"Every one of these jurisdictions [that permit physician-assisted suicide] has a total fertility rate below the replacement threshold."

"I do not think this is a coincidence. About 30 years ago, P.D. James’s prescient novel 'The Children of Men' imagined that a birthrate crisis would induce governments to facilitate the suicides of the elderly in a ritual known as 'the Quietus.'... The population pyramid is increasingly inverted.... This poses an existential threat to welfare systems, which rely on young workers to fund entitlements and health care for older adults. Those who hope that liberal immigration policies will solve this problem forget that immigrants themselves get old, and their birthrates tend to converge with those of the greater population over time. If birthrates do not recover — and at present, they show no real signs of doing so — eventually we will be forced to revert to the system that prevailed for all of human history up until recently: Older people will be cared for privately, typically by their children and grandchildren, and those without families will have to rely on charities, such as they are. In the meantime, we are in a period of transition. Welfare states limp on, but in conditions of increasing stress...."

Writes Louise Perry, in "The Perverse Economics of Assisted Suicide" (NYT).

"Academics are unsure if removing soda from SNAP would improve public health."

"Data is scarce: No state has piloted a change, and researchers can’t remove people’s benefits for a study because of the arbitrary harm it might cause. Lisa Harnack, a professor at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health, found a way to test the concept by finding people who were eligible for SNAP but not enrolled. She created a 'SNAP-like program' that gave some people normal SNAP benefits and gave others similar benefits but excluded soda (participants could still buy whatever other food they wanted with their own money). Her first study found lower calorie intake and improved nutrition among the people who couldn’t purchase soda with their benefits, but her follow-up study did not.... [Another] study found it would probably reduce rates of obesity — but even so, [the researcher said]... 'If you try to solve this problem using SNAP as a lever, so only SNAP people are impacted by it, what we’re likely to do is just increase stigma for people who are trying to make ends meet.'"

From "Should Food Stamps Pay for Soda? Colorado and Texas are among the states aiming to change what food and drink can be bought with SNAP benefits" (NYT).

"The welfare society is fundamentally a community, which is based on a mutual trust that we all contribute. All that is being seriously challenged by parallel societies."

Said Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, quoted in "Denmark Aims a Wrecking Ball at ‘Non-Western’ Neighborhoods/A government program is using demolition and relocation to remake neighborhoods with immigrants, poverty or crime" (NYT). 

The term "parallel societies" refers to "segregated enclaves where immigrants do not participate in the wider society or learn Danish, even as they benefit from the country’s generous welfare system."  

The government is getting rid of more than 4,000 public housing units.

"A self-described high school dropout living in a camper with a tarp on the roof sings a plaintive cri de coeur about blue collar workers being shafted by the wealthy..."

"... and it is right-wing Republicans who rush to embrace him while Democrats wag their fingers and scold him for insensitivity. Huh?"

Writes Nicholas Kristof — who can't really be surprised, can he? — in "On Their High Horse, Too Many Liberals Disdain Oliver Anthony" (NYT).

Have Democrats retreated so far from their workingman roots that their knee-jerk impulse is to dump on a blue collar guy who highlights “folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat”?...

Easily, for anyone who's been watching America in this century, the answer is yes. The "workingman"/"blue collar guy" might be a racist, and if anything in that song feels like dog-whistle racism, that brings on the hostility of the left. The lyric "the obese milkin' welfare" closed liberal hearts to the plaint of the working-class white man. They're not "on their high horse" in this. They're sticking with their anti-racist values and keeping their sensitivities tuned. 

Kristof says:

"If their mom were too sick to make meals or wash or do anything at all, would they just leave her there?"

"Of course not. Instead, they meant that they couldn’t see where neediness fit into their lives, because their lives were arranged to pretend that care didn’t exist. For them — perhaps for you, too, if sickness hasn’t yet rearranged your life — care was something that happened to other people."

Writes Emily Kenway in "Family caregiving should be seen as an expectation — not an exception" (WaPo).

Where this column goes: "Ultimately, caring for loved ones should be a fundamental, protected right...."

