliberalism” of recent years. It's an essential part of it."
The point of child benefits is to benefit children. It is not UBI. The claim is that some mother will max out benefit at 35k with six kids which is not much money for six kids and is just absurd. This has nothing to do with UBI and is a way to keep children out of poverty.
I subscribe to this so Mickey can challenge my thinking. I don't always agree with him and he does challenge my thinking since I am a left-of-center type. I certainly do want anyone who can work to go to work and not live off of some type of government subsidy even though I am left of center. I am even willing to err in the direction of being generous enough so some might be able to live off the dole and not work. Ultimately we are likely to have to pay people to not work. Once artificial intelligence and other sorts of automation take over so they don't do what the underclass has done during all of our previous history which is "get out the pitchforks" to overthrow the current order or vote for a more effective Trump type (Hawley? Cotton? Cruz?) who brings on an even more arguably illiberal democracy than we have today. Either that or we will have to get used to more riots as the new normal I figure. Well, bottom line I don't see Mickey arguing for child poverty in this piece.
Great well thought out post Mickey! I was initially sympathetic to it and you have turned me into a skeptic, or atleast a fan of much compromise. Please do more substacks, they are all great.
"The biggest disincentive to going to work is that you have to go to work, sometimes in a crappy job, often with an annoying boss."
Well, if welfare enables people to say NO to crappy jobs and nasty bosses, that's a feature, not a bug. Bad bosses SHOULD be struggling to find employees, and either learn to treat their workers better or deservedly go out of business. If a job is so bad people only take it if they face destitution otherwise, that job ought to be improved or cease to exist.
Moreover, when will Mr. Kaus finally realize that parents staying at home to raise their children are very much WORKING already, no matter their marital status?
I see your point. Could it be that everyone is aware of the cost to the underclass but they don’t care because they see it as reasonable cost to pay to help the class right above to survive the current economy?
"We’ll have millions of kids growing up in fatherless homes, where nobody goes into the labor force, where the mainstream world of employment is a foreign country, and we’ll have this perhaps for generation after generation."
Chilling. This has the makings of a dystopian novel.
You have some interesting points and I’m saying that on the left wing social Democrat-socialist spectrum.
My disagreement with you is probably two fold
1) I don’t want people working a crappy job for a crappy boss in some bs job that typically shouldn’t exist even
2) I don’t want them to work while their kids are 10 and under.......I want mothers to be there with their children.....even if they were sluts who opened up to too many men it’s better for them to be nurturing their kids than in the workforce where there kids have neither father nor mother
We can cut a compromise by perhaps institutions universal Canadian style healthcare, universal access to birth control, cutting welfare for children after age ten and after perhaps 2-4 kids. I would also argue for universal healthy meals for every growing child like they have in France. Perhaps a combo of provided meals, clothing and healthcare that is universal for every American child would convince me to cut out welfare. I myself definitely don’t want single moms incentivized to have kids and drain the system.
Is there value in "work" just as in the concept of sacrificing time for money? I believe strongly there is and while anybody who has raised children will no doubt agree with me that it is, indeed, "work" (and typically uncompensated at that) I think we miss the knock on benefits of actual paid work. I believe that social scientists would note (and also that I would agree with them) that there is intrinsic value in the NON-remunerated aspects of work (societal benefits to the beneficiaries of goods and services, mental and physical exercise, subordinating self for others or self sacrificing behavior, self discipline, delayed gratification, and better mental health with the performance of said job, etc, etc).
So we ask that our kids finish tasks (dont quit), clean up after themselves, and be respectful.....seems to me society, writ large, signifies these conformational boundaries better with "work" than any other mechanism I know of (religion comes to mind but I think that not only a waning influence but limiting in breadth and depth).
Why would we reward negative externalities/pathologies of the most at risk portion of our population (with a built in scheme to ensure compliance from exceeding income limits) with another government program to almost guarantee lifelong dependence?
Sad that we lemming like revisit the past policy failures (with actual "real" people trapped in those policy constraints) with a new chimera of kindness to sugarcoat the Soma.....
The path to hell is well trod with good intentions....
Not sure why i subscribed to this but this is stupid post advocating for child poverty.
@Gabriel Goffman
You missed this part I guess:
"If you are CEO of a giant globalist corporation, after all, do you really care that much if there's a bigger or smaller "underclass?" You just tell your driver to avoid bigger parts of the city. On the other hand, a universal dole—preferably a UBI, but if necessary a mini-UBI-for-Parents-- is your friend. It relieves you, and those governing the country in your interest, of pressure to actually provide jobs for Americans. You can source your production overseas -- hey, the Americans who lose manufacturing jobs will have the UBI to fall back on. You can hire inexpensive immigrants, legal or illegal, to take the jobs that are left; — and the Americans who are displaced or never hired won't starve. They've got the UBI! Support for a check-sending dole isn't a laudable reaction to the mindless free trade/free movement global “neoliberalism” of recent years. It's an essential part of it."
