Thread by @ggreeneva

Stop calling it a “$2,000 untargeted giveaway.” It’s an apology — for the to provide a functioning nation-state in return for the taxes we work our tails off to pay.

https://twitter.com/tomfriedman/status/1344307149686665218

I’m not even eligible, under the current means test. But I blew up my budget for extra child care expenses, tuition for the kid we were going to enroll in public kindergarten, and survival checks to our nanny — who couldn’t keep working (her young kids are Zoom schooling) …

… and couldn’t make rent.

Everybody whose net worth has five or fewer numbers before the trailing dot has gotten kicked to the ribs this year — sometimes repeatedly — while the president has golfed and Mitch McConnell has f––ed off.

Some acknowledgment of this miserable failure — and the hardships it’s caused across society — is the literal least the federal government should consider doing.

https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1344358320396709890

(* for the _failure_ to provide, in the tweet at the top)

Exactly. ↘️

https://twitter.com/ImNotOwned/status/1344358970853642241

Of course. This is the other thing.

Congress and the president chose to fire the money cannons at mega-millionaires and billionaires in 2017 — but insist that whatever hardship people faced this year thanks to federal incompetence is no big deal.

https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1344377072983166978

Americans didn’t have a functioning CDC or public-health infrastructure—the latter thanks to moves by McConnell and congressional Republicans to hobble the economy that date back 10 years. The administration sabotaged the USPS in the middle of a crisis that kept us in our homes.

States often took weeks or months to distribute unemployment benefits, causing some to fall into debt, poverty, or homelessness. Small businesses shuttered for lack of gov’t interest in providing support as the crisis dragged on.

Amid all this, billionaires grew richer.

In any case, the idea that Republicans reject giving money to people who “don’t need it” is a smokescreen. They just prefer sending such money to entities that already have great power and wealth. washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…

Or see, for a further example:

“Senate Republicans inserted an easy-to-overlook provision … that would permit wealthy investors to use losses generated by real estate to minimize their taxes on profits from things like investments in the stock market.” nytimes.com/2020/03/26/bus…

In any case, I’ve meant no exaggeration when I’ve described the Republican Party’s ideal federal government as an engine for the upward redistribution of wealth. That’s just a flat-out matter of fact.

https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/1103860679277199360

Yep. (h/t @JesseCharlesLee)

Just as policies during the great recession — abetted, but not entirely formed, by a GOP focus on austerity for the 99% — led to the upward transfer of wealth, the response to 2020’s crisis has, to date, led to the same result. cnbc.com/2021/01/01/the…

This thread is playing my song: the proposed checks from the government shouldn’t be conceived of as charity. They ought to be intended as an apology.

https://twitter.com/anamardoll/status/1363964911991230466

In my mind, this smart article — by @annehelen, so of course it’s smart — gets at the same fundamental issue.

Student loan forgiveness isn’t necessary because borrowers failed. It’s necessary because the social that federal policies implied failed. vox.com/the-goods/2229…

Loans were touted as a ladder into the middle class. That was undermined when borrowing costs ballooned, as states cut support to public universities—but worse, the promise of a secure income was undercut by decades spent weakening labor rights and bargaining power.

The result: