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Kelsey Piper Profile picture
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18 Mar, 4 tweets, 1 min read
A week ago, Oren Cass argued that sending child benefits to "nonworking households" was "welfare extremism" that "evinces an attitude that connection to the labor force isn't that important anyway". In response I shared a friend's story:
Now my friend has written about this herself for Vox's First Person. vox.com/first-person/2…
This isn't, as Oren Cass claims, about "liberals" (like Mitt Romney? and Lyman Stone?) who don't understand the value of work. It's about struggling families going through things Oren Cass has never had to face -- and trying to maintain their dignity and courage as they do so.

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More from @KelseyTuoc

Kelsey Piper Profile picture
17 Mar
More generally than the specific homelessness and stimulant checks thing, I strongly recommend to every single upper middle class person that you spend a couple of hours talking with working poor friends about their experience of interacting with institutions of all kinds.
There's just this gulf there that is really important and very easy to underestimate until you've actually experienced it firsthand, and listening to the people who have is the next best thing.
When I get a stupid, random rejection from a government agency, I interpret it as a fluke, a website error or a person not doing their job, and I call them up or email them and point at the place in the rules that says I'm right and I usually get what I am entitled to.
Read 7 tweets
Kelsey Piper Profile picture
17 Mar
My group house usually (including this last year) has some residents who've previously been homeless, and the process of getting them the benefits they're eligible for is always exhausting and infuriating.
Without a fixed address, ID docs, + computer access, it's really hard to apply for the stuff you're eligible for. + after time and time again of applying and being rejected for random, poorly communicated, confusing reasons, lots of people just conclude the system isn't for them.
I wrote this article about how homeless people can claim their stimulus check: vox.com/future-perfect…, but my own homeless friends don't have their checks yet. Filling out a tax return is hard and annoying enough to be a barrier.
Read 5 tweets
Kelsey Piper Profile picture
5 Mar
The fight between Oren Cass and everyone on Twitter about child poverty has me thinking about my best friend, who grew up in a "non-working household". Her father died when she was six. Her mother had worked at a nursing home until she suffered a serious back injury.
Her younger brother was disabled and was repeatedly expelled from schools that couldn't meet his needs (illegally, but they didn't know any recourse), so her mom had to homeschool him+take care of him. She couldn't hold down most jobs while doing that, so she went back to school.
Friend's mother's plan was to earn a degree that would open up the world of jobs with flexible enough hours and requirements she could work while caring for her disabled son. Then she had a stroke that left her unable to speak or live independently.
Read 8 tweets
Kelsey Piper Profile picture
23 Feb
How much do the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines reduce transmission? I try to answer that here: vox.com/future-perfect…
This is a hard thing to measure so we're mostly relying on forms of evidence that are limited in various ways. But that doesn't make the question unanswerable, and we're at the point where it makes sense to say our best guess instead of just saying that we don't know.
There are tens of millions of vaccinated Americans, and they're relying on expert guidance to figure out what's safe to do. My fully vaccinated grandparents want to visit my young cousins, and the CDC guidelines would seem to suggest the vaccines don't matter in figuring out risk
Read 5 tweets
Kelsey Piper Profile picture
22 Jan
SlateStarCodex is back! Scott left his day job to run his own private practice so he doesn't need to preserve anonymity, and the private practice will be a one-man attempt to fix cost disease in medicine.
I've seen psychiatrists for depression, anxiety, and anorexia. Normally in the Bay Area intake is $300, sessions are $200, practitioners who take insurance are hard to come by and the copays are still steep.
Scott's new practice is $35/month. That's it. He's not taking new patients at this time, so this isn't an ad to go sign up for him as your doctor, but I really really hope he's able to make this work - and that others follow.
Read 5 tweets
Kelsey Piper Profile picture
25 Sep 20
1) I'm 26. 2) My soon-to-be-wife is 27. 3) It's pretty fucking infantilizing to suggest that there's something weird about me conducting interviews with other professionals in the course of my job being a reporter. But more importantly...
One of the main points I'm making, here, is that 'I want a lot of kids' has somehow become one of the most provocative statements you can make as a progressive person of my generation. This is the first time I have literally been called a fascist for it, but the anger isn't new.
People have surrendered the idea 'it's okay to want large families' to religious conservatives to the point where they'll tell you you're a "tradwife" for believing it. Any way you want to live your life is okay - unless you want a lot of kids, in which case it's disgusting.
Read 6 tweets

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