Currently, family medical leave is unpaid and so restrictive that, according to the Labor Department, 44 percent of U.S. employees are ineligible. Instead, we could follow Norway’s example, expanding leave to all workers and sharing the costs between employers and government. If you need a business case, consider the recent Harvard Business School finding that providing caregiver leave can reduce turnover, especially of senior-level employees.

"Ms. Thomas and her husband were foster parents for their two grandsons for nearly a year and a half...."

"The expense reimbursements, day care support and a $200-per-year stipend for each child had been a big help, but the imposing child welfare requirements — including monthly visits from social workers — made Ms. Thomas want to live with her grandsons like a normal family. In April she and her husband took guardianship of the boys, which relieved them of the foster care requirements, but the decision came at a cost: They lost the expense reimbursements and the day care support.... $2,700 per month in day care costs [is] more than her $2,300 monthly income...."

From the end of the NYT article "Can ‘Kinship Care’ Help the Child Welfare System? The White House Wants to Try/The Biden administration proposes spending $20 billion over a decade to help some of the most vulnerable families in the country, including relatives suddenly thrust into child rearing."

So the "child welfare requirements — including monthly visits from social worker" are so onerous, that the grandparents preferred to pay the expenses themselves and have the freedom and privacy given to guardians. How is the Biden administration going to help people in their position? I would think retired grandparents like the Thomases are less in need of reimbursement of day care costs than many parents who are taking care of their own children. 

This is a stick-up.

I'm reading "Like Marie Antoinette," a book review written by Mario Puzo in 1968 and published in the NYT. The book under review is "The Jeweler’s Eye," by William F. Buckley Jr. 

There are a lot of things I want to blog about this morning, so why am back in 1968? It's because of the first thing I wrote about this morning, the NYT obituary for Kathy Boudin. I was struck by the sentence, "During the stickup, the gunmen killed a security guard, Peter Paige." Stickup? That strikes me as gangster slang, lacking the formality I would expect from the NYT in the account of this event that took place 4 decades ago.

Does the NYT generally use "stickup" to describe serious matters? I searched its archive, and the Mario Puzo article caught my attention:

"But there is much in the Democrats’ [$3.5 trillion] outline that makes less sense. They want to make community college free for everyone, even wealthy students."

Writes the Washington Post Editorial Board in "Opinion: Democrats should seize this chance to reshape the safety net. But not all they propose makes sense."

As many of the commenters over there are pointing out, wealthy people don't send their kids to community college. A test of who's wealthy could just be who wouldn't send their kids to community college even if it were free. So you don't have to worry about including the wealthy. What you should worry about is channeling un-wealthy people into community college. Who should go to community college? 

Shouldn't the answer be something other than those who need/want to spend less money? Here's a U.S. News article from 2019, "10 Reasons to Attend a Community College." There are reasons other than money. It might be a good choice for those who were not very good high school students and need to "ease into" a college experience. It might be good for older students with a family or a job that they need to balance with schoolwork. And it might be good if you want to go into a specialized career where there's a 2-year certificate program. 

"When the French government launched a smartphone app that gives 300 euros to every 18-year-old in the country for cultural purchases like books and music, or exhibition and performance tickets..."

"... most young people’s impulse wasn’t to buy Proust’s greatest works or to line up and see Molière. Instead, France’s teenagers flocked to manga.... As of this month, books represented over 75 percent of all purchases made through the app since it was introduced nationwide in May — and roughly two-thirds of those books were manga, according to the organization that runs the app, called the Culture Pass.... But the focus on comic books reveals a subtle tension at the heart of the Culture Pass’s design, between the almost total freedom it affords it young users — including to buy the mass media they already love — and its architects’ aim of guiding users toward lesser-known and more highbrow arts."

From "France Gave Teenagers $350 for Culture. They’re Buying Comic Books/Young people can buy books, tickets and classes via a government smartphone app. But rather than discovering highbrow arts, many are choosing mass media they already love" (NYT).

I wonder why I keep getting a busy signal from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue.

I'll bet I'm not the only person who got a letter on Saturday from the Wisconsin Department of Revenue that said:

Wisconsin Tomorrow Small Business Grant — Application Denied

Important: If you did not recently file a Wisconsin Tomorrow Small Business Recovery Grant Application with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, call us immediately at (608) 266-2772....

I hate the feeling of rejection, but it's annoying to get rejected when you didn't even apply... and then be agitated by the announcement that it's important to call the Department of Revenue "immediately," then to learn that you can't call on Saturday, to wait until Monday, and then to have the line endlessly busy.

But beyond this annoyance is my suspicion that the Department of Revenue considered every taxpayer with "small business" income as if they'd applied. If that's what they did, I don't like being treated as if I'd applied. And I really don't like having to worry that someone could be using my name to apply for a grant.

Here's a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel from last May: "State to give 84,000 Wisconsin businesses $5,000 grants by end of June."

Gov. Tony Evers authorized $420 million, through funding received by the American Rescue Plan Act, to be distributed to businesses that apply by 4:30 p.m. on June 7.

Maybe they didn't get enough applications, and they needed to imagine them. If so, I'd like to know who got the money without applying. Not that I think my little business here deserves a $5,000 "rescue" grant. I just want to think that the Department of Revenue is a fair and orderly place, and I don't like being agitated by a weird letter and told to "immediately" call a number that is always busy. I can handle it well enough, but I doubt that I'm the only one who got this rejection letter.

UPDATE, Tuesday 1:50 p.m. — I finally got through and, after waiting on hold, was told the letter means that someone filed a fraudulent application using my name and that this has happened to thousands of people in Wisconsin. The application was denied, so there's nothing to do other than to know what I already know, which is that my information is out there to be used. 

The mayor of {city name} is tweeting.

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, most families in {city name} will receive monthly#ChildTaxCredit payments. It’s a guaranteed income through December. I joined@mayorsforagi because all Americans deserve an income floor. This is a step in that direction.

— Mayor of Madison (@MayorOfMadison) July 17, 2021

 

That's been up for 17 hours, and it's been mocked on Reddit (at the Madison subreddit) for the last 8 hours. A screenshot is preserved at Reddit, and I'll just put it below the jump for safe-keeping, on the theory that the tweet will be deleted and replaced.

Somebody at Reddit — in a post rated minus 2 — defends the Mayor:

I’m pretty sure it’s intentional, the point being every city is benefiting from the credit so you can insert any city’s name. But I do think it’s funny how the people who misunderstand the posting are playing this “gotcha” game like they’re just sooo much smarter than the Mayor! LOL

By the way, I loathe the overuse of "smart" in political discussions. It's not about IQ or education. It's about paying attention.

"To be sure, we don’t have access to the counterfactual world in which capital-gains tax rates sat at 40 percent over the past four decades."

"It is theoretically possible that growth would have been lower under such a scenario. But even in the most generous assessment, the impact of low capital-gains tax rates on economic growth is unclear. What’s more, the actual policy being debated here is not what the capital-gains tax rate should be, but rather, whether it is worthwhile to raise the capital-gains rate in order to invest in universal prekindergarten, public child care, a child allowance, free community college, and paid family and medical leave." 

From "Rich Investors Make a Poor Case Against Biden’s Tax Plan" (NY Magazine). 

There was some concern expressed yesterday over the "remarkable slackening" in population growth seen in the 2020 census. What will it do to the economy going forward if Americans don't maintain the long human tradition of robust reproduction? I was inclined to say, don't worry about it, less population growth is good for the environment. 

But if you took the other side of that debate — and plenty of readers emailed to instruct me on the need for newly bred Americans to maintain our economic well-being — you'd better worry about women declining the option to undertake childbearing and men and women passing on the potentially fulfilling endeavor of child-rearing. It's terribly expensive! But people are supposed to plunge into it as part of the love-struck romance of youth. Damn the financial incentives. But, oh!, rich folk need plenty of incentives to keep investing. 

Sorry, rich folk coddlers, you're going to have to incentivize reproduction a little bit. The old scheme of locking women into childbirth as a consequence of indulging in sex failed long ago, and you sound like a fool talking about it now, especially if you attempt to stand on the foundation of love for babies, when what you are doing is justifying freeing rich folk — people who make over $1 million a year — from paying a 40% capital gains tax. Can't dishearten them in their enthusiasm for investing? What about the young people who are disheartened about having children? Worry about them.

(To comment, you can email me here.)

"An unlikely coalition of Democrats across the ideological spectrum mounted an 11th-hour push in the final weekend before the American Rescue Plan for President Biden to go big on tackling child poverty."

