Comments on: There's no AARP for children

There's no AARP for children

meowzilla — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 09:59:35 -0800

[The American] welfare system has long spent generously on the old, but it has consistently skimped on the young. Why America Has Been So Stingy In Fighting Child Poverty

By: rickw

rickw — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:03:24 -0800

If children want help they should have the good sense to be old!

By: SansPoint

SansPoint — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:05:10 -0800

Punishment for sexual immorality.

By: saturday_morning

saturday_morning — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:05:21 -0800

The old (are permitted to) vote.

By: 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a

922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:08:50 -0800

kids don't vote.

By: graventy

graventy — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:16:23 -0800

Because I'm not getting any younger! It's a pretty classic FYGM situation.

By: mhoye

mhoye — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:19:48 -0800

I think it's not that kids don't vote, but that investing in children doesn't provide returns for something like fifteen to thirty years, but the returns from cutting those investments are immediate. (I mean also because the American system is racist, punitive, carceral, and relies on fear, poverty and desperation to maintain the status quo, but you know what I mean.)

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:20:15 -0800

I have learned, partly with Metafilter's help, that the answer to many, many questions beginning "why doesn't America fund ... ?" is "racism." This article identifies that. So many people cannot stand the thought that a non-white person might get a dollar's worth of anything. They think that spending money on poor children encourages their birth -- I grew up hearing that mothers got fat checks for each new baby.

By: Czjewel

Czjewel — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:21:17 -0800

I wish the government would have given me money directly when I was poor. I would have bought a go kart...

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:22:07 -0800

kids don't vote. And neither do their young parents, and if they do it's more often for the side that least supports them.

By: Countess Elena

Countess Elena — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:34:11 -0800

Parenthetically, I'll never forget seeing a reprint of this poster -- The Mayor of the Poor: Elect CURLEY. This was just a piece of local flair on a Boston restaurant wall, but when I saw it, I was blindsided by the idea. You could absolutely never run a candidate with a slogan like that today, except maybe for a city position in NYC or somewhere on the coast. It's no coincidence that the hands reaching out to him are white, except the ones that are dirtied (metonymy for honest labor). He was an Irish politician, and the face of the poor at that time was that of the white ethnic immigrant. When that changed, so did the entire project of public spending in America.

By: evilDoug

evilDoug — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:38:32 -0800

I have to say, being of retirement age I find it pretty hilarious, that you think seniors are getting some sort of wonderful bonus. I'm a small step from homelessness but some of you think I'm on easy street. It's bullshit framing and needs to die in a fire. We need to give more to help seniors. We need to give much more to help children. We can and should do both. And we could if we started demanding the wealthy pay their fair share and the military live on slightly fewer billions.

By: Gelatin

Gelatin — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:45:00 -0800

By: Fish, fish, are you doing your duty?

Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:50:17 -0800

Children in the US are not small, vulnerable humans who have rights and need to be protected. They are a means to an end, exploitable as gas or water, and meant to be consumed as such. You can use them as human shields ("won't somebody think of the children" rhetoric for transphobic legislation or against teaching actual US history). If they die, you can say it was an unfortunate but necessary tragedy (Sandy Hook, COVID) or use their parents as object lessons to support more punitive measures (cutting food stamps). You can use them as leverage to force their parents to take or keep shitty jobs that do nothing to lift them out of poverty (the article). Children exist to absorb the bad feelings we can't keep inside (abusive parents, teachers, etc.). Why else would they be too small to fight back? And if you can limit sex education and access to reproductive self-determination, children are an infinitely renewable resource. An endless supply of human-looking beings who can't speak for themselves and that you can use for whatever you want. When they grow up? Their trauma can drive them to the ranks of the people who use children. And if not, these objects turned subjects have to answer to the Great American Ethos of Personal Responsibility. It's on them to make something of their lives. And their children's.

By: Fish, fish, are you doing your duty?

Fish, fish, are you doing your duty? — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 10:54:57 -0800

(To be clear, my comment is in no way meant to downplay the role of racism in all this.)

By: jackbishop

jackbishop — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 11:08:10 -0800

I have to say, being of retirement age I find it pretty hilarious, that you think seniors are getting some sort of wonderful bonus. I'm a small step from homelessness but some of you think I'm on easy street. The social safety net across all American demographics is pretty shitty, but it is at its least shitty for seniors. Yes, there's something of a crabs-in-a-bucket mentality in pointing it out, but, to the extent America spends money on public-welfare projects, the elderly get a disproportionate share.

