One welcome outcome of the US COVID response was that child poverty hit record lows, thanks to the expanded child tax credit and other supports that put more money in the hands of families with children. No, we didn’t solve the problem completely — and also, does anyone have an argument in defense of any level of child poverty — but millions of families got a little bit of breathing room, and the trend moved sharply in the right direction. 

Effectively, we conducted a real-time experiment on exactly what it takes to end child poverty, and it’s pretty much as obvious as it seems: give money to people with children, and poverty will go down. But then we simply stopped doing it: Congress allowed the expanded child tax credit to expire, and child poverty more than doubled to 12.4%. That’s right: for a couple years we dramatically reduced child poverty… and now we’re dramatically increasing it. All with barely a word of public debate.

Make it make sense.

The child-care industry experienced a series of massive disruptions over the past few years, from lockdowns and school closures to the increasing number of people with professional jobs working from home. And while across the economy overall, employment has rebounded to pre-COVID levels — and real wages adjusted for inflation have increased above the pre-COVID mark — the chart below shows that the childcare workforce has yet to recover. 

As always, the answer to a shortage of workers is to provide higher pay and better conditions — two things the child care sector has long failed to offer. Affordable child care services and livable childcare wages are among the great unmet needs of the US economy, and unfortunately the situation doesn’t seem to be improving nearly fast enough: the Washington Post reports that 70,000 child-care centers may close as government funding runs out.

It’s fairly common at this point for a billionaire to cause controversy by saying stupid stuff on tape… but it’s far less common for those comments to be as clearly rehearsed as the latest outburst from Australian real estate investor Tim Gurner. Even if you’ve already read about some of the highlights — for example, Gurner identified as a key economic problem that workers have become “arrogant,” and that we need unemployment to increase “40% or 50%” to get them back in line  — the video is worth watching for the calm, thoughtful and dare we say… arrogant… tone he uses to share his point of view. In other words, this wasn’t an accidental revelation of what the guy actually thinks… it was a scripted declaration of billionaire supremacy. Perhaps the best part: this is the same dude who inspired a waves of memes when in 2017 he was the first person to sincerely allege that Millennials couldn’t afford to buy homes because they spent too much money on avocado toast.

Civic Action
119 1st Avenue South Suite 320
Seattle, WA 98014
United States

If you believe you received this message in error or wish to no longer receive email from us, please unsubscribe.