kevin__

The thing is, we have actual data on a lot of these policies. And we know what works and doesn't work.

1 dollar spent on increasing food stamps increases GDP by something like $1.75. For something like an expanded child tax credit, it's more like $1.25. And for tax cuts for top earners, it's around $0.30. Even just looking at it from a purely economic standpoint, one policy is drastically better than the other. But more importantly, the first two policies also have enormous positive and direct benefits - they drastically decrease things like child poverty.

These are some of the most obvious public policy choices for any wealthy country, and for whatever reason we just refuse to take action until there's a massive recession or a global pandemic, and even then it's for like 6 months or a year.

The fact that this article even needed to be written says a lot about the state of politics in America.

I don't think I will ever wrap my head around the fact that there are politicians who seem to sincerely believe that the best way to decrease poverty is to give tax cuts to the rich and huge corporations, instead of actions like what's described in the article.

Sure, I guess in a dictionary sense of the word. But that obviously doesn't match their behavior in that case. They wouldn't be arguing for lower taxes or cuts to social security if they were only interested in preserving what existed in 1980. They wouldn't be attempting to overturn Roe v. Wade or gut the Civil Rights Act.

I think a large part of the problem with conservative policy positions (at least in the US) is that they're mostly unchanged from 30-40 years ago. Despite mountains of evidence on things like work requirements for government benefits, multiplier effects of stimulus spending vs tax cuts, benefits of expanding healthcare coverage, and many more, the conservative positions remain the same.

I would guess this is likely because these positions are more based on philosophy than they are on actual economics or other evidence-based fields. This was a reasonable position when there wasn't strong evidence to either prove or disprove these arguments, but at some point the evidence becomes overwhelming, and those positions should no longer be considered serious. We're long passed that point on a number of issues, but it sure doesn't seem like anything will change anytime soon.

If nothing else, it shows the value of having an actual editor. I'm assuming Glenn's writing has always been this ridiculous, but that decent editors were preventing his worst instincts and tendencies from actually making it into the published version.