I think if Dems had done more spending to keep stuff like keep the Expanded Child Tax Credit going and maintained their huge advantage among parents/recipients then maybe they would have a chance, but their 12-point lead among this group evaporated as soon as they allowed the monthly support to expire.
When you say spread out, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean something akin to four stimulus checks of $350 every three months instead of one check for $1400? Or that they should have been smaller—say $700 - even if more people would have lost their homes? Or both smaller and spread out?
Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest that stopping climate change is the best way to reduce biorisk; I meant that the value of stopping climate change is even higher because it alsocontributes to additional cause areas. And I just don’t see anything stopping us from strongly funding pandemic prevention/biorisk reduction and minimizing damage from climate change by aiming for 1.5C or less heating.
That post reminds me of some research suggesting that narrow piecemeal reforms tended to be more successful in US State Ballot Initiatives that people directly vote on, compared to more comprehensive Ballot Initiatives. Thus multiple narrow initiatives over the years could add up to more change over time than fewer big ones, though there are still challenges because sometimes it’s very difficult to change things one part at a time.
Hmm I just think of growing research on how poverty wipes out the potential of people much of the time and it seems like a pretty serious problem for innovation. Even if one ignored the moral side, it’s a drain on IQ and fosters scarcity mindsets with poorer decisions.
I really like this policy and also the earned income tax credit, and we can talk about different policies like the stimulus checks as well, which I don’t necessarily oppose. I also agree that they can help during elections. However, the point I’m making is not about what to spend on, nor the overall size of spending over time, but about timing… spending too much at once- be it on right wing issue (military, corporate tax cuts) or left wing (welfare, education, health) … I don’t have strong opinions on what the US should spend more on… maybe they should spend more (or less) on the military and more (cf. left) or less on health (cf. Robin Hanson) and/or education (cf. Bryan Caplan).
As Obama’s former advisor Furman says: The first $1T of stimulus led to a great recovery, but the last $0.5T of stimulus caused a lot of inflation but only few jobs. In other words, the marginal cost-effectiveness of looser policy was bad and the stimulus should have been smaller—maybe $1 trillion instead of 2.
I don’t have strong opinions on the exact implementation of spreading things out more, I was arguing that this should probably be done using econometric models that take into account the current macroenvironment, and not just based the discussion ‘on casual observation rather than econometrics’ i.e. ‘We need to spend more on health, climate, etc. $X.0T is a nice round number’.
I think if Dems had done more spending to keep stuff like keep the Expanded Child Tax Credit going and maintained their huge advantage among parents/recipients then maybe they would have a chance, but their 12-point lead among this group evaporated as soon as they allowed the monthly support to expire.
When you say spread out, what exactly do you mean? Do you mean something akin to four stimulus checks of $350 every three months instead of one check for $1400? Or that they should have been smaller—say $700 - even if more people would have lost their homes? Or both smaller and spread out?
Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest that stopping climate change is the best way to reduce biorisk; I meant that the value of stopping climate change is even higher because it also contributes to additional cause areas. And I just don’t see anything stopping us from strongly funding pandemic prevention/biorisk reduction and minimizing damage from climate change by aiming for 1.5C or less heating.
That post reminds me of some research suggesting that narrow piecemeal reforms tended to be more successful in US State Ballot Initiatives that people directly vote on, compared to more comprehensive Ballot Initiatives. Thus multiple narrow initiatives over the years could add up to more change over time than fewer big ones, though there are still challenges because sometimes it’s very difficult to change things one part at a time.
Hmm I just think of growing research on how poverty wipes out the potential of people much of the time and it seems like a pretty serious problem for innovation. Even if one ignored the moral side, it’s a drain on IQ and fosters scarcity mindsets with poorer decisions.
I really like this policy and also the earned income tax credit, and we can talk about different policies like the stimulus checks as well, which I don’t necessarily oppose. I also agree that they can help during elections. However, the point I’m making is not about what to spend on, nor the overall size of spending over time, but about timing… spending too much at once- be it on right wing issue (military, corporate tax cuts) or left wing (welfare, education, health) … I don’t have strong opinions on what the US should spend more on… maybe they should spend more (or less) on the military and more (cf. left) or less on health (cf. Robin Hanson) and/or education (cf. Bryan Caplan).
As Obama’s former advisor Furman says: The first $1T of stimulus led to a great recovery, but the last $0.5T of stimulus caused a lot of inflation but only few jobs. In other words, the marginal cost-effectiveness of looser policy was bad and the stimulus should have been smaller—maybe $1 trillion instead of 2.
I don’t have strong opinions on the exact implementation of spreading things out more, I was arguing that this should probably be done using econometric models that take into account the current macroenvironment, and not just based the discussion ‘on casual observation rather than econometrics’ i.e. ‘We need to spend more on health, climate, etc. $X.0T is a nice round number’.