It doesn’t bother you sometimes that some people starve while others hoard wealth that rivals the gdp of entire countries?
People going hungry, especially children, is a travesty.
What is your solution to it? We already have food stamps, welfare, fully subsidized healthcare, child tax credits, social security disability, free school breakfasts and lunches, Section 8 Housing, SNAP, WIC, CHIP, Medicaid, churches, charities, social security death benefit and so much more. People are still hungry.
Should we do more? The lesson of Africa says we shouldn’t. Decades of food aid to Africa did little more than make the continent dependent on food aid and drive all the farmers out of business because they couldn’t compete against free.
And I haven’t even brought up lthat there simply aren’t enough billionaires to tax to make even a tiny difference in any of this. Even if you took literally their entire net worth, converted it to cash (which is literally impossible) and spent it on the poor it wouldn’t make any difference.
THe child tax credit cut child hunger by 26%. We let it end. Giving people food isn't an especially hard problem in the US, yet we're not able to do it.
Increasing the eligibility and amount of the credit is helpful, but doling it out in repeated checks that you then have to go back and report on your 1040 is annoying. How many news stories are run about people who depend on their annual tax refund for living expenses? Reducing that refund by paying the money out earlier and celebrating it as a free handout is awfully manipulative.
Not really negatively manipulative IMO, I've worked with many people who don't really understand taxes and they think that a refund is some kind of free money "bonus" and often use it to make frivolous purchases and blow the whole refund at once. Most of these people don't really plan or budget on how to use their refund because they have no idea how much it's going to be, it's just treated as kind of a random winfall.
Doling that out in smaller increments and making the purpose specific (child credit, instead of tax refund) seems like a good nudge into better spending habits... especially when the amount is known ahead of time.
they think that a refund is some kind of free money "bonus"
For many people that get the child tax credit, a bonus is exactly what it is.
The word you should have put in quotes is “refund”. My sister, for example, used to pay about $1,500 in tax throughout the year yet get a $7,500 “refund”.
Isn’t that something? Pay x and get 5x as a “refund”.
in my opinion, as long as people are starving we aren’t doing enough… if billionaires aren’t enough tax the millionaires, if the millionaires aren't enough then tax me too… I can’t look at our existing failures and say “good enough, it’s just too hard”
People going hungry, especially children, is a travesty.
What is your solution to it? We already have food stamps, welfare, fully subsidized healthcare, child tax credits, social security disability, free school breakfasts and lunches, Section 8 Housing, SNAP, WIC, CHIP, Medicaid, churches, charities, social security death benefit and so much more. People are still hungry.
Should we do more? The lesson of Africa says we shouldn’t. Decades of food aid to Africa did little more than make the continent dependent on food aid and drive all the farmers out of business because they couldn’t compete against free.
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food...
And I haven’t even brought up lthat there simply aren’t enough billionaires to tax to make even a tiny difference in any of this. Even if you took literally their entire net worth, converted it to cash (which is literally impossible) and spent it on the poor it wouldn’t make any difference.