The point of child benefits is to benefit children. It is not UBI. The claim is that some mother will max out benefit at 35k with six kids which is not much money for six kids and is just absurd. This has nothing to do with UBI and is a way to keep children out of poverty.
I subscribe to this so Mickey can challenge my thinking. I don't always agree with him and he does challenge my thinking since I am a left-of-center type. I certainly do want anyone who can work to go to work and not live off of some type of government subsidy even though I am left of center. I am even willing to err in the direction of being generous enough so some might be able to live off the dole and not work. Ultimately we are likely to have to pay people to not work. Once artificial intelligence and other sorts of automation take over so they don't do what the underclass has done during all of our previous history which is "get out the pitchforks" to overthrow the current order or vote for a more effective Trump type (Hawley? Cotton? Cruz?) who brings on an even more arguably illiberal democracy than we have today. Either that or we will have to get used to more riots as the new normal I figure. Well, bottom line I don't see Mickey arguing for child poverty in this piece.
Great well thought out post Mickey! I was initially sympathetic to it and you have turned me into a skeptic, or atleast a fan of much compromise. Please do more substacks, they are all great.
"The biggest disincentive to going to work is that you have to go to work, sometimes in a crappy job, often with an annoying boss."
Well, if welfare enables people to say NO to crappy jobs and nasty bosses, that's a feature, not a bug. Bad bosses SHOULD be struggling to find employees, and either learn to treat their workers better or deservedly go out of business. If a job is so bad people only take it if they face destitution otherwise, that job ought to be improved or cease to exist.
Moreover, when will Mr. Kaus finally realize that parents staying at home to raise their children are very much WORKING already, no matter their marital status?
I see your point. Could it be that everyone is aware of the cost to the underclass but they don’t care because they see it as reasonable cost to pay to help the class right above to survive the current economy?
Disgusting sexist article. How about blaming the men who pressured these women into sex and then abandoned them and refused to pay child support?
"We’ll have millions of kids growing up in fatherless homes, where nobody goes into the labor force, where the mainstream world of employment is a foreign country, and we’ll have this perhaps for generation after generation."
Chilling. This has the makings of a dystopian novel.
You have some interesting points and I’m saying that on the left wing social Democrat-socialist spectrum.
My disagreement with you is probably two fold
1) I don’t want people working a crappy job for a crappy boss in some bs job that typically shouldn’t exist even
2) I don’t want them to work while their kids are 10 and under.......I want mothers to be there with their children.....even if they were sluts who opened up to too many men it’s better for them to be nurturing their kids than in the workforce where there kids have neither father nor mother
We can cut a compromise by perhaps institutions universal Canadian style healthcare, universal access to birth control, cutting welfare for children after age ten and after perhaps 2-4 kids. I would also argue for universal healthy meals for every growing child like they have in France. Perhaps a combo of provided meals, clothing and healthcare that is universal for every American child would convince me to cut out welfare. I myself definitely don’t want single moms incentivized to have kids and drain the system.
Is there value in "work" just as in the concept of sacrificing time for money? I believe strongly there is and while anybody who has raised children will no doubt agree with me that it is, indeed, "work" (and typically uncompensated at that) I think we miss the knock on benefits of actual paid work. I believe that social scientists would note (and also that I would agree with them) that there is intrinsic value in the NON-remunerated aspects of work (societal benefits to the beneficiaries of goods and services, mental and physical exercise, subordinating self for others or self sacrificing behavior, self discipline, delayed gratification, and better mental health with the performance of said job, etc, etc).
So we ask that our kids finish tasks (dont quit), clean up after themselves, and be respectful.....seems to me society, writ large, signifies these conformational boundaries better with "work" than any other mechanism I know of (religion comes to mind but I think that not only a waning influence but limiting in breadth and depth).
Why would we reward negative externalities/pathologies of the most at risk portion of our population (with a built in scheme to ensure compliance from exceeding income limits) with another government program to almost guarantee lifelong dependence?
Sad that we lemming like revisit the past policy failures (with actual "real" people trapped in those policy constraints) with a new chimera of kindness to sugarcoat the Soma.....
The path to hell is well trod with good intentions....
The biggest disincentive to going to work is that you have to go to work- did you mean “ biggest incentive”?
Also you say president Manchin- you mean Senator surely.