By: Emmy Rae

Emmy Rae — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 11:33:44 -0800

In this country the question always is "what if someone* gets something they don't deserve?" and not "how could we serve & support people with the incredible wealth we have as a nation?" and I wish politicians would start to reframe that way. *as the article points out, "someone" is usually non-White

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 11:36:25 -0800

The social safety net across all American demographics is pretty shitty, but it is at its least shitty for seniors. Only because, over your lifetime, you pay into the meager excuse for senior assistance called Social Security. So, you're kind of owed that back at the very least (although Congress appears to be very, bipartisanly, intent on kneecapping even that pittance this session.)

By: seanmpuckett

seanmpuckett — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 11:36:34 -0800

And if the answer isn't "racism" it's "capitalism" and sometimes it's a two-fer as in racism encouraged by capitalists.

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 11:42:08 -0800

Yes, there's something of a crabs-in-a-bucket mentality in pointing it out Important concept there, thanks. Crab mentality. Zero-sum thinking.

By: Reasonably Everything Happens

Reasonably Everything Happens — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 11:52:10 -0800

the answer to many, many questions beginning "why doesn't America fund ... ?" is "racism" And not only are black families more likely to have children, they're also more likely to die before drawing down too many benefits. It's what John Candy would call a "two'fr"

By: migurski

migurski — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 12:07:23 -0800

Only because, over your lifetime, you pay into the meager excuse for senior assistance called Social Security.

This is mostly untrue, and economists are starting to develop a new way of talking about the relationship between taxes and spending called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT previously). As a currency issuer, we can afford anything that we choose to do at the national scale by spending money into existence. The economy itself is a government-run program. Pretty soon even the crypto people will have figured this out from first principles at their accelerated pace. It's super-obvious when you look at today's military, one of the biggest social welfare programs around. If we're not choosing to do something as a nation, it's never for reasons of affordability. It's this: "what if someone* gets something they don't deserve?"

By: meowzilla

meowzilla — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 12:15:04 -0800

Companies that slash their employee training and outreach programs to meet their arbitrary quarterly projections so their CEOs can get bigger bonuses, then complain that "it's so hard to find good help these days", are doomed.

By: haptic_avenger

haptic_avenger — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 13:21:29 -0800

I pretty much gave up on believing the country cares about kids when they shut down schools for 1.5 years and the response was a collective shrug from the left. My sense is that one issue is individualism - people of all political stripes believe kids are the responsibility of parents/mothers. And it's largely socially acceptable to complain about kids, having to cover for workers on maternity leave, etc. The US middle class urban culture can be strangely antagonistic towards kids.

By: The_Vegetables

The_Vegetables — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 13:29:21 -0800

I kind of feel that there is no balance between young and old because so many things in the US are based on inflation, zoning, the passage of time, etc, so I have to say I think the elderly get a far better deal. It may not be 'easy street', but it's simply not comparable. I kind of agree with evilDoug that we need to give more help to struggling seniors, but the breakdown is I think we need to give more help to nearly all children. The Advance Tax Credits started in 2021 is something approximating leveling the playing field.

By: zenzenobia

zenzenobia — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 13:47:44 -0800

Seniors have Medicare, which isn't free but it's much better and cheaper than my previous employer plan was. And I was astonished to find I get to cut my Social Security income in half for income tax purposes (if you have more income, you pay taxes on 85% of it). I also was able to buy a house decades ago and paid very little for my public university degrees. Everyone should have these opportunities and decent health care and there's no reason we can't do it. Oh wait, racism. Carry on.

By: zengargoyle

zengargoyle — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 14:37:10 -0800

Kids can't spend the money, it goes to parents if anything. Group social services only work in metropolitan areas. Even getting to those and using them take the parents to take advantage. Old people know how to use the helpful money. Kids just aren't able yet to say take the bus to the library by themselves. Or go to the youth center by themselves. It takes the parents to manage that. So it immediately doubles at least the troubles of money for the kid and money for the parent to let the kid take advantage of their money. By comparison, old people are easy at least up until the end. But it's much easier for an old to get help from random strangers than it is for parents to hand over their kids to random strangers. Kids need parental cooperation, olds don't.

