The pandemic created a unique political environment where, for a brief period of time, there was a working consensus that the government should try to help people. This resulted in a historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) in 2021. The CTC was increased from $2,000 per child to $3,600 for each child aged 5 or younger and $3,000 for each child aged 6 through 17. (The credit phased out for couples making $150,000 or more and individuals making $75,000 or more.) Further, the CTC was made fully refundable, regardless of income. Previously, the lowest earners were not able to take advantage of the full credit. Finally, instead of forcing families to wait until they filed their taxes to receive the credit, the CTC was paid as a monthly benefit to eligible families from July 2021 to December 2021.
In this country, if one is poor, it’s because that your choice. After working for Head Start for 20 years, I know people do not wake up one morning and say...” I’m not going to work. I want to be poor”. We balk at taking care of those in need. We would rather enrich huge corporations than help those in need. Shame on us.
I'm so glad to hear from you. I had a sister (she's still around but I don't talk to her) who works as a LCSW for Head Start and voted for Trump in 2016. I tried and tried to get her to explain her reasoning to me. It seems to be tied into this fear of someone getting something unearned that is more terrifying than the idea of people in need going without. It's made me feel so sorry for the families she works with, wondering how her judgement feels. I can't think of a worse kind of person going into social work. It's surely not for the money, but I don't think it was to help people either. I'm not sure how she thinks about it, if at all.
In America, the Republican attitude is that the government should not offer assistance because there are those that will take advantage of that assistance to not work.
In Europe, the prevailing attitude is that the government should offer assistance even though there are those that will take advantage of that assistance to not work.
If the Republicans truly believe that Corporations are people, they would apply similar logic to corporations. By this I mean, Government should not provide assistance to corporations because there will be those that will take advantage of that assistance to continue poor management practices that force them to rely on said assistance to survive..
Glad I checked because it's not the same person. But I think they cover very similar things. I'd start with the podcast though. It explains so much about the country's politics.
The social worker Trump voter? Her husband works at Ford so I was just so confused. I've not interacted with any Head Start folks in my state (to my knowledge) but I did have a long relationship with the Early Childhood Early Intervention program in my state for 0-3 years and every single person I dealt with was amazing. My kid wouldn't be walking without accommodations I'm positive. Most of them were not social workers but the case care coordinator was always a social worker. I think most people go into the field truly wanting to make a difference to vulnerable populations. It scares me though to think that my sister probably thinks that about herself. And how many others are like her? More than we'd like probably but I still believe social workers are mostly kind and overwhelmed by their caseloads. It's not a problem I see being resolved in my lifetime.
Yes, exactly! That's wild to think that someone who goes into social work (your sister) can have that perspective and vote for Trump. It sounds like a brain mis-fire and mis-alignment or something. How can you vote for someone filled with hate but then work in a field that supports people. But also, I have to think back to recently watching "Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, Reckoning" on HBO about the 1989 Boston Stuart killings with the vision of the main cop who launched the investigations - don't you think a copy should serve his community and protect all people? Well, he didn't and even the looking back comments he made in the last year for that show continued to prove how awful of a person he was - check it out here: https://apps.bostonglobe.com/metro/investigations/2023/12/charles-stuart/
I have started to think there are really two types of people that go into social work. People motivated by altruism and people motivated by control and judgement. I think most people working with children at least believe themselves to be altruists. But when you look at how DCFS is run in many places it does make you wonder. I know sometimes they have zero good options and so many rules, so they have to operate the best way available to them. Social workers who work with other populations might tend to be less altruistic? Hard to say. But there's a lot of similarities as far as punitive policies between some programs and say parole officers etc.
If your sister voted for trump, she voted against her own job security. We worked with Republicans at HS. They hid their disdain (usually) for poor people. I had very little respect for them.
That's the main question I had for her and my brother-in-law. It's bad enough to vote for people who are spouting meritocracy bullshit but in this case they were voting against their own self-interest in a way that should have been obvious to anyone. I live in Kentucky, I'm familiar with aspirational votes for Republicans that wouldn't piss on their constituents if they were on fire. But this seemed so illogical. And I still don't understand it.
Why is it that we do LESS than "The Least We Can Do"? It takes corporate tax breaks to entice Republicans (who all depend on corporate donations they raise to be able to stay in office--to continue this grift sham)! When the Pope asked by Michael Moore if Capitalism is evil, he said, "Si"! Where is the moral compass of the Chamber of Commerce, the Corporate C suite, the Wall Street Journal Board??? "This" all reflects our society, so each should ask, "What is truly my moral compass?" This is a horrible time to be most children on this planet. Thank you Judd and team for describing this wretched situation in depth.
