"... on a presidential list when this is so much more of a serious conversation. Do I support legislation that is race conscious about balancing the economic scales? Not only do I support it, but I have legislation that actually does it. In fact, I’ve got the only legislation, I think, in the entire congress that Columbia University says would virtually eliminate the racial wealth gap in our country. It’s something called baby bonds.... [I'm for] not only trying to right economic scales from past harms, but to make sure we are a country that creates a more beloved community where all dignity and humanity is affirmed of every single person."
Said Cory Booker, quoted in
"6 key moments from Cory Booker’s CNN town hall" (Vox).
Baby bonds?
Booker’s plan would offer all newborns $1,000, and then add up to $2,000 annually for children in low-income households. By age 18, that could add up to serious money; Booker’s team estimates that for kids from lowest-income families, the nest egg would average some $46,000....
[E]very newborn would start out with $1,000 in a low-risk savings account managed by the Treasury Department. Booker’s team assumes in their analysis (as does Zewde) a 3 percent rate of return.
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109 comments:
That's fine, as long as they hire administrators from Chicago who *accidentally* take all their balances in 20 years to pay off the national debt.
Just give every 18 y.o. $46k and let Darwin sort them out.
He doesn't understand money if it's in a Treasury-managed savings account. The money does not exist until it's handed over to the guy, when it turns up as inflation.
There's no income gap for people with the same HP.
It's not a bad idea. I would like to see it combined with social security reform. The fact that the Treasury department will be borrowing money from itself to invest in itself deserves some thought, but why not. They can call it Baby TARP.
The idea that it would virtually eliminate anything is ivory tower stuff. He might as well claim it will virtually eliminate greenhouse gases.
It’s not a bad idea. If it wasn’t limited to minorities, it invested in risk assets like public and private equities, it ran until the beneficiary turned 70 instead of 18 and it was a replacement for our current Ponzi scheme Social Security program it would be a great idea. Government programs designed to equalize outcomes using direct transfer payments of tax dollars always end in catastrophes.
"Booker’s plan would offer all newborns $1,000, and then add up to $2,000 annually for children in low-income household"
Sounds colorblind to me. Which, I've been told , is racist.
"Baby bonds."
Hey, didn't Paul O'Neill propose something like this under Bush?
Of course, as with all prog proposals, Booker forgot to add the real message: "never enough."
Free lunches, EITC, housing subsidies, Medicaid, and so on and so forth: never enough. Reparations that are just baby "investments" won't stop the call for actual race reparations. Since nothing is ever enough, the obvious response to any of these calls is immediate rejection.
Cory Booker announces legislation to buy votes by putting a thumb on economic scales.
Nice conversation about this between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter earlier this week. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bloggingheads-tv-the-glenn-show/id505824976?mt=2&i=1000433401487
$46,000 would buy a lot of tennis shoes and marijuana.
How does he pay for his baby bonds?
I guess his administration can stop donating to the Special Olympics.
If this is a good idea, why dont we do it for health insurance? Establish HSA for everyone, started at birth, means tested.
A means tested HSA benefit from the govt is not near as shiny as an Obama phone, or a $40,000 pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when you turn 18
Very good conversation on this between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter earlier this week. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bloggingheads-tv-the-glenn-show/id505824976?mt=2&i=1000433401487
Spartacus is mesmerized by melodious, siren song, in his tender ears "more free stuff, less free stuff, too much free stuff"
Under the true economic “rule” that you get what you pay for, Booker wants us to lock in generational dependence on welfare. With totalitarians it’s always about the feels, never about rationality.
Money always helps but $46,000 isn't enough to offset the lack of a good education. Forty per cent of black males do not graduate from high school in the big cities of the US. It is estimated that without the high school degree the median income is $25,000 a year while with a high school degree it's $35,000. That is $10,000 a year difference. So over 40 years of work a person without a high school degree on average has $400,000 less in spending power than someone with that degree and so you get widespread poverty in that community. But the teachers' unions resist all efforts to introduce effective charter schools or effective school reform. Those unions are the ones that should be paying reparations, if anyone because they are directly associated with the harm. But really fixing the schools is what is needed. (By fixing the schools I do not mean developing false statistics.)
My view on reparations is that it is pretty blatant and racist pandering to the Black community. Not sure though if it is because they are worried about losing part of this constituency to Trump, or if they believe that Blacks are monolithic enough that this racial pandering will set them off from the field. I think that it was Harris yesterday, but it may have been one of the other women running against her (back bench Senate women running for President with little relevant experience start to blur together), proposed giving teachers a five digit raise paid in federal dollars. Clear pandering to one of the party’s biggest constituency, with their two unions together being consistently one of the Dems’ biggest funding sources, as well as providing more delegates to their convention than any other group. Also stupid policy. Likely several of the other candidates will jump aboard, and maybe up the ante. Reparations is also horrible policy. Slavery was abolished over a century and a half ago, and Jim Crow criminalized a half century ago. It isn’t residual racism that is the problem, but rather voting as a block for Democrats, which has resulted in the destruction of the Black family, 3/4 of Black babies born and raised out of wedlock, and all of the associated social issues. Booker joins the herd wanting to bribe Blacks by offering reparations for their dysfunctional family structures, and ups the ante by proposing that Black pot use be forgiven. He is also, of course, willing to further the destruction of our medical system with signing on to Medicare For All, and driving drug costs below their development costs.
He's trying to bribe us with our own money...
The ultimate leveraged buy-out.
It is already being done. It is called "Child Tax Credit" and it is $2000 every year for 16 years!!!! Problem is Mom and Dad spend it!
Would someone please ask Corey Booker about his own slaver ancestors?
(PSA: if your ancestors were shipped to America as slaves, its is almost 100% that some of your OTHER ancestors either captured their "distant cousins" or particpated in their sale or both.
Seriously. Trace your own family tree. It becomes exponential. I had ancestors who fought on both sides of the civil war. I had ancestors who fought the British, some who helped the British, and some who were British. If you can trace your ancestry back to Able... see that distant Auntie? That line goes straight to Cain.
So why doesn't Corey Booker, and all the other Reparations Race-mongerers, put up or shut up. They should go first, since their ancestors brought slavery here to begin with.
So when the bond babies turn 18, they get a check for $46,000. And with the crappy education and family life most of them have had, they will make smart decisions on how to spend that money. OK.
Why not concentrate on improving the education system? Which means fighting against the teachers unions on some issues, and against the "claims of racism" on other issues, and against the wasteful bureaucracies on other issues, and against parents on other issues.
Of course, that would require actual work, wouldn't it, COry? And you might upset some of the groups giving you money.
By the time these poor children become of age, their parents will have spent every dollar of it.
What would it do to abortion rates if every fetus had a potential $40K lottery payoff attached?
It is already being done. It is called "Child Tax Credit" and it is $2000 every year for 16 years!!!! Problem is Mom and Dad spend it!
That's the point: besides a genetic inheritance, parents bequeath financial and value inheritances to their children. It's difficult to evaluate which inheritance is the most significant in terms of contributing to the unequal outcomes for people who begin life under very different circumstances. Booker's idea is a nice one, but the notion that some money from the govt can overcome the other differences in inheritance is, charitably, overselling things. Maybe it's worth a try, and maybe hyperbole is necessary to sell policy. It feels good, in any event.
The best thing we could do for poor folks in general, and poor blacks in particular, is to stop flooding their minds with stupid-ass, left-wing ideas.
Do your schoolwork
Work hard
Don't sell or use drugs
Don't get a girl pregnant before marriage
Go to Church
Read books
Dress properly
Play sports
Play a musical instrument
Graduate from High School -- then either join the military or go to Junior college
46k, after 16 years the kid can buy a new escalade with the 46 as a down payment..
Money always helps but $46,000 isn't enough to offset the lack of a good education.
plus, i think we can assume that this would just mean that tuition would just go up $46,000
I intend to maximize inequality between my kids and the rest of America's children by providing the absolute best education and largest possible financial inheritance I can while structuring it to avoid their becoming trust-fund couch potatoes, besides having chosen an intelligent and good-looking wife and of course trying to instill good values in how we raise them. These values will make them feel pangs of guilt regarding their inheritance, as I feel such pangs when stating my parenting philosophy as clearly as I have here. If Booker wants to create govt programs that, by supporting them, I may feel less bad about my cutthroat approach to maximizing inequality, I'm inclined to support them if the consequences are on balance beneficial or even ambiguous.
"...proposed giving teachers a five digit raise paid in federal dollars."
I recently saw a Dick van Dyke episode from the early 60s where they made a joke of the cliche that "all teachers are underpaid."
Reparations: the "who pays who" is like the old vaudeville skit where people are trying figure out who owes who. I could go for a series of voluntary funds where people could contribute money if they felt unjustly enriched. On the other end, there'd just be some eligibility board that says who's in or out. Anyone who's "in" gets a check every year. It doesn't have to be just race or American reparations. If you feel bad about the Holocaust or the treatment of the Irish in Ireland, there could be funds for those, too.
So the wealth gap results from centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and micro aggressions, but it can be solved in just one generation with Baby Bonds? Booker’s a genius!
It's difficult to evaluate which inheritance is the most significant in terms of contributing to the unequal outcomes for people who begin life under very different circumstances.
Difficult but not impossible.
We show that genetic endowments linked to educational attainment strongly and robustly predict wealth at retirement.
Abstract: Recent advances in behavioral genetics have enabled the discovery of geneticscores linked to a variety of economic outcomes, including education. "We build on thisprogress to demonstrate that the same genetic variants that predict educational attainmentindependently predict household wealth in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)."
The problem is that none of this information seems to be available to people like Booker.
Mazo Jeff @7:56 wins the thread.
As far as reparations go, I'm dead set against them for several reasons, but primarily for their slavery rationale. Slavery is an historic fact that is never going away. Since it can't be erased, it can't be cured. As a reason for action, it's evergreen. And what's done now will never be enough because next year, the year after that, or whenever, slavery as an historic fact will still exist, be dusted off and used again.
How about we stop thinking that the govt can solve any social problem in a financially and socially sustainable way. The record is 0 for to this point, and all we have to show for it is ~$70 trillion is debt that will have to be inflated away (or defaulted), and more social polarization than when we started all the SJW stuff in the 60s.
“Booker's idea is a nice one, but the notion that some money from the govt can overcome the other differences in inheritance is, charitably, overselling things. Maybe it's worth a try, and maybe hyperbole is necessary to sell policy. It feels good, in any event.”
Giving $46,000 to Black kids, without high school educations, upon turning 18, is idiotic. What are they going to do with that money? I saw what happened to people I knew who inherited or somehow received chunks of money at 21 after having acquired a college degree, and that wasn’t pretty. She has high school grand kids, and refuses to give them cash for birthdays or Christmas, despite that being what they most want, because we know precisely where they want to blow it. Oldest one a week or two ago moaned and groaned about having to go shopping with grandma, instead of being able to pocket the cash. But came anyway. My expectation is that the $46k would be easily blown by many of these kids before their 19th birthdays, buying flashy cars, drugs, and a couple babies.
