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Hold onto your lifesavers and altoids, because we’ve got a Minty Fresh Newsletter Exclusive!!
If you’ve ever been laughed at for asking “why don’t we just print more money?” then your time is here – because Congress is considering printing more money so we don’t default on our debt. Well, sorta, kinda.
As the deadline to raise the debt ceiling looms, lawmakers have proposed minting a platinum $1 trillion dollar coin that the U.S. government would use to pay its expenses. In newsletter exclusive polling, Data for Progress finds 40 percent of voters support producing a $1 trillion dollar coin, including 53 percent of Democrats, 36 percent of Independents, and 33 percent of Republicans.
In 1997, a couple things happened: Rose kicked Jack off the door, Brad Pitt and Gwyneth Paltrow broke up, and Congress passed a law giving the Secretary of Treasury the power to mint platinum coins of any amount at any time, for any reason. This law gives the U.S. Treasury the authority to mint a platinum coin to pay the government’s debts. After learning about this, voter support for minting the coin jumps to 51 percent, including 62 percent of Democrats, 48 percent of Independents, and 42 percent of Republicans.
We’re quite literally running out of time and money here, so let’s mint the coin!! We can’t allow the government to go into Hot Girl Summer with crushing debt. A Debt Girl Summer isn’t fun for anyone.
Read the polling here.
Here are some other highlights from DFP this week:
Mr. Steal Your Jobs ft. ChatGPT
You better start being nice to Alexa and Siri because artificial intelligence is coming for your job. And it's highly probable they have the storage to remember every single time you yelled at them for playing James Taylor instead of Taylor Swift. Sorry, your robot is about to fire you.
Since the launch of ChatGPT, a text-based artificial intelligence, reactions have been divided. Sure, it’s pretty cool that ChatGPT can write a five-paragraph essay on Napoleon’s exile in the time it takes us to write this sentence. But are we just going to accept a future where no one has panic screamed at their parents about an essay due in nine hours that they haven’t started? And if ChatGPT is in a silly goofy mood and says that Napoleon wrote slam poetry on the island to pass the time, how do we even fact-check that information?
Data for Progress finds 47 percent of voters are “concerned” about ChatGPT, while 19 percent are “indifferent,” and 16 percent are “scared.” We’re personally “excited” and “thrilled,” but that’s just because ChatGPT wrote this newsletter. (We’re kidding.) (Or are we?)
We also find that 62 percent of voters support creating a federal agency dedicated to regulating AI. This includes 78 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of Independents, and 53 percent of Republicans. Homework assignment! Everyone tweet @JoeBiden your favorite names for the department. We personally like the Department of Love, Death & Chatty Robots.
Read the full blog and polling here.
It takes a much more affordable village.
Children don’t come cheap. Feeding them is expensive, clothing them is expensive, and bribing them with toys is expensive. Without insurance, childbirth itself costs over $18,000, and honestly, women should be getting paid for that insanity. Another insanely high cost of having a kid? Childcare.
According to the Department of Labor, families in the United States are spending a wild 8 to 19 percent of their income on childcare. With prices already skyrocketing, this makes it even harder for families to afford pretty important things like housing, groceries, and healthcare. Plus, it makes it difficult for working parents to, you know, work. If you can’t afford childcare, it becomes harder to go to work, but then you can’t make money to afford childcare, and it’s just an absolutely maddening cycle.
Data for Progress finds 67 percent of voters are concerned about the cost of childcare in the United States, including 76 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of Independents, and 62 percent of Republicans.
In order to make sure that parents can go to work without leaving the dog and Bluey to watch their kid, lawmakers are proposing the Child Care for Every Community Act, which would expand access to affordable childcare and early childhood education. Seventy-nine percent of voters support the Child Care for Every Community Act, including 89 percent of Democrats, 77 percent of Independents, and 70 percent of Republicans.
Congress, we can’t just leave parents hanging. Affordable childcare seems like a pretty basic request, right? Parents need to feel confident that their children aren’t spending twelve hours on TikTok and setting the house on fire while they’re off at work.
Read the full blog and polling here.
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