If President Biden’s American family plan turns out as proposed, my great-niece Harri will finally become one “modest but adequate standard of living based on a new federal government obligation to provide social wages.
Harris is a 30th-year-old single mother of two, one 3-Year old and one in school. As an assistant manager at Walmart, she makes about $47,000 per year, but about $8th,000 this is what the day care of your preschool child assumes. She recently started making $. to get550 a month on a Child Tax Credit (CTC), but that’s only a temporary boost for the next year that was part of the Democrats’ March stimulus package. If the family plan – part of what Biden describes “Human Infrastructure ”becomes law, she will receive this CTC money for an additional five years and her preschooler will receive free public pre-school education, relieving Harri of daycare costs.
Add it all up and Harris’ income becomes $. increased6th,600 and she becomes $. save up8th,000 one year on the care costs. It is made from $. walk away47,000 a year of reported income to $. to have53,600, but since there are no childcare costs, their real income increases by. $14th,600, a 37% increase. Where she lives, in central Pennsylvania, the Economic Policy Institute estimates that she is around no childcare costs. $ would need49,000 to have a modest but decent standard of living. Harris will have a little more. Bringing in $53,600 will not allow her a luxurious life, but the extent of that change should be transformative for Harri and her children. Harri will get more than parents with fewer children or fewer preschoolers, but she will get less than parents with more children or more than one preschooler.
The point is that the combination of CTC and public Pre-K (plus an additional program where parents of one- and two-year-olds don’t have more than 7th% of their income for day care) will change the lives of most parents and children dramatically. It is often claimed that the CTC alone will cut child poverty in half. But the whole combination will do a lot more for a lot more families, including those who are not poor but struggle to get along.
In addition to its multiple effects on various American families, Biden’s Family Plan is a pioneering commitment to the concept of social wages, a concept that is even more widely applied. Along with other Biden initiatives, there seems to be a firm democratic recognition that most workers are underpaid in market wages to make ends meet, and that the government has a responsibility to change that.
Social wages differ from the often (and loosely) used phrase loose “Social Security Net. “Safety net programs like Unemployment Benefit and Temporary Aid for Families in Need are for people who, for one reason or another, have gotten into a difficult time. Like a net, they prevent people from falling further by providing temporary income until they get back on their feet.
Social wages, on the other hand, are more permanent, less means-dependent and available to much larger groups of people. They either subsidize vital workers by increasing their wages or by reducing the cost of common goods and services. Biden’s various plans include, for example, wage subsidies for home and day care workers, which are now average. US dollars23,000 and $22nd,000 one year each. Obamacare grants and the income tax credit do this for a wider group of low-wage workers. Many labor-populated cities, like New York, have long had reduced fares and rent controls to keep the cost of low- and low-wage workers affordable, although better-paid workers also benefit. In the post-war years, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union set up a cooperative housing and even a not-for-profit bank to help reduce the cost of living for its members and other workers.
Higher incomes or reduced costs increase human freedom by providing a higher standard of living that allows people to choose how to spend their money, rather than just struggling to pay the bills. Harris should be almost $. to have4th,000 of disposable income when the family plan becomes law, something she’s never had. Disposable income is your after-tax income, and almost everyone has it. Disposable income is the income that you have after all your normal expenses are met, the money that you can actually spend. It’s all beyond this modest but reasonable amount that the Economic Policy Institute has estimated for your family where you live.
Biden’s family plan will affect my niece’s family and prospects much more than many other families. For example, a family with one school-age child only gets $250 a month at the CTC and no savings for childcare. Or a single mother with two children, like Harri, receives the same amount of CTC and childcare allowance, but because they are only. US dollars earned20th,000, it will only end up with $26th,600 and free childcare – no longer in official poverty, but still far from a modest but sufficient income.
But the concept of social wage is just as important as the concrete outcome of a particular program. It means that the federal government takes its responsibility to ensure that “No one who works full-time should live in poverty. ”It also represents the transfer of money from our super-rich to workers who earn less than a modest but decent living. Biden suggests his plans with increased taxes for businesses and individuals who more than pay. Earn US dollars400,000 per year – although it would be even more equitable if the Walton family had to pay Elizabeth Warren’s proposed property tax on their $247 Billions in fortunes since Harris and her staff helped create some of it.
I’m as surprised as anyone at how comprehensive Biden’s initiatives are, but none of them came entirely from the Biden boss. They are all programs developed and advocated by progressive activists and academics in opposition to a seemingly impregnable public commitment to neoliberalism – all this movement and electoral politics of the past few decades, all this Fight for $fifteen Actions and the doors that Berniekrats knocked on.
As an academic, I am particularly enthusiastic about the intellectual work that contributed to this process. Efforts to establish “modest but decent family income had started, for example, in the post-war period from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics – at a time when the unions represented one of three workers and which Henry Wallace called ambitious “the common man’s century. ”This statistical series ended in the early years of the Reagan administration, which meant the federal government no longer cared about what was appropriate for the common people. About a decade later, a more sophisticated attempt was made by Wider Opportunities for Women and then by the Economic Policy Institute to achieve decent income levels. The Reagan administration didn’t want us to be able to measure how inadequate most family incomes would become. But now we know, and we have one of our political parties that at least rhetorically seeks adequacy.
The fate of Harri and her children, and millions like them, will be decided in the next few weeks as the Democrats flatter, negotiate and debate with one another what will be in the final budget balancing act. Let us hope that they do enough to decisively change the side of four decades of neoliberal indifference to the people who do essential work on which we all depend.
This story was first published on Working-Class Perspectives.