Blogger rehajm said...
Ponzi scheme Social Security program
SS is NOT a "Ponzi scheme"
It is a welfare program, pure and simple. It is no different from Food stamps, ADC, WIC, Section 8 housing and all the other federal welfare schemes.
It is funded out of general revenue and can no more "go broke" than Food Stamps or the US Navy can "go broke".
It would be unconstitutional to do it any other way.
Social Security taxes are no different from any other income tax, except for the income they apply to.
Social security was sold as an insurance program and many people think it still is. Many people think there is a relationship between what you pay in and what you get out. There is only the loosest relationship and COngress could change that tomorrow. Or Congress could decide that people with assets over $100,000 are no longer entitled to SS payouts. Or they could cancel SS payouts altogether while leaving the SS taxes in place.
Get over it. SS is a straight welfare program funded out of general revenues. Nothing more. Nothing less.
It is the only way the program could pass constitutional muster back in the 30s or today.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/tea.htm
It is the farthest thing in the world from a Ponzi scheme where people coming into the system pay the people taking money out.
John Henry
I think his plan is better than most. Some of you are being nit picky by saying he should concentrate on education. More education spending isn't going to fix the problems that plague low income communities. At least this is thinking outside the box.
$46 grand! Add in the money they make from selling crack, off to Harvard!
"Do I support legislation that is race conscious about balancing the economic scales?"
It's a fools errand. Most people are poor because they are bad with money. Giving them more money is not going to bring them out of poverty, because they don't know how to manage money, they don't understand delayed gratification, they have bad habits that money will only exacerbate before it runs out. This has been shown over and over again with Lotto winners.
And making them dependent on an intervening government will only make it worse. We have decades of history showing how good intentions like this have completely devastated the black community.
This is nothing more than buying the black vote.
>>some money from the govt
From where? Is "govt" an abbreviation for "taxpayers"?
This is Democratic Party Policy #1: Take money from people who generally vote for Republicans and give it to people who generally vote for Democrats.
Economist Mike Munger says don't tip baristas because they'll just use the money to buy nose rings.
Everybody likes a handout.
Personally, I am more in the "if you don't work, you don't eat" camp as to handouts. Also, Booker and the other reparations folks ignore the trillions already spent on on anti-poverty programs. I am much less interested in leveling than in productive work and incentives.
These Democrat candidates are really loopy. They want every minority person in America saying, "Where's my check?"
I suspect that in many cases a financial inheritance is a symbol or sign of other aspects of a child's inheritance, and that it's these aspects--hardworking parents who cared to save for their children, who valued thrift and planning--that are as important as the sum itself in terms of benefiting the children who receive the inheritance. As others have pointed out, a sum of money inherited by someone who's not got a good idea of how to put it to good use is unlikely to help close the wealth gap. Maybe Booker needs to go beyond his small policy entrepreneurship to also lay out ways in which these monies could be maximized to the benefit of the recipients.
A program making payments on the basis of family income is probably the least-objectionable version of the idea...but it's got some problems. We'll stick to practical (as opposed to ideological/philosophical ones) here).
The first obvious problem is one of measurement. How do you set the income threshold (for those who get extra/annual payments) in a way that prevents gaming of the system? Beyond just people cheating the reporting you'll have to deal with people structuring their finances in a way that minimizes their income during the period in question. If there's a hard cut off number/corner solution you'll have a strong effect at the margin. If it's tied only to income what's to stop a wealthy family from getting payments when mom stops working (to care for baby) and dad takes a sabbatical, defers compensation for a few years, or they otherwise structure their finances to appear income-poor for purposes of getting extra money? You have to be careful when you measure income and use that as a proxy for wealth.
The second, related, problem is the program administration. The potential conflicts and problems with having the government invest, or even "invest" huge amounts of our money should be obvious.
The third problem is one of math. I'll leave aside the cost estimates and potential for inflationary pressure/price distortion, but let's just talk about how Booker would square this idea, being tied as it is to income, with his open borders/amnesty positions. Suddenly you're talking about $35k/child (over 18 yrs) in direct cost AND talking about continuing to import millions of low-income families each year (as formerly-illegal immigrants)? Families that tend to have larger numbers of children? Seems like a pretty expensive problem! You'll be doing that, of course, on top of funding single payer or Medicare for All for those same people, and maybe on top of "free" college. Sorta seems like it'll add up!
OK but only on the condition the 18 year old can recite IF and Ulysses by heart. And write two paragraphs in which the subjects and verbs agree and the word motherfucker is absent.
Another leftist, as usual, ignoring the role of human nature and incentives in shaping behavior.
People only value something that they have worked for. That is a fact. If you hand them something, especially as a birthright, they consider it part of the necessary furniture of reality, a built-in entitlement, not a thing of special value.
He seems to think that the reason why poor people are poor is because they don't have enough money. That is backwards. They don't have any money because they think and act like poor people. To illustrate this point, ask yourself how many Chinese and Vietnamese who came to the US penniless in the 20th century still are. Ever heard of any? I haven't. They sure don't look like white people to me. And I have to say that it's easier for me to understand the speech of someone with an "ebonic" accent than a Vietnamese accent. I doubt that I'm the only honky who has had that experience.
Getting that "thinking" part right in a population that has a mean IQ of 85 is a steep challenge. Changing the culture of that population to internalize the values and behaviors of successful citizens would be more effective, but would require abandonment of the leftist victimhood narrative. Good luck with that.
You don't make people middle class (or working class) by handing them a pile of dough. Once again, mistaking the symptom for the cure. The reparations scam would almost certainly decrease the incentive for the needed behavioral change among the recipients. Remind me, which welfare program is it that causes people to work harder and save more?