By: The_Vegetables

The_Vegetables — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 15:12:06 -0800

Oh wait, racism. Racism is part of it, but have you seen the UC Berkley case, where the law has required UC Berkeley to admit 5000 fewer students than it wants. Sure some of these are minorities in which race plays a part, but most probably are not. The youth now can't even buy their way into the best colleges in the US, and this is in 'liberal' California. There is an age war whether the olds (of which I at 44 is certainly am one) want to admit it or not. I'm not dismising UC Berkeley of any fault here either, US universities residential units are managed for maximum income (which means very few vacancies) so it has a hand in this crisis too, but how many units to construct certainly isn't being decided by the youth.

By: The_Vegetables

The_Vegetables — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 15:14:58 -0800

Here is a pretty good article about it.

By: clew

clew — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 15:33:51 -0800

Kids need parental cooperation, olds don't. That's true anywhere, and the US is unusually bad among rich nations in supporting children, yesno? So it can't be the explanation, although it's part of the mechanism. One of the other differences between the young and the old is that the truly unsupported old are more likely to have died already and removed themselves from the numbers. The damage may well have started when they were children, though, or parents, it's not necessarily a separate problem.

By: Pater Aletheias

Pater Aletheias — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 15:59:57 -0800

The Advance Tax Credits started in 2021 is something approximating leveling the playing field. I'm starting to suspect that 2021 will someday be the answer for the trivia question: "In which year did the US implement a temporary program that drastically reduced child poverty, yet was never repeated?'

By: chortly

chortly — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 16:11:32 -0800

I pretty much gave up on believing the country cares about kids when they shut down schools for 1.5 years and the response was a collective shrug from the left. It wasn't a shrug -- the left for the most part wanted to keep their kids home to keep them safe. That may arguably have been the wrong choice, but it was made out of concern for their children, not disregard for them. See for instance this Pew poll from 2020. The last table shows the percent saying each factor should be given a lot of consideration in school opening/closures: Risk to students: R: 37%, D: 82%. Risk to teachers: R: 35%, D: 81% Parents not being able to work: R: 56%, D: 43% Student academics: R: 61%, D: 36% Student social life: R: 49%, D: 29% Cost to schools: R: 29%, D: 38% And these differences are even greater when you compare BIPOC or low-income Democrats with Republicans.

By: evilDoug

evilDoug — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 16:37:25 -0800

Really Gelatin? Because it seems to say that in the very first sentence of the post. I know that was a while ago, shall I quote it to remind you? OK then, I will "[The American] welfare system has long spent generously on the old..."

By: cinchona

cinchona — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 18:53:44 -0800

I have to say, being of retirement age I find it pretty hilarious, that you think seniors are getting some sort of wonderful bonus. It really is so funny. Especially because a lot of the individuals complaining about this supposed "privileged geriatric class" are some of the loudest critics of the people who think that the "multitude" of programs and services "reserved for" groups like women, LGBT people and ethnic minorities is evidence that society "caters to" these groups.

By: Mr.Know-it-some

Mr.Know-it-some — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 19:30:53 -0800

One group just issued a manifiesto calling for "substantially increasing public investment in children ... increasing resources available to low-income families with families with children through changes to the Child Tax Credit and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) ... the safety net for children should be strengthened during economic downturns....school spending should be protected during economic downturns ... maintain high rates of health insurance coverage, increase participation in prenatal care and well-child visits, and ensure affordable access to doctors...families should have access to high-quality and affordable early childhood education...Increased spending on children should be financed by offsetting new spending with cuts to entitlement programs that benefit upper-middle-class and affluent seniors; so-called corporate welfare, including agriculture subsidies; subsidies to well-off households in the federal tax code; and increased tax enforcement." What's striking isn't the recommendations but the source: The most established of establishment think tanks, Brookings (center-left) and AEI (corporatist right). While it's certainly likely to gather as much dust as the typical think-tank report, such bipartisan consensus among analysts can eventually result in real change. (They also endorse policies that might not please the left as much: "The working group supports policies to strengthen and encourage marriage along with clear public messages about the importance of marriage.")

By: Violet Blue

Violet Blue — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 22:04:56 -0800

Even if it wasn't the OP's intentional framing, could we not pit one group against the other — and dismiss ageism? The elderly are all of us, regardless of ethnicity, should we live so long. Is the poverty rate higher among kids than elders? Yes.

The monthly poverty rate for older adults increased from 15.7% in January (2021) to 16% in September, a less significant change than with other demographics.

The monthly poverty rate for adults ages 18 to 64 increased from 14.3% to 15.5%.

The monthly poverty rate for children increased from 18.7% to 20.4%.

Does that mean the elderly are doing well? No.

