So, I had some snivelly third way neoliberal go "WELL ACKSHULLY PROGRESSIVE POLICY DOESNT POLL WELL AND WE COULD'VE HAD THE CHILD TAX CREDIT IF WE COMPROMISED WITH MANCHIN AND ROMNEY ON A WORK REQUIREMENT AND WORKING CLASS VOTERS LIKE WORK REQUIREMENTS", while citing some poorly sourced twitter thread from a vox journalist for evidence of this.
It took me a bit track down the journalist's blog, read several articles on the child tax credit, and find polling data that suggests this and surprise surprise, it's from right wing sources.
Like, literally conservative polls from conservative pollsters. Sure, they address a wide spread of voters, but honestly, those pollsters could've also been fishing for narratives. Anyway, here's a focus group study on this and I wanted to address this.
You can tell from the word cloud at the top that this is gonna be a fun one. WORK is the top word by a large margin in the word cloud. And yes, the entire thing is gonna preach the religion of work a lot.
But, having once been in this religion of work, and being raised in a middle class family who was anti welfare, I feel at least somewhat qualified to wade through this mess.
FAIRNESS: A “hand up” for those working, no “handouts” for those that aren’t
The single word spoken most often across all three sessions was “work,” pointing to both its rhetorical importance
and real source of meaning and stability for the families we talked to. Most of the participants could name
families that were struggling and needed help but placed a heavy preference on benefits being “fair” and
conditioned on participation in the labor force. The idea of universal cash benefits for parents was not received
positively by most participants.
This was most pronounced among non college educated people polled. Now, why is this significant? because to be honest, i probably wouldnt have found my way out of the cult of work without the critical thinking that bestows a college degree. I know that despite being pro working class, i also crap on the working class a lot for pro work sentiments, but really, it's a problem with them. They've been so brainwashed into this religion of work, that they just center their whole lives around it. They dont understand how life could exist without work, and they feel resentful toward those who don't work, so they kinda wanna drag everyone down with them, and force them all to work.
This is why im not super impressed by some forms of traditional working class populism. Because a lot of it just amounts to making work one's entire identity and then using this toxic culture to bully and coerce everyone else into working and being just as miserable as they are, while taking pride in their status as a worker.
No, you're a slave. And you're just trying to drag us all down into slavery. Don't take pride in this crap, and I'm sorry, but I have active disdain toward anyone who preaches these values.
Even then, the facade quickly falls apart under contradictory ideas. Becuase it always does.
On Child Tax Credits:
• “Some people are working and doing their best, but they’re working at, like, McDonald’s, you know?
They’re still low-income…but not making a crapload of money.”
• “I think that a lot of people that don’t work and get the benefit, it’s a little unfair…It’s going to just
allow them to abuse it, not have to work.”
• “Is it going to have any kind of positive long-term effects on poverty or generational
poverty?…$250-300 a month isn’t enough to transform your life.”
So these are three separate quotes, but second one. "A little unfair"...a little unfair...how? because you have to work? What if you got it too and didn't have to work? Still unfair?
And then the third quote directly contradicts the second. Either it's enough to change your life where you dont wanna work, or it doesn't. Which is it? (hint, they're right, it's not enough to meaningfully reduce work incentive, these people are just talking out of some uneducated sense of fairness based in resentment politics).
• On Making Ends Meet:
• “I think the middle class is struggling more than the lower class, because the lower class has so many
more opportunities for programs, than the working [or] middle class.”
• “I think it takes two financially to hold a household together…I do believe that the man should feel
responsible for the family, [but the] cost of living is so high that it does take two incomes to make it
happen.”
• “[As a working mom,] I would love not to work. I think my kids would [too]. I noticed that when I’m
home more from not working, they thrive.”
• “[In] the skilled trades, there’s a huge deficit of workers and millions of vacancies across the country.
No one ever really talks about that…I think there’s this romance surrounding college.”
And here we go. More contradictory attitudes.
First of all. Totally agree on the first one. And that is the source of resentment politics. The middle doesnt benefit from government programs. So they become anti government programs, seeing the government make poor peoples' lives "easy" while they don't get anything, and feel like they have to work for everything.