Or the media and many in the public’s obsessive fawning over the obscenely wealthy-to be that wealthy doesn’t take great genius but does take a certain level of money/power obsession and moral bankruptcy. Smartest and best people I know are scientists, teachers, doctors, public defenders-not emerald mine Elon musk the racist meme lord
I’ll explain it to you. They live in a bubble and they want to keep their wealth. If more people become wealthy, they lose power and their money. They are nothing without their money. They would not know how to function without it and it’s simply greed and fear.
On top of that, although money perpetuates more money, even the great and rich can fall at the flip of a switch. If only we could control that flip of a switch.
On that note, if you aren't yet familiar with David Duchovny and Téa Leoni's daugher West, she is worth a follow on trying to push that fall further: https://www.instagram.com/westduchovny/
All republicans I meet ask, how will we pay for this? Regarding any service for working people or the poor… I ask them why our military spending is $877 Billion- more than the next 11 largest countries COMBINED. Wouldn’t being bigger than the next five suffice? THAT is our money that should go to the people of this country! On top of that we have a number of individuals who are multi- billionaires. You can’t spend that kind of money in a lifetime! So why let this continue. We have previously had a tax rate for the wealthy topped out at 92% in the 1950s!!!
For sure we need to raise the taxes a lot! None of this cutting taxes to the bone and going welp, we can only ever cut programs, not raise taxes, and welp we have a giant deficit, no clue why! Ugh.
We will never be allowed to have nice things as long as the filibuster exists, and as long as the bloated, waste and fraud filled Pentagon budget is really a jobs program.
I agree that defense spending is not producing the level of safety that it should. We need to change the mindset that proposing reductions, or simply decreasing the rate of annual increases, will result in citizens being less safe. Someone with the political will must challenge the Joint Chiefs with eliminating $X billion dollars from the budget without reducing the military's ability to safeguard the citizens. Until we eliminate the false presumption that more spending equates to greater safety our taxes will be forever controlled by the military-industrial complex. Once the sacred cow of defense spending is slaughtered on the steps of Congress emphasis on other means to protect the country can be explored.
I fully support original expansion of the CTC, but I think it's wrong to talk about trade offs with defense. That lets the rich off the hook. We need higher taxes on rich people to pay for programs that help Americans. And though I'm still part of the 98%, I should be paying more taxes to fund an expansive child tax credit.
Also, the idea that the US spends more than the next 11 counties on defense is outdated. A closer look at Chinese spend reveals a lot of spending that wasn't counted in the past. In particular, the Chinese Coast Guard has a huge budget, can patrol beyond Taiwan, and that spending didn't used to be included in comparisons. The US still spends more than any other country, but it's on par with China plus only one or two more countries.
Right, they all got their salaries last year and their excellent health insurance but they literally didn't do their jobs. 27 bills passed and these assholes have the audacity to complain about the laziness of other people?
I don’t like this proposed law. It does too little for the poorest and gives too much to people and corporations who need to be paying more taxes. Monthly checks, generous ones, and no work requirements, period. Grandparents and Disabled people also parent children, and they need the full credits.
Important piece. The CTC during/after the pandemic was transformative. Another reason D’s need to take control of White House, Senate and House. While Manchin will be gone,I worry about Fetterman now, given his recent ‘change’; we’ll see.
I don’t get it. So we aren’t paying for this modest CTC expansion. We are lumping it in with business tax credit extensions so they don’t work against it? Like, NONE of this is paid for?
Thank you for this reporting. For those conservatives afraid we are encouraging the poor to not work, then why do you also oppose free breakfast and lunch at school? Why do you oppose expansion of free preschool? Why do you oppose paying medical and dental for children? You want these children to be born, then walk away when it comes to raising them up to be healthy and productive members of society. Explain this to me, if you can.
While it shouldn't take corporate tax breaks to gain political support for child poverty prevention policies; I'm assuming the domestic research tax break is referring to this?
While it doesn't seem like the highest priority, allowing R&D expenses to again be deducted in the year they are incurred seems reasonable. It also benefits more than just tech heavyweights in that start ups frequently have large R&D expenses. Apparently the standard practice here (before the 2017 tax law change) and in other countries globally was too apply R&D expenses this way.
That said, ensuring the IRS is well funded to look into the businesses R&D expenses should be a part of this. Companies love to shoehorn costs into R&D and more scrutiny here would be a good thing.