They could make getting the bond money contingent on graduating from high school by age 19, with certain levels of test scores, and no run-ins with the law. That would actually incentivize them to behave and get an education. But that would
1) Require another government department to run the program and
2) Would be decried as racist
I grew up in NJ, just outside of Newark, and I was aware of Booker from the early days of his political career. He's an interesting character, with a much more complicated story than a lot of folks realize. I kept paying attention to him early on because he seemed to be an unusual sort of Democrat by NJ standards. He toppled Newark's political machine to become mayor, and his policies were the sort of anti-corruption, tough-on-crime policies that NJ Democrats generally run away from. He also seemed to be one of the very few politicians that was vocal about needing to work with the other party, and he actually seemed to try to walk the walk. I thought he eventually would run for governor, but I guess he figured it would be easier to run for US Senate than to go up against Chris Christie, who actually was popular in NJ at one point. When he started talking about national politics, he talked about a strong military, assertive foreign policy, conservative spending, and bipartisan initiatives. A lot of what he said sounded like he would develop into a Scoop Jackson-style moderate Democrat on the national stage. The old Cory Booker would be a formidable presidential candidate; he'd almost certainly win a lot of independent/moderate voters, especially if the GOP nominated a weak candidate like McCain or Romney. That's actually where the story turns: he appeared on Meet the Press during the 2012 presidential campaign, and he made some remarks that were interpreted as respectful of Romney and critical of Obama. After that, it was obvious that someone had a "conversation" with him; he almost immediately dropped moderation from his public rhetoric and became a disappointingly predictable liberal apparatchik. He became a very different person.
I share that preamble because there are elements of this "reparations" proposal that feel like the "old" Cory Booker. If it ends up being income based (rather than purely race based), it might be sold as "reparations" to one set of constituencies, while creating something that looks a lot more like a savings account than the current Ponzi scheme that is Social Security and that might be extended to a broader population as a politically palatable way for Democrats to get on board with major Social Security reform, perhaps even leading to the semi-privatization or even privatization that has worked well in other countries but has been politically impossible to achieve here. I realize that there are arguments to be made that trading a Ponzi scheme for accounts supported by Treasury-managed debt instruments might only result in a difference of degree than of character, but directionally, it could be an improvement that might open the door to better reforms.
I can't say that I support Booker's proposal, but it is more interesting and practical than almost anything the other Democrats are saying. What I am saying is that perhaps it's a mistake to see Booker as only crazy "Spartacus." If the "old" Cory Booker is the "true" Cory Booker, he could become a moderating force in the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, I think he has damaged himself too severely ever since someone "got to him" after the Meet the Press incident, but surprises are becoming the norm, so who knows?
The more you steal from producers and give to non-producers - the fewer producers and the more sloth and dependency you create. It takes a lot of hard work and motivation to create the kind of wealth that we have where there is extra to improve the world and motivate new producers to create even more. The idea will result in less motivation to work and build, and more to sit and wait for the mailman. This is just another dumb idea that ignores human nature and will reduce the overall wealth of the people, just like excessive forced redistribution always does. Why is it so hard to simply do what works and avoid what fails? Answer: Because what works takes work - not by somebody else - by you, and a lot of people don't want to do their share, even for themselves. If you give them my stuff, they will not make it into more - they will spend it and produce nothing, reducing the net welfare of both of us. Those people can suck it.
It should be noted that the vast majority of recipients will not be getting $46,000 to spend when they turn 18. They will be getting $46,000 to pay off the $46,000 in loans that they took out with the expected payout as collateral.
By the time they turn 18, the money will be long gone.
Don't you love people who promise you stuff they plan to steal from other people to give to you so you can love them? If you support that, you support theft, plain and simple. Legalizing theft begets more theft.
It's kind of neat how Booker took a question about reparations and used it to talk about his welfare program. Absolutely unrelated.
I doubt his welfare program would work well, at all, but it's a thousand times better idea than "reparations". At least it pays the people who need the money.
Two wolves and a sheep discussing dinner.
Wolves don't make meat or wool, they aren't interested in learning how, and why should they?
"Take money from people who generally vote for Republicans and give it to people who generally vote for Democrats."
It also works in the other direction. Taking money from more people creates more Republican votes and giving money to more people creates more Democrat votes.
The politics of the restrictions on how the funds can be spent will be interesting, too.
Let's say a low income family has a couple of kids nearing college age. They collectively have $80k in designated baby bond accounts. Suddenly both their cars break down. Or suddenly they have a health emergency. Or suddenly they have any number of other expenses that plague low income families and make accumulating savings difficult! As I understand Booker's plan they'd still be screwed--on paper they have a bunch of money in their names but they wouldn't be able to spend that money on anything other than college, a home purchase, or retirement savings.
Think about what it will look like for families like that to then ask their neighbors or their government for assistance! "Sure you middle-income people have paid taxes to fund accounts for my children and those accounts add up to many tens of thousands of dollars--much more than you've been able to save for your own children--but I can't use that money to fix my roof so please donate today." Kinda awkward.
Isn't Booker's plan precisely the argument for "privatizing" Social Security?
"(A)low-risk savings account"? Like Treasury bonds? So the Government would take money from the productive economy and establish another "trust fund" (like Social Security) which just enables the Government to spend more money, all the while calling it "savings." Or the Treasury could buy stocks and bonds in private companies, which the Treasury would thereby in part control. It would be more honest just to give the kids some money when they turned 18 - way too honest and transparent for political purposes, of course.
Blogger Bay Area Guy said...