Again, as someone raised in a household with this kind of thinking, this is literally the source of resentment politics. "I work so hard why do they get stuff for free, i would rather have lower taxes, yay ronald reagan!"
This is how support for reagan started. Splitting the middle and the bottom. Splitting the whites from the blacks. Men from the women, and so on and so forth.
But then you have like the other statements. How yeah, you have two incomes to do what one used to do 40 years ago. Gee, did you ever think it's because businesses dont wanna pay people to work? Why do you glorify work? Do you not realize that work is the source of all problems here?
And then you have the third statement. Oh, I would love not to work. YES. SO TAKE THE MONEY, AND DON'T WORK. "NO, NO HANDOUTS, ONLY WORK, CHILDCARE INSTEAD" (a common theme that came up).
Seriously people, I wanna help you, stop fighting your own interests.
Yes, theres deficits in skilled trades. Ya know, theres a reason for that. My dad was in the trades. The work is physically brutal, like, literally backbreaking. LITERALLY. Back breaking. People dont wanna do it. And they shouldnt be forced to do it until employers make the jobs pay appropriately and have adequate safety standards. but businesses dont want they, they want slaves, and your work happy mindsets are literally simping for that.
Romance surrounding college. Yeah. because for many of us, it was seen as a ticket to a nice cushy job where we don't HAVE to break our backs.
People dont wanna work crappy jobs like that. And we should stop glorifying that, and trying to coerce people into that. Markets should be voluntary.
Moving on:
One phrase came up, multiple times, in each of the three groups, when working-class parents would talk about
what they saw as the benefits available to the poor and the lack of a safety net for the middle-class: “You’re
damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Work hard, many parents felt, and you’re rewarded by being ineligible
for government assistance, but at the same time, your take-home pay is not enough to cover the ever-escalating
cost of living (which participants most often defined by mentioning housing, groceries, and gas.)
Again. "I work so hard, why should anyone else get crap for free". Middle class people are brainwashed by reaganomics to complain about poor people on welfare, not understanding that the problem with their lives is actually the system. And I'm trying to fix the system, by making programs universal.
Seriously, get out of the way, I'm trying to help you.
One Ohio mom did the focus group session via video chat from the hotel her family had been living in after they
had lost their house. She reported that their income was too high to qualify for their county’s affordable housing
program, but not enough to stably afford their own place. Her take? “It’s like you’re damned if you do and you’re
damned if you don’t nowadays.”
YES, and this is why we should have universal programs.
A major source of tension among the participants was the heavy emphasis placed on work while also recognizing
the need to take care of less-well-off families’ needs. Most of the participants could name families that were
struggling and needed help but placed a heavy preference on benefits being “fair” and conditioned on participation
in the labor force. One Ohio mom said that a national child care system was “definitely a great idea, as far as
putting money into the system to make [work] more available, versus handing out the money to people.”
On the whole, the idea of unconditional cash benefits for parents was received unfavorably, with multiple
participants expressing concern that parents couldn’t be trusted to spend the money on child-related items and
that the benefit would seem “unearned."
Seriously people, stop fighting your own fricking interests here.
Families wanted the option of taking advantage of some benefit programs without giving up on work, and prized
optionality in the delivery of in-kind and tax programs. In the EITC and CTC discussions, for example, parents generally
preferred being given the choice between delivery of monthly benefit payments or annual lump sums. When talking about
child care plans, there was a general consensus in favor of voucher-type plans that would allow them to find a provider
themselves, rather than expanding Head Start or extending the public education model down to early childhood.
Some participants knew people who had been directly impacted by marriage penalties in the tax code or had faced
those penalties themselves. In the words of one Georgia mom, it was unfair to have “to choose between marrying
a man she loves or losing the benefits that she has.”
Seriously, you realize why these programs dont work for you and have such nonsense penalties attached to them is because weirdo do gooders like you put those conditions in place to ensure only those who "deserved" them get them. I get it. You feel resentment toward not getting anything yourselves. So let's make a system that works for everyone. These contradictory attitudes are annoying.