I know a couple of really poor people. They work for me for a while, then their lives get disrupted and they fall through the cracks again.
I am retired and getting pretty old but I still manage a large garden/ orchard/ chicken flock. I could not afford $15/hour but I could afford $11/ hour, paid each day at the end of the day. This young man got in trouble with the law for a stupid brawl. He got 6 years, even though no one went to the hospital and no weapons were involved. He served his time. Now he tells me that he can't vote until he is "off papers. That's another 4 years, by his calculations. He does not own any means of transportation, so going to work in our small town is already near impossible. I used to pick him up at his house and bring him here to work every day. He was a pretty good worker.
So there are many reasons folks are poor. The way I look at it, people are directly impacted by the laws that the Legislators make. The legislature dictates who is rich, who is poor, who gets ahead, who doesn't. They are more than any other body, the dictators over our fate. When they have "safe seats" and listen to their donors instead of their constituents, the country goes to the dogs.
This stinginess when it comes to our nation's families and children is why even if the economy is not doing as well in Germany, or other wealthy countries, the families and children are doing better. The USA has a lot of misconceptions about what government should do for them, and one of those is that people need to suffer on their own if they do not have the access and means to do better than they are! It is mean spirited to put it nicely. This is the politics of those with a vengeful God, not a benevolent one. It is just sickening. We should be taking care of our nation's children, they are our responsibility and our future. They deserve our support. Corporations should not be getting tax breaks. We need that going in the opposite direction. As Matt Stoller says of Boeing, it should be broken up.
It is already so heavily subsidized, and it's business model is just unsafe. Lots needs to be fixed in American corporate culture, but paying less taxes is not one of them.
In this country, if one is poor, it’s because that your choice. After working for Head Start for 20 years, I know people do not wake up one morning and say...” I’m not going to work. I want to be poor”. We balk at taking care of those in need. We would rather enrich huge corporations than help those in need. Shame on us.
I'm so glad to hear from you. I had a sister (she's still around but I don't talk to her) who works as a LCSW for Head Start and voted for Trump in 2016. I tried and tried to get her to explain her reasoning to me. It seems to be tied into this fear of someone getting something unearned that is more terrifying than the idea of people in need going without. It's made me feel so sorry for the families she works with, wondering how her judgement feels. I can't think of a worse kind of person going into social work. It's surely not for the money, but I don't think it was to help people either. I'm not sure how she thinks about it, if at all.
In America, the Republican attitude is that the government should not offer assistance because there are those that will take advantage of that assistance to not work.
In Europe, the prevailing attitude is that the government should offer assistance even though there are those that will take advantage of that assistance to not work.
If the Republicans truly believe that Corporations are people, they would apply similar logic to corporations. By this I mean, Government should not provide assistance to corporations because there will be those that will take advantage of that assistance to continue poor management practices that force them to rely on said assistance to survive..
Have you read about dignity societies versus honor societies? It's really fascinating.
Got any good books on this topic to recommend?
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/made-of-honor/
Glad I checked because it's not the same person. But I think they cover very similar things. I'd start with the podcast though. It explains so much about the country's politics.
https://www.everand.com/book/575694994/The-Rise-of-Victimhood-Culture-Microaggressions-Safe-Spaces-and-the-New-Culture-Wars
I'm pretty sure this is the person who was on an episode of Hidden Brain, but I'm double checking just to be sure.
Bravo, David! Corporations = Socialism for the rich.
WHOA - that's a wild one, Rachel!
The social worker Trump voter? Her husband works at Ford so I was just so confused. I've not interacted with any Head Start folks in my state (to my knowledge) but I did have a long relationship with the Early Childhood Early Intervention program in my state for 0-3 years and every single person I dealt with was amazing. My kid wouldn't be walking without accommodations I'm positive. Most of them were not social workers but the case care coordinator was always a social worker. I think most people go into the field truly wanting to make a difference to vulnerable populations. It scares me though to think that my sister probably thinks that about herself. And how many others are like her? More than we'd like probably but I still believe social workers are mostly kind and overwhelmed by their caseloads. It's not a problem I see being resolved in my lifetime.