Graduate from High School -- then either join the military or go to Junior college
BAG,
I agree with you until that last point. I don't disagree with you as far as it goes but I don't think these are the only 2 options.
I would say graduate from HS -- Then learn a skill that people will pay you for. The military is certainly a good place for that. The Navy saved my life, literally. It also taught me a lot of useful stuff that has served me well for the past 50 years or so. Some job/skill related, some just life skills.
Junior college is not a bad idea for many that can't afford regular college or are not sure they want a regular college. You can always transfer to regular college later if that is what you want.
But there are many other options: Trade schools, apprenticeship programs.
Or even just get a job doing something that seems interesting and PAY FUCKING ATTENTION You can learn a lot just by looking around. (Yogi Berra?) If you are hanging dry wall, learn how to cut, screw, spackle and all that of course. But if you just PAY FUCKING ATTENTION You can learn how the boss buys materials, lays out a job, estimates costs and makes bids and the 101 other things that go into successfully running a drywall crew.
And, show up where you are supposed to and on time. Don't feel like working today? Tough shit. Suck it up buttercup and get out there. That alone is one of the most useful skills you can bring, especially starting out.
Military and JC? Sure. You can even combine the two. But they are not the only option to learn a skill.
And people need to understand that the first and only thing any employer cares about is that you can do something useful for them. The more useful, the more they will pay.
John Henry
One larger uncomfortable point is that a lot of these discussions tend to start from agreed-upon facts and then jump to cargo cult-like misunderstanding causes and effects.
It's true that homeowners are typically better off, in terms of a number of social measurements, than non-homeowners. That fact does not mean that homeownership by itself CAUSES those improvements, and that means just making a person or population of persons into homeowners may not result in corresponding improvements to those social measures for that population. IF people become homeowners because of certain factors and those factors cause their higher social wellness (outside of homeownership) then simply lowering the cost of becoming a homeowner (assuming this would even accomplish that) without acquiring those factors will not produce the same outcome.
The same, of course, is true with college. People who graduate from college may make more money (on average) than people who don't, for instance. From that it does not follow that making millions more people attend college will boost all of their incomes.
All of that goes to the effectiveness issue. If at the end of the first few generations of this plan you've got people who were given large sums of money only to spend that funding college educations that did not improve their lives...then all we've done is expensively subsidize higher education yet again!
Would they have to meet one of the following?
a. have to be a democrat
b. have to be a black person
c. NOT be an asian person
d. Be a ??? person?
This stuff is really stupid and such pandering it's ridiculous.
The money would be spent the next day.
A 3% annual return? That gravy boat sailed off when the Fed started buying up collateralized debt obligations. They called it quantitative easing.
Apart from the idiocy of the idea, it is a fundamentally flawed solution at its core. Booker says Columbia University Endorses the fix of the problem. Columbia did no such thing. It was a post doc paper by some leftie who got the math wrong. The essential flaw, apart from its socialist underpinnings, is that half of blacks own less than the amount of wealth owned by half of whites and the fix is to equalize that gap. But that ignores that most wealth is owned by the top 5% of both blacks and whites. So adjusting for the wealth at the 50th percentile and below is only just going to increase the sale of small Cadillacs with gold trim and thumping big sound systems.
The true disparity is the average or mean of wealth in proportion to population size. That will NOT be fixed by freakin’ baby bonds which will never be enough. I am not wealthier because Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, and Soros are white like I am. Nor am I poorer because Oprah, Jordan, and Robert Smith are black. They are all just rich fuckers and good on ‘em. It would take a great many $$trillions to fix that gap.
The lefties are shitting the bed on this and many more issues, and the idiot millennials are lapping it up, including, I’m sorry to say, my own kids.
- Krumhorn
Sure, pass the "Baby Bonds" bill, and every Leftwing politician from that day forward will campaign on increasing the amount, adding years to the age limit and expanding eligibility to whatever constituency they need the votes of.
Booker is a self-serving clown, of course, but the hippopotamus in the punchbowl is the fact that if the geneticists are correct, we can expect American blacks to go right on being stupid, criminal and poor for the foreseeable future. Booker's idiotic scheme is every bit as practical as affirmative action, and would probably cost considerably less. Norman Rockwell called it "The Problem We All Live With". He was just a little unclear on what the problem actually was.
These bonds would be for every single baby born in the United States. It's not race-based. Interesting idea. Would give a nest egg to every child to purchase their first house or car. In fact, the US could make rules about what it could be used for -- to purchase a house, a car, to start a business, or for education expenses.
I'm fine with reparations, as long as a person can prove that at least 50% of their ancestry can be traced to slaves in US and also that this slavery is a cause of them being disadvantaged and damaged today.
No matter the question the Democrats' 'solution' is "give people who vote for me money".
I'm sure it's just a coincidence.
It would be better to offer each child a family, a culture of achievement, and good schools. A $1000 dollar nest egg at 3% is peanuts and won't accomplish anything without that.
Ponzi Schemes don't turn successful just because they're perpetrated by a government that can print money, they fail the same way private Ponzi Schemes do. Investors who pay into the scheme with the expectation that money and a return will come back to them but instead the funds are used directly to pay earlier investors and the later payor is given an implied IOU. Due to exponential the growth of the participants, eventually you run out of funds to pay earlier investors. The United States will go broke the same way governments go broke and it will take SS, 'Food Stamps' and 'UD Navy' with it. US government debt will meet and then exceed GDP, debt burden will be too great, Fed will try to inflate their way out fo the problem, inflation and hyperinflation will spiral out of control and confidence will be lost.
Yes, governments 'go broke' and so likely will the United States government unless these schemes are redesigned to be sustainable.