"They prevailed over what one person involved in the process called the 'cost police' in Biden’s inner circle, those anxiously warning about the ballooning cost of the stimulus package.... This under-the-radar success created what could be the most consequential piece of the $1.9 trillion package — one that, if made permanent, could approach the impact of the programs established under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. The sudden, unexpected creation of an approximately $120 billion social program has thrown a twist into the political landscape.... With the initiative expiring in a year, all but ensuring it will be a major issue in the midterms, the child poverty measure raises a central question: Are the politics of big government back?... A family with two young children and no income will now get $600 a month. The parents of 90 percent of the country’s children will benefit, and 27 million children will be lifted from poverty, according to analysts.... ...Democrats hope American families will get used to receiving their checks, and they cite the Washington axiom that it’s hard to take something away from voters after they’ve started receiving it. Still, popularizing the program will require Biden to begin selling it..... Some Democrats acknowledge that some in their party are squeamish about having to defend the distribution of government checks to working-age adults who are not working....  "

From "How Biden quietly created a huge social program" (WaPo).

"For years, Republicans used welfare to drive a wedge between the white working middle class and the poor."

"Ronald Reagan portrayed Black, inner-city mothers as freeloaders and con artists, repeatedly referring to 'a woman in Chicago' as the 'welfare queen.'... And the tension between the working class and the poor was easily exploited: Why should 'they' get help for not working when 'we' get no help, and we work? By the time Clinton campaigned for president, 'ending welfare as we knew it' had become a talisman of so-called New Democrats, even though there was little or no evidence that welfare benefits discouraged the unemployed from taking jobs.... Yet when COVID hit, public assistance was no longer necessary just for 'them.' It was needed by 'us.'... The CARES Act, which [Trump] signed into law at the end of March, gave most Americans checks of $1,200 (to which he attached his name). When this proved enormously popular, he demanded the next round of stimulus checks be $2,000... But the real game changer... is the breadth of Biden's plan.... Rather than pit the working middle class against the poor, this bill unites them in its sheer expansiveness... Over 70 percent of Americans support the bill... The economic lesson is that Reaganomics is officially dead. It's clearer than ever.... Give cash to the bottom two-thirds and their purchasing power will drive growth for everyone."

Writes Robert Reich in "How Bidenomics Can Unite America" (Newsweek).

Here's a NYT column headline I took the wrong way: "Democrats Repent for Bill Clinton."

I thought finally — probably because of the desire to oust Andrew Cuomo — there is a demand that Democrats denounce Bill Clinton for his mistreatment of women in the workplace.

But no. The column (by Charles Blow) isn't about that at all. It's not even mentioned. Blow's focus is on "Black and brown Americans and the poor":

Two major pieces of Clinton-signed legislation stand out: The crime bill of 1994 and the welfare reform bill of 1996.

I view the crime bill as disastrous. It flooded the streets with police officers and contributed to the rise of mass incarceration, which disproportionately impacts Black men and their families. It helped to drain Black communities of fathers, uncles, husbands, partners and sons.... Part of the goal of the bill was to blunt Republican criticisms that Democrats were soft on crime....

Then there was the welfare reform bill, which Clinton promised would “end welfare as we know it.”...

Nothing against Blow for highlighting these issues. I just wanted to record my reaction to the headline to underscore, once again, that the gender politics of the Democrats has been incoherent for a quarter of a century, and I have been forced to disapprove of them the entire time. 

And by the way, Bill Clinton is the first presidential candidate I voted for who actually won. I was 41 years old, so I waited a long time.

"The give-them-cash solution to poverty is nothing new. It was conventional wisdom in Democratic Washington toward the end of the Johnson Administration."

"In 1968, a petition signed by 1,300 economists (including James Tobin and John Kenneth Galbraith) urged a 'national system of income guarantees.' LBJ didn't like the idea, but when Richard Nixon became president Democratic holdovers in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare served him up a no-work-requirid cash-dispensing scheme that became Nixon’s 1969 Family Assistance Plan. It almost became law, failing after a fringe West Coast politician named Ronald Reagan called it a 'megadole.'"