Throughout this report, the individual vignettes from our interviews are complimented by a national survey on family
policy conducted by American Compass, a conservative economic policy think tank. The American Compass/YouGov
“Home Building” survey, fielded in January 2021, offers insights on family policy and attitudes from a representative
sample of 2,000 U.S. adults aged 18–50, including 1,174 respondents who reported being a parent or guardian.
Again, keep in mind, these are republicans doing these surveys. And for some reason neoliberals think this is a massive "own" against progressives. Like the answer is to compromise MORE. No, it's to try to break through to these people and make them realize that the problems are due to their contradictory atttiudes toward welfare.
Also, despite preferring work requirements, i dont see any people really pushing for hard work requirements. people just have contradictory attitudes and these republican buttholes seem to be framing what they say in ways to push certain narratives.
Disagreement centered around the question of whether a child benefit should be tied to work, as in the Rubio-
Lee plan, or universal, as in the Biden administration’s proposal. While many parents acknowledged the expenses
that come along with having children, there was far from unanimity about whether the child benefits would be a
worthwhile idea. There was an irreconcilable tension in acknowledging the benefit that monthly payments would
have for families like theirs, while also wanting to put constraints on how the payments were structured or given
to avoid waste or abuse
Yes, and this is the core fundamental contradiction that exists in your typical American work worshipper's psyche. Oh gee, I would benefit, but can we really have it not tied to WORK?!
Again, yall know my views on this. F work. F work requirements. And I'd rather not compromise with this cultish obsession with the idea. We would aim to create a society without as much dependence on work.
I think that they should provide that [benefit] whether the person has a job or not…In
families where the parent or two are going back to college, that’s just like a job too. So
regardless of whether you work or not, you should be able to get that help, that extra
supplemental income for your kids.”
So peoples' views are nuanced, and yes, this is why work requirements suck. What counts as a job or not?
I mean, i'm trying to become an author, do I have a job or dont I? Having work requirements really comes down to pigeon holing people into a certain idea of what work looks like. If I care for my family like I have on and off with family members being sick or injured, does that make me employed or not? Because I've literally done that. Is trying to write a book a job or not? Because I've been at least trying that. It's one of the reasons I havent been posting here as much post election.
Overall, participants in the Georgia session, which was comprised of black parents, were more likely to favor the
idea of universal child benefits than the other two groups. This jibes with findings from the American Compass
survey, which found black parents more likely than white or Hispanic ones to express a preference for universal
child benefits over other forms of federal assistance to families
Based.
8Working-Class Americans’ Views on Family Policy
A Texas mom agreed with the idea that a strict work requirement would leave out parents who were most in
need: “Some people are working and doing their best, but they’re working at, like, McDonald’s, you know? They’re
still low-income…not making a crapload of money.” People with disabilities, another participant chimed in, are
often working part-time, and wouldn’t make enough to qualify for a full payment if there was a work requirement
associated with the benefit
Yeah again, work requirements are too black and white. I mean, I'm likely autistic, but im not diagnosed and dont qualify for being disabled. So just getting disability is hard since the system is largely restrictive with who counts. Never mind like insane amounts of autistic people are unemployed.
Then I have a friend who lived off of disability. But then they risked losing it if they worked too much. And yeah it's hot mess. Universal programs are good, conditional ones suck and puill the rug out from under you. And then middle class people complain they dont get free money and have to work. So, let's give them free money, so none of us have to complain about other people not working.
Other participants also noted a certain logic in providing a benefit for single parents while requiring one of two
parents to work to receive child benefits. “If you are a two-person household, and one of you is capable of working
and doing something to provide for your family, you should do that,” an Ohio mother in her early 40s said
...why?
“There being an incentive to that one parent needs to work, I think I agree with that, because it would maybe help
control the use of it,” said another Ohio mom with two kids. But at the same time, she worried that more checks
would lead to more avenues for government to interfere in people’s lives. “For me personally, I would feel like the
government would be able to implement more control, by giving that money to people,” she said
Uh, unfounded fear. We already have a coercive system in which the government has control over people. It's called conditional welfare.