Economics doesn't care if you pay a debt with the left hand or the right and money is fungible
These bonds would be for every single baby born in the United States. It's not race-based. Interesting idea. Would give a nest egg to every child to purchase their first house or car. In fact, the US could make rules about what it could be used for -- to purchase a house, a car, to start a business, or for education expenses.
Why not simplify? Just give every eighteen year old their choice of a house, car, or education.
No, wait, house, car and education. And pay for upkeep and insurance on house and car, as well as provide free breakfast, lunch and dinner while they are being educated.
But what about the people who are born before this utopia is instituted? It is not FAIR to them to be left out, is it? Might as well include them , retroactively and with interest.
it’s being reduced to a box to check...
27 sexual orientations
Native American Heritage
Healthcare as a right
Reparations
The Democrat Party is boxes to check all the way down.
Check the boxes and claim your prize.
If there is one thing that is universally true of 18-year-olds, it is that they always spend their money responsibly and with an eye to the future. They never make impulse purchases of things they don't need. Nope. Not a chance.
They would never just take almost $50K, piss it away, have nothing to show for it and then not know what to do next. Nope. Not a chance.
E]very newborn would start out with $1,000 in a low-risk savings account managed by the Treasury Department. Booker’s team assumes in their analysis (as does Zewde) a 3 percent rate of return.
Lolol
Hello SS. They’ve done so well with that!
I’ve read about this before, although the argument was $10k.
FREE SHIT!
Let's say a low income family has a couple of kids nearing college age. They collectively have $80k in designated baby bond accounts. Suddenly both their cars break down. Or suddenly they have a health emergency. Or suddenly they have any number of other expenses that plague low income families and make accumulating savings difficult! As I understand Booker's plan they'd still be screwed--on paper they have a bunch of money in their names but they wouldn't be able to spend that money on anything other than college, a home purchase, or retirement savings.
Simple, just take out a reverse mortgage on the house they don't have. Or, sell their account to one of the thousands of firms that already buy "structeured settlements" You have 80,000 comin'? we will give you 50,000 today and handle all the paperwork for free!
Did the article mention the part where Booker was caught on hot mic telling Lemon "Good Job" and "We have to win this election." ?
That's the point: besides a genetic inheritance, parents bequeath ... value inheritances to their children.
We have to give blacks a leg up to make up for their shitty parenting. It sounds kind of offensive in plain English. Remember: these are the not-racists.
Fernandistein said...
It's difficult to evaluate which inheritance is the most significant in terms of contributing to the unequal outcomes for people who begin life under very different circumstances.
Difficult but not impossible.
We show that genetic endowments linked to educational attainment strongly and robustly predict wealth at retirement.
This "finding" comes directly out of the new eugenics from the section known as sociogenomics. This field combines GWAS studies with large scale social reaserch studies such as the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). The HRS is sponsored by National Institute on Aging Division of Behavioral and Social Research. This division under Richard Suzman funded the founding research in the field of biodemography and of sociogenomics. The study director, David Weir, has published in the journal Biodemography and Social Biology as have many of his co-researchers on thsi project and their graduate students.
Catherine Bliss has written on the development of the field from the outside (as far as I can tell). Social By Nature: The Promise and the Peril of Socio-Genomics.
2 of 2
Objections which can be made to the conclusions the field as a whole are the following: 1. The policy implications are profound and far reaching if the conclusions are accepted but the field is new. Sociogenomics was developed as a field after the conclusion of the Human Genome Project after which the GWAS technique was developed. 2. Research from NIH is very likely to be the basis for policy but sociogenomics is not only new but unscrutinized. the conclusions have not been critiqued in part because the field of sociogenomics is new. Thatis, the sociogenomic group had to reach conclusions before the conclusions could be critiqued but researchers outside the circle of Federally funded researchers and their graduate students. But, now that the group is publishing no one is critiqing. In particular, the National Institute on Aging Division of Behavioral and Social Research is not sponsoring research critiquing these findings; it is taking a partisan position. 3. The effect of genes is modified by the network they are in so the mere presence of a gene in an individual is not predictive but sociogenomics is going toward predicting with these "polygenic risk scores."
Having the government promote research by eugenic society members and by writers for the main natioanl eugenic journal and by their graduate students without also funding a close look into the statistics and genetics of the effort is what the German socialist government did in 1933. It would be more scientific to fund a close look into what the eugenicists are now doing than to prevent discussion by refusing to fund critical studies.
No, wwww, its not an "interesting" idea. It's a stupid idea. Here's why (in addition to what I said at 9:19 above (which you may want to review):
There is no such thing as "free money". It comes from somewhere, and the somewhere is one or more of the following: taxes, debt, or inflation.
Taxes take money from those working now and give the money to people who may never work. Those working now will have less surplus for saving and building wealth. This hurts poor people the most.
Debt takes money from (1) the capital markets in the near term, competing with investments that improve productivity and everyone's wealth, and (2) future generations who have to pay interest on that debt through there taxes (see above).
Inflation takes money from everyone by making everything more expensive. There is no net increase in national wealth, only in the money supply. You can't eat money, drive it, or hammer nails with it, and it makes a poor roof for your house.
For all of these reasons, Spartacus' idea is stupid, stupid, thrice stupid: economically illiterate, ultimately harmful to those it is intended to help, and divisive because the taxpayers know damn well it's always them who get it in the neck for all the left's utopian schemes.
On the other hand, it will create thousands of Democrat-funding government union jobs to administer it, so it's got that going for it.
So the kid turns 18 and pulls the money out for some wrious partying and high living.
