Interesting piece: I think the most obvious answer is that the expanded CTC is relatively new, most people have not benefited from it, and people don't really see it as a distinct post-pandemic program. Those things will change if the becomes permanent. nytimes.com/2022/01/05/ups…
There is a risk among the policy wonk community that we overestimate people's knowledge of the ins-and-outs of unfamiliar programs. As a result, the way questions are framed and demand effects (where subjects are providing an answer they think the poller is seeking) matter a lot
For example, people's support for work requirements weaken if you tell them about the effects, or if you spell out the consequences. Framing matters.
LOL this focus group by a conservative think tank that featured 30-something people has now generated both an NY Times op-ed and now gets an Upshot mention. Nice work.
It's also worth noting that the people who would benefit most from the revised CTC, i.e. people facing such intense poverty that they don't file tax returns, are being undersampled.
My general theory on this stuff is that a) people like getting benefits, b) esp. if they are well run. Thus far, only parents with qualifying kids have received the CTC, and only for a few months, and not all parents. It will take a while for feedback effects to kick in.
The implication is that in the short run the expanded CTC is more politically vulnerable than its proponents might have hoped (which we are seeing now), but is a long-term winner in terms of popular support.
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I wrote about how the people who encouraged the Jan 6th insurrection are succeeding with a different strategy a year on: taking control of the machinery of elections. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-year-on-th…
I've been studying election administration on and off for almost two decades. The concerted attack we are seeing now on local election officials is new. 2/
Steve Bannon has pushed a "precinct strategy"--where Trumpists dedicated to the Big Lie capture the local GOP apparatus--as a means of "taking over all the elections.” (Local party officials appoint key election roles in many states). It's working. 3/ propublica.org/article/heedin…
New open-access from @pamela_herd, Julie Gerinza and I: we track the use of administrative burdens in the Trump era to make legal processes of immigration more onerous. 🧵@pmmg2018 @PMRA1991 academic.oup.com/ppmg/advance-a…
We use the metaphor of Kafka's bureaucracy to reflect what immigration processes morphed into under Trump: confusing, arbitrary, and illogical. This anecdote we culled from @crampell's reporting demonstrates the impossible situations immigrants found themselves in. 2/
The Trump administration adopted more than 450 executive actions. We sorted through these to focus on 78 that explicitly increased administrative burdens. After a while it becomes almost overwhelming to see the sheer scale and relentless of the changes. 3/ academic.oup.com/ppmg/advance-a…
This is an example of what @victorerikray@pamela_herd & I describe as radicalized burdens.
When you understand that Wisconsin has the highest racial prison disparities in the country the effect of imposing financial barriers for former felons to vote becomes clear.
In Wisconsin
*Black people constitute 6% of the population and 42% of the prison population
*Blacks are incarcerated 12 times the rate of whites, compared to a ratio of 5:1 for the rest of the US
*1 in 36 Black adults are in prison, highest rate in the US wpr.org/wisconsin-impr…
Gah - meant *racialized burdens* not radicalized burdens.
When you incorporate POC disproportionately (see below for WI), other barriers you impose on the status of incarceration necessarily have a racialized effect.
The new smart contrarian take is telling people to shut up about the decline of US democracy, no-one cares bro.
FWIW the US gets uniquely generous treatment from the rest of the world not just because it's powerful, but also because it's seen as a stable democracy. As that perception declines, so will a lot of other material benefits in the US.
When you want to say "make the trains run on time" but also, you hate trains
This is an incredible story of how a tax break aimed at small businesses is converted into a tax-free intergenerational wealth accumulation machine for Silicon Valley investors. Via @JesseDrucker@maureenmfarrell nytimes.com/2021/12/28/bus…
One takeaway here is that Congress passes tax laws without really understanding the long term costs b/c they do not anticipate how the tax avoidance industry will weaponize it
The cost of this tax loophole is at least $60 billion but probably multiples of that because of the creative ways it is being exploited. It’s so bad the Trump admin tried to corral it, but faced pushback from tax lawyers.
The idea that something is a "cultural identity marker" means that people attribute some non-instrumental symbolic value to it. Seems like the people who are willing to risk illness, death and the infection of others to do something are the ones more driven by cultural values.
If the media you consume, or your political identity is causing you to hurt yourself and others, that seems like a cultural problem. I'm sure liberal finger-wagging is irritating, but hard to see how that's the bigger problem here. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/fox-news-is-…