More discussion, particularly in the Texas focus group, centered around the child benefits as an unearned handout to
parents who weren’t working. “Some people will be responsible with it, and the other people will just live off of it,”
one male participant in Texas said. “I think that a lot of people that don’t work and get the benefit, it’s a little unfair,”
said another Ohio participant in her mid-40s. “It’s going to just … allow them to abuse it, not have to work
If you're getting it too, what's so bad about that?
Either way, CTC is so small it wont discourage work. You cant live off that.
An Ohio mom with three kids noted that, under the ARP, she will “receive $750 [per month.] That would
about pay for rent, if I was to receive it.” But with her very next sentence, she highlighted the tension on display
throughout the session, with parents in the self-described working-class feeling that those not working have more
benefits available to them, but not necessarily wanting those benefit programs for themselves. She continued:
“I don’t know that it is something that’s needed. They just gave us stimulus money, there
are programs out there…and I don’t really see if the middle class is where [the checks]
really need to go. I don’t know that it’s necessary.”
Okay, people complain about not getting money, and then complain when we do give them money.
Contradictory fricking people.
A working mom from Ohio said that she’d consider it “a handout. There’s really no incentive, other than have
babies.” A Texas mom in her late 30s sounded a similar note: “$300-400 dollars a month, that would [be] really
beneficial…But at the same time, it could also coddle people that don’t want to work that are playing the system.
So, like, what’s the fine print?”
“I do feel like it’s a form of welfare,” an Ohio mom agreed. “That money would be better spent from the
government for working incentives…[or] to offer more affordable child care.”
In Texas, one participant mentioned knowing “a couple of people have had more kids to cheat the system.”
Another woman in that group talked about her niece, who had her first child at age 13. “Who has the babies now?
My parents. My parents are the ones raising [them,] because she couldn’t take care of them.
Ya know what? I give up on these people.
You all wanna live in the hellhole we call modern america, fricking go for it. Complain about your lives. Complain about hard people work. Complain about how you dont get anything. But then complain about the people who wanna fix it because you think it would somehow be unfair TO YOU to have someone not working. Because that would be horrible, wouldn't it? A utopia where...we dont have to work any more. The horror.
Anyway, keep in mind, this was a survey done by a right wing group. And they literally looked for like, "working class without a college degree" people. Ya know, the people who I'm trying to help, but their contradictory attitudes keep getting in the way.
You guys really need to shed this work ethic crap. And you need to get over your stupid little contradictory ethics with all of the shoulds. This crap is why our system is so broken in the first place, then you complain about it bring broken, and yeah.
Anyway, does this change my mind? No. I understand that my ideas are a tough sell to people, but...I honestly think I understand capitalism better than they do. Because I have studied the issues. i do understand the problems, and as you can see, i'm running around in circles trying to debunk all of this contradictory nonsense.
My vision is simple. Everyone gets a UBI, everyone chooses whether to work or not. Because the UBI isnt gonna be overly generous, people will mostly still work. Some won't, but that's okay. Because we should move away from work anyway.
And honestly, im not really willing to compromise with regressive fricking people like joe manchin, or mitt romney, or joe working man whose mind is so dull from a life of manual labor they literally arent thinking straight when they go to the polls.
It's a lot like the matrix quote:
“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
That's how I feel about these people. I want to help these guys. My interested are adjacent to these guys. It's like they won't let people help them because their mindsets are so dependent on that system that they are fighting to protect it. And they're pushing these broken and contradictory politics.
At the same time, I do believe that people want change in this country, even if they dont know what that change is. I dont expect to change everyone's minds, but if we can flip enough people and let my ideas stand on their own two feet for rational people to evaluate, I think the strength of them will prevail.
Either way, I have no interest in compromising my vision neither with neoliberals, nor with regressive working class conservatives. You want that weird regressive contradictory BS? Keep voting for trump, see how that works out for you. Hint: it won't. Because I understand the problems of society and how to fix them, and you don't, and trump doesn't. He's not gonna save you.
I'll just keep moving forward.