You can only paper over the cracks in human nature with a wad of Benjamins.
I'm not sympathetic to Booker's proposal, but I will say this: Poverty is a stupefying experience. The lack of money makes you stupid. When you get a few bucks ahead, you spend it because you know it's not going to last and that if you keep it, someone will take it away from you. And when you spend it, it's generally on something that will make you look good or feel good. The concept of compound interest is foreign to the experience of a poor person......I don't know if giving a poor person 46k would solve the problem. More likely it would exacerbate it. Remember NINJA loans. The theory behind them was that if people owned homes, they would have the values of home owners. Anyone see the fatal flaw in that reasoning? It's the same thing that exists in Booker's proposal.
Interesting that, if The Little Red Hen is read or discussed at all today, the salient point is ignored: That non-producers should not be rewarded for their lack of productivity by those who produce.
It's not a new idea except for the part where he picks and chooses who gets how much based on their race.
I'd support us giving every newborn child of citezen parents $50K and then we could eliminate federal aid funds 18 years from now because every kid would now have plenty of money to spend on school, cars, travel or booze and drugs. And as Henry and Ralph said, it could hasten the end or need for social security and it would be a heck of a real life Darwin Challenge.
Lsstly I bet this would increase the birthrate among citizen parents so we could cut down on immigrants.
Jupiter said
... the hippopotamus in the punchbowl is the fact that if the geneticists are correct ...
Think of it this way. Genotype and phenotype have to be connected in defined way before you can make social predictions based on genetics. But ever since the Human Genome Project it has been established that the categories of race as they exist socially in the United States do not correspond to any scientific genetic way of defining race. It has been required that geneticists in the US use the social racial constructs rather the more accurate genetic ones that exist. And so 19th century social constructs in one form are called genetic science and in another are called social science. There IS no real genetic racial science; geneticists are not right. In the past anthropologists were not right. In the future sociogenomicists will not be right. And ... the consequences of the past can't be fixed with money, contrition, retribution, education. But no one can do well in this society without an education and everyone alike is suffering from the terrible educational policies supported by the teachers unions and the Democrats. So to me that is a place to work on. And I am confident that it is not genetics as much as Tony Evers and his positive behavioral trash theories that holds things back.
I read awhile ago if you want people to save money, change the taxable rate on savings accounts.
Make the first $1000 or $2500 exempt from taxes.
Of course the welfare programs would need to be tweaked to accommodate that.
They could also change the tax reporting from $10 to $50 or $100.
If written correctly, it could act as a stimulant to the economy. It juices the economy if the funds must be spend on a house or a car or starting a business. Perhaps the legislation could be written so that the funds must be spent on a car built in America and other American-made items such as American-made laundry machines, refrigerators, stoves, ovens.
I have long believed that student loan debt slows the frequency of those big first time purchases a couple makes, like a car, home, laundry machine. The baby bonds could help juice those purchases. That's my belief. I'm sure others disagree. & that's just OK. We agree to disagree.
Hey Social Security came in handy in the 60's. Dems used a lot of it in order to lose Viet Nam honorably at what... 3 million a day? Don't work = don't eat is a biblical teaching, as such it's unconstitutional as determined in the future by an Obama appointed judge. OTOH, after passing an appropriate inheritance tax on it, Fentanyl/heroin ODs would recoup substantial sums.
Lots of ground to plow here- much of it already done by those above! My first thought is that nothing "...creates a more beloved community..." than free money. What does that even mean? I'd gladly entertain new ideas that address income inequality, but in my experience it's all about behavior and not money (free or earned). If your behaviors don't include some amount of work ethic and self control/discipline; you are going to have a difficult life.
Also, the present value of $43k (18 years out) is about $27k. That would certainly help pay for classes at a Community College or trade school. It could also buy a reliable car so that you can get to and from your job. But, how likely is that in the hands of an 18 year old?
The Unplanned Child Welfare Fund. That may be a viable incentive to dissuade women who may choose summary judgment and cruel and unusual punishment to relieve her "burden".
Black baby bond-age. Yeah, souns good. Especially when you factor in all political parties' willingness to tap into locked boxes full of money, like Social Security.
Oh, well.
where all dignity and humanity is affirmed of every single person
Yes. Diversity (i.e. color judgment) breeds adversity. Political congruence is exclusive. Feminism is chauvinistic. Immigration reform for labor arbitrage, democratic gerrymandering, and cover-up of refugee crises are anti-nativist, globalist policies. Selective-child is a summary judgment (i.e.g witch and warlock trials) and cruel and unusual punishment (including cannibalized-child). Respect individual dignity and recognize intrinsic value throughout human evolution.
My great great great grandmother was kidnapped by the Wyandots and forced into slavery in 1780. Her first four children were beheaded and scalped in front of her. She worked for the tribe as a slave for three years until her family found her and paid a substantial ransom. Many white people passed through the tribe on trading business and did nothing to rescue her. I am the great great granddaughter of one of the daughters she had after her return. I can document this. If we're handing out reparations, I'd like my share of the ransom with 327 or so years of compounded interest. While that's not nearly enough to compensate for the lives of four healthy young children or payment for my great great great grandmother's labor, it is a number that can be documented through original records. My family has suffered irreparable harm and should be compensated by the heirs of the people who aren't responsible for her capture or enslavement, but who allowed it to happen. Senator Booker, I don't want a baby bond. I want cold, hard cash.
I have long believed that student loan debt slows the frequency of those big first time purchases a couple makes, like a car, home, laundry machine. The baby bonds could help juice those purchases. That's my belief.
Paying student loans depresses other spending but paying taxes doesn't?
