Having never made enough money to even consider the possibility of becoming financially responsible for a minor, I have long been baffled by the idea that a tax credit would genuinely provide reproductive encouragement for those wondering how they might conceivably feed food that costs money and not credit to future generations of Americans. Well apparently, those stimulus checks we got or are still waiting for or were garnished because we owed money to the U.S. government put some wild ideas into the old government’s head: what if we gave people who wanted children but couldn’t afford them the money to purchase supplies for the children?
According to the Washington Post the United States “spends less than almost any other developed nation on child benefits as a share of its economy.” Furthermore the current tax credit available to parents often “diminishes in value for Americans who do not earn enough money to use the credit to offset their tax obligations to the IRS. That means that millions of the lowest earners do not make enough to receive the full benefit.” So the poorest children receive no benefits because their parents don’t earn enough for them to qualify for assistance. Sounds like a very American system.
However, the Biden administration is bandying about a plan similar to the stimulus that would deposit “checks worth $300 every month per child younger than 6, as well as $250 every month per child aged 6 to 17. That would amount to $3,600 over the course of the year for young children, as well as $3,000 a year for older children,” officials in the know told the Post. Eventually, these benefits would end for “affluent” parents, though there’s no word on how much money one has to have to be considered affluent by IRS standards.
Wow, this is a wild system—you say we take a percentage of everyone in the country’s accumulated money, then use that currency to help children who do not have enough money to eat? What if we also used it to give medicine and medical services to people, so that it’s like, they pay some sort of tax on their income, and in return get an improved quality of life? Is this anything? If only some other intrepid nation or, like, whole continents of them could beta-test this to see if it works.