As you know, I am NOT a big fan of giving people tax dollars with no expectations or accountability measures. Giving parent(s) money per each child may be a good idea if our goal is to increase family sizes, and/or enable a parent to stay home with their child(ren). Which are not bad goals...
However my goal as always is to ensure that all children are raised by capable, mature, emotionally stable, responsible, loving, etc adults. I just don't see this helping to attain that goal unless it has some teeth to hold parent(s) accountable for doing their job.
I mean if the tax payers are going to pay them to raise educated, emotionally stable and productive future citizens. What do we do about incompetent, neglectful, irresponsible, etc parent(s) who squander this wonderful gift from the tax payers?
Thoughts?
8 comments:
I think in large part this is a good plan. I'd change some of the pay-fors on it, but overall the notion of providing folks this money on a monthly basis instead of as a yearly tax credit makes more sense. And providing extra money towards the raising of children will have massive positive societal impact.
"massive positive societal impact"
Maybe about as good as the war on poverty... More broken families, more single parent households, increased crime rates, more gangs, etc?
The old saying concerns me. "The path to hell is paved with good intentions"...
Here are some open ended what if questions:
- Irresponsible & emotionally unstable mom gets $350 / child up to 5 kids?
- Middle class family gets $350 / child up to 5 kids?
I am not denying that there are upside for many kids. But on the other hand it is like giving out Jerry's education vouchers. Who will be left even further behind?
Well, sure there will be some who will benefit less. Shall we not do something that will benefit the great majority of our most at-risk children just because we can't guarantee that it won't help all of them? (and if that's the standard, there's a whole hell of a lot of government largesse that needs to be looked at, too)
Or... We could address the problems...
Denying the likely looming disasters from a program like this is like an ostrich burying the head in the sand.
Remember that most of the in need kids already get monthly checks through the welfare system.
This would be a LOT of money flowing to many income level households with no consideration given to financial need.
"Remember that most of the in need kids already get monthly checks through the welfare system."
Um, this proposal replaces TANF with this.
Correct.
So we replace a needs based system...
with an
Everyone middle class and below gets checks system...
Why is this better again?
Because our needs-based system doesn't take care of the need, for starters. Only about one-fourth of eligible TANF families get funding because we only allocate a certain amount for it at the federal level and states can't afford to make up the difference.
Here is my simple math...
This is to be a budget neutral change.
Many new households will get sizable checks, including 2 parent homes with reasonable income.
That money has to come from someone else's checks, or the system has to be hugely more operationally efficient.
Something smells fishy.
Post a Comment