If written correctly, it could act as a stimulant to the economy.
Government spending as "stimulus" is the left's version of "tax cuts pay for themselves".
Senator Booker, I don't want a baby bond. I want cold, hard cash.
My great great uncle's kids who were orphaned in the Civil War when he was shot on May 22 , 1863 at Vicksburg. He died a week later. They'd like a check too. They probably have descendants. I haven't found them yet but I have looked.
3% rate of return? What does their mom pay in interest on loans she gets?
Refundable income tax credits are a much better idea. The only point to this is it's a pot of money that politicians can target, later
This will be my final comment on this topic (a relief to many, I'm sure).
The appeal of trying to fix the world by using state power (coercion) to force people to make certain economic choices remains evergreen in an age where a majority of the present adult population saw the Soviet Union collapse under such a system, at the cost of tens of millions of human lives.
Tens of millions.
Now, there are some who think that if such a law were designed properly, cleverly enough, "written correctly", it might act as a "stimulant" (not to say laxative) to the economy.
Anyone who thinks this is a new idea is unfamiliar with the now-well-debunked ideas of John Maynard Keynes. But don't worry; most politicians are also unaware of Keynes, or pretend to be.
Does it occur to anyone that encouraging (via government coercion) spending on any class of goods, whether they be houses, cars, or college educations, will simply cause these goods to rise in price? I hate to break this to you, but it will.
Again: Money spent on consumption is money not available for investment. Investment generates wealth.
I'm not saying that consumption is bad, or unnecessary, but it is investment that generates wealth.
But in the end, it doesn't matter. Any government program, no matter how cleverly designed, with no matter which fine intentions, will at best underperform the net results of choices made by free actors in a free (reasonably free, we're not talking perfection here) market. Why? The government cannot possibly have all of the information needed to make the best decisions, much less the knowledge of individuals' own preferences, that those free actors have.
Trying to improve the lives of stupid, self-defeating people by tinkering with the economy is doomed to end in failure and tyranny.
I suggest that the very best thing to do is to accept the world for what it is, do our own personal best, and leave others alone to do the same.
That is the genius of our system, as it was originally conceived. The Founders never thought that it was the Government's job to fix the world or citizens' lives. Its purpose was mainly to preserve their liberty, and trust the citizens to do their best.
It used to work pretty well. Not perfectly, but pretty well.
Who did better? Certainly no socialist, or Keynesian technocrat-statist regime.
Paying student loans depresses other spending but paying taxes doesn't?
20 & early 30 somethings are a demographic category that make a lot of "first time" purchases. New couples with babies on the way need a car, house, laundry machine, furniture, dishes, pots and pans. The big "first time" merchandise. The older people get, the less they need to buy stuff 'cause they are already outfitted. Some senior citizens rarely shop. The ones that do tend to buy luxury items or upgrade.
Some older people do not replace their merchandise for a long time. Some just get it repaired. They don't need to buy stuff if they've already got a working car, dishwasher, laundry machine, house. They don't need a crib, baby-seat, dishes, utensils, napkins, sofa, or chairs to round out their house. The majority of their their shopping for merchandise is optional or luxury.
I have long believed that student loan debt slows the frequency of those big first time purchases a couple makes
An Unplanned Baby Bond is a marginal solution. A better solution is to address the first-order forcings of progressive costs of education, medical care, etc, so that they are affordable and available to every American.
If the government giving the blacks money is reparations, then we have been paying reparations since the launch of the Great Society... and that means we have paid out literally trillions already. Sounds like enough to me.
This is ok, but if they take the money it means no EBT, no housing voucher, no Obamaphone, no welfae....period.
20 & early 30 somethings are a demographic category that make a lot of "first time" purchases.
None of this is differential. The point is your fantasy economics posits that reducing disposable income with debt service impacts these decisions but reducing disposable income through taxation does not.
It will never be enough. Never. There are too many who are far from underprivileged who got that way through racial grievance promotion.
Just pay a $1000 bounty for every aborted fetus black women turn in.
In a generation most of the problem will be gone. Probably cheaper too.
Phidippus: While we should like to think that the discarded theories of Freud and Keynes have been 'debunked', there will surely be fresh voices coming on the scene who promote those very theories and call them brand new and exciting. Such is the way with the Progressive set to whom real history is anathema.
In the early 1970's I was working my way through college on a highway construction crew. The six man crew had 4 members from the Kickapoo Tribe. Pretty good workers.
Then the government reached a settlement for a broken . Every Tribal member got $5k. Big money back then, likely close, with inflation to Senator Asparagus' plan. Especially big bucks in rural NE Kansas. You could, literally, rent a modest house for almost two years with $5k.
The next day we had a 2 man crew. Guess who disappeared. Over the next 3 weeks all four of the Tribal guys came back asking for a job because they were dead broke.
Why only $1000, why not start with $100,000? Allowing white men to keep the other $99,000 is indicative of a deeply sexist and racist culture.
If Booker honestly meant, "[I'm for] not only trying to right economic scales from past harms, but to make sure we are a country that creates a more beloved community where all dignity and humanity is affirmed of every single person."
...he would stop pigeon-holing people by race, sex, etc., etc., etc.
But his ambition is too great, and maybe his thinking too warped and corrupted, for that.
I picture each Democratic candidate as a Dorian Gray. Every time one says or does something to further divide the country along race and gender fault lines, or fails to stand up for our common humanity and Americanism, his/her picture grows a little more hideous.
Those pictures already look like Orval Faubus or Ross Barnett in the schoolhouse door. With all their deference to their new crop of freshmen Congressmen they bid well to start looking like Julius Streicher, soon enough.
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