Yes, exactly! That's wild to think that someone who goes into social work (your sister) can have that perspective and vote for Trump. It sounds like a brain mis-fire and mis-alignment or something. How can you vote for someone filled with hate but then work in a field that supports people. But also, I have to think back to recently watching "Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, Reckoning" on HBO about the 1989 Boston Stuart killings with the vision of the main cop who launched the investigations - don't you think a copy should serve his community and protect all people? Well, he didn't and even the looking back comments he made in the last year for that show continued to prove how awful of a person he was - check it out here: https://apps.bostonglobe.com/metro/investigations/2023/12/charles-stuart/
I have started to think there are really two types of people that go into social work. People motivated by altruism and people motivated by control and judgement. I think most people working with children at least believe themselves to be altruists. But when you look at how DCFS is run in many places it does make you wonder. I know sometimes they have zero good options and so many rules, so they have to operate the best way available to them. Social workers who work with other populations might tend to be less altruistic? Hard to say. But there's a lot of similarities as far as punitive policies between some programs and say parole officers etc.
If your sister voted for trump, she voted against her own job security. We worked with Republicans at HS. They hid their disdain (usually) for poor people. I had very little respect for them.
That's the main question I had for her and my brother-in-law. It's bad enough to vote for people who are spouting meritocracy bullshit but in this case they were voting against their own self-interest in a way that should have been obvious to anyone. I live in Kentucky, I'm familiar with aspirational votes for Republicans that wouldn't piss on their constituents if they were on fire. But this seemed so illogical. And I still don't understand it.
Why is it that we do LESS than "The Least We Can Do"? It takes corporate tax breaks to entice Republicans (who all depend on corporate donations they raise to be able to stay in office--to continue this grift sham)! When the Pope asked by Michael Moore if Capitalism is evil, he said, "Si"! Where is the moral compass of the Chamber of Commerce, the Corporate C suite, the Wall Street Journal Board??? "This" all reflects our society, so each should ask, "What is truly my moral compass?" This is a horrible time to be most children on this planet. Thank you Judd and team for describing this wretched situation in depth.
I will never understand the wealthy's disdain for the poor.
I wish we could do a trading places switcheroo with every single Republican and CEO of every company mentioned in the article.
Fuckers.
Or the media and many in the public’s obsessive fawning over the obscenely wealthy-to be that wealthy doesn’t take great genius but does take a certain level of money/power obsession and moral bankruptcy. Smartest and best people I know are scientists, teachers, doctors, public defenders-not emerald mine Elon musk the racist meme lord
I’ll explain it to you. They live in a bubble and they want to keep their wealth. If more people become wealthy, they lose power and their money. They are nothing without their money. They would not know how to function without it and it’s simply greed and fear.
On top of that, although money perpetuates more money, even the great and rich can fall at the flip of a switch. If only we could control that flip of a switch.
I'd love to see the Sackler family take that fall.
On that note, if you aren't yet familiar with David Duchovny and Téa Leoni's daugher West, she is worth a follow on trying to push that fall further: https://www.instagram.com/westduchovny/
Thanks, I don't Instagram. I'll ask my partner to look out up, it sounds awesome.
HA - fair enough! Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painkiller_(TV_series)
Thank you, Adam!
All republicans I meet ask, how will we pay for this? Regarding any service for working people or the poor… I ask them why our military spending is $877 Billion- more than the next 11 largest countries COMBINED. Wouldn’t being bigger than the next five suffice? THAT is our money that should go to the people of this country! On top of that we have a number of individuals who are multi- billionaires. You can’t spend that kind of money in a lifetime! So why let this continue. We have previously had a tax rate for the wealthy topped out at 92% in the 1950s!!!
We have the answers, we refuse to use them.
For sure we need to raise the taxes a lot! None of this cutting taxes to the bone and going welp, we can only ever cut programs, not raise taxes, and welp we have a giant deficit, no clue why! Ugh.
We will never be allowed to have nice things as long as the filibuster exists, and as long as the bloated, waste and fraud filled Pentagon budget is really a jobs program.
I agree that defense spending is not producing the level of safety that it should. We need to change the mindset that proposing reductions, or simply decreasing the rate of annual increases, will result in citizens being less safe. Someone with the political will must challenge the Joint Chiefs with eliminating $X billion dollars from the budget without reducing the military's ability to safeguard the citizens. Until we eliminate the false presumption that more spending equates to greater safety our taxes will be forever controlled by the military-industrial complex. Once the sacred cow of defense spending is slaughtered on the steps of Congress emphasis on other means to protect the country can be explored.
I fully support original expansion of the CTC, but I think it's wrong to talk about trade offs with defense. That lets the rich off the hook. We need higher taxes on rich people to pay for programs that help Americans. And though I'm still part of the 98%, I should be paying more taxes to fund an expansive child tax credit.