That's Point #2 in Mickey Kaus's "Five (5) quick points on the new Biden Dole" (Substack).

Kaus goes on to contemplate whether there's any Republican around these days who's capable of playing the Ronald Reagan role.

"The more you provide 'equal opportunity' for those at the bottom, the more you perfect a system in which those at the top can believe they are smarter and better (i.e. more meritorious)..."

"... than those who can't or don't climb up the pyramid. After all, they had equal opportunity. What's their excuse? Now we’re facing the end game: What to do when we no longer have enough jobs that practically anyone can do, but that pay enough to allow, if not a 'middle class' life, a life as a full participant in society. There seem to be at least seven approaches...."

From "Two Paths for Meritocracy/Are we free at last from Michael Young's doomsday machine?" by Mickey Kaus (substack)(Michael Young is the author of "The Rise of the Meritocracy" (1958)).

You can go to the link to read the 7 approaches. #7 is Kaus's own. He also finds the entire list "quite dispiriting." An alternative is to reject meritocracy.

"When you add $600 to the national average unemployment payment... the replacement rate goes from 38 percent to almost exactly 100 percent."

"In other words, that amount is what it would take for Congress to replace what the average American worker receiving unemployment would have earned.... Unemployment benefits are typically meant to keep people afloat but stay low enough to incentivize them to find a job. Now, when seeking work may be both fruitless and dangerous, the incentives have nearly reversed.... And a $600 flat amount, rather than one relative to each person’s income, on top of a state’s usual benefits, is perhaps the simplest possible policy to enact.... While an extra $600 a week is enough to replace 100 percent of the average national income, the added benefit will differ depending on where people are and what they typically earn.... A person who earns close to the average weekly wage will roughly get their salary replaced on unemployment, but low-wage workers who lose their jobs are more likely to end up making greater amounts than they were before...."

From "The $600 Unemployment Booster Shot, State by State" (NYT). At the link, a graph shows the states in order of how much the new benefit exceeds the income replacement level. At the top of the chart is Maine, where the unemployed are getting an amount that looks like about 125% of the average income in the state. Before the $600 bump, the payment was something like 48% of the average income. At the bottom of the chart is Maine's next door neighbor New Hampshire, where it looks like the payment is 88% of the average income of the state. That really isn't that big of a discrepancy, but the average income figure doesn't tell you the extent to which low wage earners are doing especially well (or the extent to which higher paid workers are getting into trouble meeting their regular expenses).

One commenter over there says: "I would like to see an article that shares both sides of the story on this. My husband is a small business owner of an essential business that he has built for 40 years. He is now having a hard time getting his few employees back to work because they are making more on unemployment. As I do understand the concept, it will, in the long run, put these small businesses out of business."

Yes, the extra $600 is premised on the idea that the incentive to get back to work is inapplicable because people aren't supposed to work. But what about those working in "essential" businesses? How do low-paid workers there feel seeing that they could make more money by not working? We often like to think that people want to work. Trump frequently repeats that people want to get back to work. But if your job isn't intrinsically rewarding to you and you could make more money not working, would you want to get back to work? Maybe you would.

The small business owner — like that commenter's husband — has an opportunity to see who has a strong work ethic and a dedication to the company. That may be worth remembering when the $600 add-on is taken off and everyone wants to come back. In the meantime, however, he is suffering, and it must be demoralizing to see that people don't want to support the company that had given them their jobs. Maybe some of the fault is with the owner: Why didn't he foster a spirit of loyalty to the company, when he had the chance?

"Since the election of Ronald Reagan, America has tended to value individual market choice over collective welfare."

"Even Democratic administrations have had to operate within what’s often called the neoliberal consensus. That consensus was crumbling before coronavirus, but the pandemic should annihilate it for good. This calamity has revealed that the fundamental insecurity of American life is a threat to us all. 'There’s no such thing as society,' Margaret Thatcher famously said. 'There are individual men and women and there are families.' Tell that to the families effectively under house arrest until society gets this right."

From "Here Come the Death Panels/Obamacare didn’t lead to rationing. The mismanagement of the coronavirus will" by Michelle Goldberg (NYT).

"Can I tell you why I’m frustrated by this reparations conversation? It’s because it’s being reduced to a box to check..."

"... 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.