Stable Genius Liberal

What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

What precisely did the income change? Ongoing interviews with both parents and children suggested one variable in particular. The money, which amounted to between one-third and one-quarter of poor families’ income at one point, seemed to improve parenting quality.

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That “helps parents be better parents,” she said.

Turns out that giving poor people money helps then escape poverty.

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liberalsarecool: Corporate invasion of West Virginia.

Enemies of the Poor

our patchwork, uncoordinated system of antipoverty programs does have the effect of penalizing efforts by lower-income households to improve their position: the more they earn, the fewer benefits they can collect. In effect, these households face very high marginal tax rates. A large fraction, in some cases 80 cents or more, of each additional dollar they earn is clawed back by the government.The question is what we could do to reduce these high effective tax rates.

That’s Friedman’s argument for a negative income tax.

Mankiw makes an argument against raising the minimum wage

Mankiw makes an argument against raising the minimum wage.

My two big issues with this is that the EITC acts as a de-facto subsidy to those who hire low wage workers. This subsidy would, (using Mankiw’s logic) dis-incentivize productivity gains via automation and advantage industries that are built around low-wage, low skill work.

So, why should the income tax system be used to subsidy low-wage, low-skill, low productivity workers and the industries that require them rather than advantage higher-skill, higher-wage higher productivity work?

What happens when you don’t get vaccinated

My two vaccinated children, on the other hand, have rarely been ill, have had antibiotics maybe twice in their lives, if that. Not like their mum. I got so many illnesses requiring treatment with antibiotics that I developed a resistance to them, which led me to be hospitalized with penicillin-resistant quinsy at age 21 – you know, that old-fashioned disease that supposedly killed Queen Elizabeth I and that was almost wiped out through use of antibiotics.

I realize that this is just one person, and should not be treated as a anything more than anecdote, but this is not what the anti-vac people say happens to an immune system with and without vaccines. They insist that people who are not vaccinated will develop a healthy immune system via some natural process. Modern medicine disagrees, and so does her experience.

4 states confirm water pollution from drilling

Over the past 10 years, hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has led to a boom in oil and natural gas production around the nation. It has reduced imports and led to hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue for companies and landowners, but also created pollution fears.

Its called an externality. But I’m sure the right will insist that this problem can only be solved by tax cuts and deregulation.

Ralph Nader Sends Open Letter to President Bush: The Country You Destroyed

Hey Ralph, remember that time you ran for president and told everyone that there would be no difference between Bush and Gore? How did that turn out?

Arthur Laffer: Inflation does not appear to be monetary base driven

“Usually when you find the model this far off, you’ve probably got something wrong with the model, not that the world has changed,” he said. "Inflation does not appear to be monetary base driven,“ he said.

Is this the first domino to fall?

Gold on track for biggest annual loss in three decades

So all those Ron Paul Austrians experts who warned about currency debasement and hyperinflation have come out and admitted they were wrong, right?