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Here’s our endorsement of the Biden and Romney plans to pay parents a direct cash benefit. I would just add two points: 1/ https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/13/reducing-child-poverty-in-america?frsc=dg%7Ce
First, America is desperate for bills that break the hard partisan divide. The Trump/Tucker/Hawley populist side of the GOP claims to back cash for parents. They should be forced to support Romney’s bill by the salubrious power of hypocrisy. 2/
Here’s conservative wonk @lymanstoneky making the point that Romney’s plan is pro-family, for example. National Review is for it too. 3/ https://ifstudies.org/blog/romneys-family-security-act-is-pro-marriage-what-the-numbers-tell-us
(Here’s Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review with favorable commentary.) 4/ https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nationalreview.com/corner/romneys-child-allowance-plan-and-the-republican-future/amp/
Such bipartisanship is vital in the US because its two-party system has degenerated into tribal hatred. In the long run it needs a multiparty system, but in the short run bipartisanship shows voters that the hatred is partly just bs political mobilization. 5/
Second, the Biden and Romney cash child benefits are great because they respond to a social truth: the government should support parents in raising the next generation of citizens. 6/
Raising children is a joyous but often exhausting task. Adults hesitate to take it on because the risks are huge and it seems like you bear them nearly all yourself. 7/
Meanwhile the kids you raise aren’t just for you: they become everyone else’s doctors, bus drivers, entrepreneurs and standup comedians. They pay the taxes that are the previous generation’s pensions. 8/
In economic language, raising kids has vast positive externalities for the rest of society which are not captured by their parents. Government should subsidize or it will fail to reach socially optimal production levels. 9/
In somewhat out-of-fashion poetic language: your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. 10/ https://poets.org/poem/children-1
Anyway, I think there is a moral dimension when government fails to support things that are generally recognized as social goods. People stop understanding what the point of government is. 11/
And on the flip side, when government does support these things, it is hugely popular, it makes government popular, and it reminds us all that we are capable of doing good things with each other after all. 12/12