More than 15 million older adults are economically insecure.

About 50% of seniors rely on Social Security for the majority of their income.

Over the next 10 years, the number of elderly Americans without homes could triple.

They are also more vulnerable to economic instability than others for the same reasons they're more vulnerable, generally: Declines in physical health, cognitive abilities and social networks. The oldest and poorest among the elderly are women over the age of 80.

By: FencingGal

FencingGal — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 04:08:04 -0800

It's unfortunate that the article framed this as "young versus old," but lots of people love the age wars, so that's going to get the most clicks. What seems to be missing though is the direct connection between childhood and elder poverty. Parents who are barely making ends meet are not saving for their own retirement. In thirty years, they will be the elderly poor. How many of the financially vulnerable elderly now would be in much better financial shape if they hadn't spent two decades struggling specifically because they were raising children? I spent years as a single mother going into debt to take care of my children. I have just come out of that in the last ten years - and largely because of help, then a small inheritance, from a generous aunt who never had children of her own. I do not regret having children, but it was not a financially wise decision. And because things also suck for young adults, a lot of the elderly who are able to are continuing to help their children, sometimes at the cost of their own financial stability. Financial instability affects whole families regardless of age. I'm financially stable now (at 63), but have a lot of fear about the future. Medicare is not great for cancer patients - I know a lot of people who are dependent on charitable organizations to make their copays for medication (oral cancer medication, which is very common and often a lifetime expense, is ruinously expensive, but not covered in the same way as infusions).

By: MtDewd

MtDewd — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 04:43:45 -0800

Somehow this reminds me of an old Soviet-era joke where the local commissar takes funds out of elementary education and puts it into the prison system. When asked why, he replied, 'I'm just looking out for my future. It's unlikely I'll be spending it in school.'

By: Gelatin

Gelatin — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 05:19:56 -0800

Really Gelatin? Because it seems to say that in the very first sentence of the post. I know that was a while ago, shall I quote it to remind you? OK then, I will "[The American] welfare system has long spent generously on the old..." It can simultaneously be true that 1) the US devotes relatively more resources on the elderly, 2) that these resources are insufficient for certain individuals, 3) the US also devotes relatively few resources to children in poverty, and 4) that no one, not even the OP and certainly no one else in the thread, characterized the situation as "easy street."

By: Glegrinof the Pig-Man

Glegrinof the Pig-Man — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 07:18:36 -0800

(They also endorse policies that might not please the left as much: "The working group supports policies to strengthen and encourage marriage along with clear public messages about the importance of marriage.") How is the left supposedly opposed to those policies? I'm trying to parse this as something that doesn't veer into either dangerous "fourteen words" territory or the religious right's war against LGBTQ+ people and coming up blank. After all, I could certainly give you a ton of examples on the right and center that adhere much closer to being hostile to families, given that they are rather infamous for pushing children into concentration camps, preventing marriages between consenting adults, and forcing both parents and children into multigenerational poverty, all of which are not only anti-family, but straight out of the Nazi playbook. Hell, in Tennessee, they're making it difficult to impossible for Jews to adopt, and that was even before they got mad about Maus.

By: FencingGal

FencingGal — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 07:44:36 -0800

One additional point about the interconnection of generations: because the US does not consider providing childcare essential, a lot of parents are dependent on grandparents to care for their children so they can work. So grandparents getting necessary health care and being able to afford to retire can directly affect the finances of young families. And that's not even considering the many grandparents who are primary caregivers for their grandchildren. In 2016, 2.7 million grandparents were custodial grandparents. That's an increase of 7% since 2009, and rates are higher among Black and Hispanic populations. Really, the youth-versus-age framing is a bunch of bullshit.

By: evilDoug

evilDoug — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 08:55:38 -0800

I guess there's a meaning to 'generous' that I'm just not seeing.

By: Brian B.

Brian B. — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 08:44:49 -0800

I pretty much gave up on believing the country cares about kids when they shut down schools for 1.5 years and the response was a collective shrug from the left. It doesn't follow that concern for kids is related to accelerating a pandemic by exposing them and their teachers and family while unvaccinated. For the record, those schools were only physically shut down and put online, and billions of dollars were spent to buy tens of millions of computers and related support as part of the education infrastructure. One could bet that if the pandemic was worsened from in-school exposure, the right wing would then use it to their advantage. We can only wonder how many bad-school headlines were avoided by those few students who would have refused to wear masks as their parents do to the airlines.