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Matt Bruenig is the founder of People’s Policy Project.
The debt ceiling deal is a cruel agreement that imposes new work requirements on SNAP recipients and bureaucratic hurdles for those who still qualify. It will kick people off the rolls and inflict pain, seemingly randomly, with no regard for the human toll.
Don’t let the Democrats tell you Joe Biden’s hands are tied on the debt ceiling. If he really wanted to, he could use any number of maneuvers to refuse Republicans’ anti-worker, anti-poor demands and still avoid default.
Minnesota just passed a paid parental leave program. But the plan has no minimum benefit and entirely excludes all new parents who did not earn $3,500 in the 12 months leading up to birth.
Many Nordic countries use the “Ghent” unemployment system, where unions rather than the state administer benefits. Some on the Left have applauded this approach — but leftists in the US would do well to avoid it.
It’s complicated.
US reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar just introduced the End Child Poverty Act, which would set up a universal child benefit. It’s a major improvement on previous proposals to help poor and working-class families — and would instantly slash child poverty.
The idea that AI will wipe out all our jobs is generating lots of apocalyptic headlines these days. It’s no surprise why: in a society without an egalitarian welfare state and pro-worker policies, labor reallocation can be a disaster.
Public school in the US is already provided universally, free of charge. There’s no reason we shouldn’t provide free lunch to every child at school as well.
The typical measure of Americans without health insurance underreports how many people are going without coverage. Examining how many people go without insurance in a given year reveals that over 20 percent of Americans have gone uninsured in recent years.
The nonprofit jargon of “equity” isn’t helping us tackle basic questions of how to live in a better, more equal society.
Thanks to exclusionary work history requirements, the 12 state parental leave programs in the US make one in three women ineligible for benefits on average. It doesn’t have to be this way.
The US health care system forces new parents to pay thousands of dollars simply to have their child delivered into the world. That’s absurd. We could easily make childbirth free for all.
A laudable effort to consolidate tax credits in New York State is hampered by policymakers’ obsession with means testing.
A year ago today, Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize. Since then the campaign has exploded nationwide, with an impressive 267 Starbucks locations now unionized.
The Child Tax Credit expansion last year lifted several million children out of poverty, before Democrats failed to extend it. Now Congress is debating the policy again — and this time they have the chance to ensure even more children receive the benefit.
The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade was a blow to reproductive rights. But fortunately, new data suggest that most of those seeking abortions still seem to be getting them.
The argument that means-tested welfare programs reduce inequality and poverty more than non-means-tested programs is based on an accounting trick. Universal benefits are the best and cheapest way to alleviate poverty.
GOP leaders say they want to raise the Social Security retirement age. That’s just a deceptive way of saying they want to cut benefits — punishing nonwealthy Americans while leaving untouched the massive government spending on tax shelters for the rich.
The New York Times released a big story this week declaring that child poverty has plummeted over the last thirty years. But their numbers are misleading: unlike social democratic countries, the US is still plagued by sky-high child poverty.
Moderates claim that Biden’s BBB failed because it simply “went too far.” The truth is that even if it had passed, it would have excluded scores of working families.