Also, the idea that the US spends more than the next 11 counties on defense is outdated. A closer look at Chinese spend reveals a lot of spending that wasn't counted in the past. In particular, the Chinese Coast Guard has a huge budget, can patrol beyond Taiwan, and that spending didn't used to be included in comparisons. The US still spends more than any other country, but it's on par with China plus only one or two more countries.
Republicans/Joe Manchin: "F**k them kids."
Lol "large amounts of transfer payments that are not connected to work” is the modus operandi of the entire GOP
Right, they all got their salaries last year and their excellent health insurance but they literally didn't do their jobs. 27 bills passed and these assholes have the audacity to complain about the laziness of other people?
GREAT point! This is a talking point we need to use in everyday conversations. It is now in my back pocket to pull out as needed...thank you!
I don’t like this proposed law. It does too little for the poorest and gives too much to people and corporations who need to be paying more taxes. Monthly checks, generous ones, and no work requirements, period. Grandparents and Disabled people also parent children, and they need the full credits.
Important piece. The CTC during/after the pandemic was transformative. Another reason D’s need to take control of White House, Senate and House. While Manchin will be gone,I worry about Fetterman now, given his recent ‘change’; we’ll see.
I don’t get it. So we aren’t paying for this modest CTC expansion. We are lumping it in with business tax credit extensions so they don’t work against it? Like, NONE of this is paid for?
Thank you for this reporting. For those conservatives afraid we are encouraging the poor to not work, then why do you also oppose free breakfast and lunch at school? Why do you oppose expansion of free preschool? Why do you oppose paying medical and dental for children? You want these children to be born, then walk away when it comes to raising them up to be healthy and productive members of society. Explain this to me, if you can.
Perfectly asked. Let me know if you ever get an answer.
While it shouldn't take corporate tax breaks to gain political support for child poverty prevention policies; I'm assuming the domestic research tax break is referring to this?
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/section-174/
While it doesn't seem like the highest priority, allowing R&D expenses to again be deducted in the year they are incurred seems reasonable. It also benefits more than just tech heavyweights in that start ups frequently have large R&D expenses. Apparently the standard practice here (before the 2017 tax law change) and in other countries globally was too apply R&D expenses this way.
That said, ensuring the IRS is well funded to look into the businesses R&D expenses should be a part of this. Companies love to shoehorn costs into R&D and more scrutiny here would be a good thing.
Thank you for a very good explanation of the ins and outs of this issue. One that does not make my eyes glaze over.
It is astounding how these legislators think, how common sense is the furthest option from their minds.
I know a couple of really poor people. They work for me for a while, then their lives get disrupted and they fall through the cracks again.
I am retired and getting pretty old but I still manage a large garden/ orchard/ chicken flock. I could not afford $15/hour but I could afford $11/ hour, paid each day at the end of the day. This young man got in trouble with the law for a stupid brawl. He got 6 years, even though no one went to the hospital and no weapons were involved. He served his time. Now he tells me that he can't vote until he is "off papers. That's another 4 years, by his calculations. He does not own any means of transportation, so going to work in our small town is already near impossible. I used to pick him up at his house and bring him here to work every day. He was a pretty good worker.
So there are many reasons folks are poor. The way I look at it, people are directly impacted by the laws that the Legislators make. The legislature dictates who is rich, who is poor, who gets ahead, who doesn't. They are more than any other body, the dictators over our fate. When they have "safe seats" and listen to their donors instead of their constituents, the country goes to the dogs.
Our Prisons system is in serious need of reforms.
This stinginess when it comes to our nation's families and children is why even if the economy is not doing as well in Germany, or other wealthy countries, the families and children are doing better. The USA has a lot of misconceptions about what government should do for them, and one of those is that people need to suffer on their own if they do not have the access and means to do better than they are! It is mean spirited to put it nicely. This is the politics of those with a vengeful God, not a benevolent one. It is just sickening. We should be taking care of our nation's children, they are our responsibility and our future. They deserve our support. Corporations should not be getting tax breaks. We need that going in the opposite direction. As Matt Stoller says of Boeing, it should be broken up.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/its-time-to-nationalize-and-then/comments
It is already so heavily subsidized, and it's business model is just unsafe. Lots needs to be fixed in American corporate culture, but paying less taxes is not one of them.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/19/the-ceos-of-nearly-two-hundred-companies-say-shareholder-value-is-no-longer-their-main-objective.html
YEAH, RIGHT, WHATEVER!!!😡
Shorter Republicans - we will fight anything that takes one dime out of the pockets of our donors.