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    What would a wealth tax mean for Britain? Ask Chris Blackhurst anything

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    Welcome to an exclusive Ask Me Anything with me, Chris Blackhurst – business commentator at The Independent.Scroll down to read more – or jump straight to the Q&A by clicking here.Talk of a wealth tax is back. And this time, it’s being pushed not from the political fringe, but from within the Labour Party itself.Former party leader Lord Kinnock has called for a 2 per cent tax on assets over £10 million, arguing it could raise up to £11 billion a year and help shore up the UK’s finances. His intervention has reignited debate over an “asset tax” on the super-rich.With five trade unions now backing the idea, and Rachel Reeves refusing to rule anything out ahead of her Mansion House speech, Labour’s direction on tax policy is under real scrutiny.I’ve spent decades reporting from the Square Mile and speaking to the people who keep Britain’s economy turning. And from where I sit, a wealth tax is not just economically risky – it’s a political signal that the UK is no longer serious about prosperity, investment, or growth.The wealthy, contrary to popular myth, don’t live in a vacuum. They create jobs, fund philanthropy, and help drive economic confidence. Drive them away, and it’s not just the rich who suffer – it’s the exchequer, small businesses, and the very public services Labour wants to support. The UK’s loss is another’s gain. There are plenty of countries lining up to entice the wealthy to relocate. So what’s really going on here? Is a wealth tax a fair way to close Labour’s fiscal black hole – or a dangerous misstep that could stall Britain’s recovery just as it gets going?Join me live at 6pm BST on Wednesday, 16 July, as I take your questions and comments on wealth, taxation, and the high-stakes economic choices facing this new Labour government.Submit your questions in the comments below. If you’re not already a member, click “sign up” in the comments section to participate. For a full guide on how to comment, click here.Get a free fractional share worth up to £100.Capital at risk.Terms and conditions apply.Go to websiteADVERTISEMENTGet a free fractional share worth up to £100.Capital at risk.Terms and conditions apply.Go to websiteADVERTISEMENTDon’t worry if you can’t see your question right away – some may be hidden until the Q&A starts. See you at 6pm! More

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      in US Politics

      Trump promised to lower energy costs – his tax bill will raise them for people in red states the most

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      The cost of electricity is poised to surge across the US in the wake of Republican legislation that takes an axe to cheap renewable energy, with people in states who voted for Donald Trump last year to be hardest hit by the increase in bills.As air conditioners crank up across the US during another sweltering summer amid an unfolding climate crisis, rising energy costs will become even more severe for households due to the reconciliation spending bill passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by Trump, who called it the “big, beautiful bill”, on 4 July.By stripping away support for cheap solar and wind energy production, the legislation is set to cause electricity rates paid by families and businesses, many already struggling to pay their bills, to rise by much as 18% by 2035, according to an analysis by Energy Innovation, an energy and climate policy thinktank.Household energy costs, which span electricity and gas use, will rise by $170 on average every year by 2035, the report finds, with Republican-leaning states bearing the brunt of the increases. Bills in Missouri will spike the most, by $640 a year, with the next largest increases – in Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Texas – all also hitting states that voted for Trump in last year’s presidential election.Trump won the election, in part, by promising to lower inflation and cut US energy costs in half within a year. In office, he has sought to boost fossil fuel consumption while slashing incentives for clean energy projects and barring them from federal lands.“I don’t want windmills destroying our place,” the president said last month. “I don’t want these solar things where they go for miles and they cover up a half a mountain that are ugly as hell.”But the Republican bill’s wiping out of tax credits for renewables will stymie wind and solar projects that are typically now cheaper than gas or coal, forcing utilities to rely more heavily on existing, inefficient gas generators, Energy Innovation said. This will push up energy costs across the US, particularly in states that have not enacted their own policies to boost renewables.“Demand for electricity is increasing and without renewables we aren’t able to meet that new demand,” said Dan O’Brien, senior analyst at Energy Innovation and author of the new study.“We’ve seen US power prices generally fall over the past 75 years, but with this bill for the first time we will see sustained increases in power costs. Lower-income folks in rural areas in red states will have compounding impacts from this bill – their states voted to pass this but it will really harm them in the long term.”Environmental groups were scathing of the Republicans who voted for the reconciliation bill. “After an election where cost-of-living was the driving issue that pushed millions of working-class Americans to check the box for Donald Trump, it’s mind-boggling that Republicans just passed a bill that will raise costs across the board,” said Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, a climate change advocacy organization, who called the legislation “one of the most catastrophic bills in a generation”.Electricity prices for American households have already increased above the rate of inflation since 2022, with a slew of new data centers for artificial intelligence helping push up overall demand for power. This trend has placed further strain upon “energy insecure” people who struggle to meet the cost of heating, cooling and lighting their homes. Around 34m households, more than a quarter of all dwellings in the US, reported difficulties in paying energy bills in 2020.“A lot of people are struggling and it’s a hardship that’s often not highlighted,” said Michelle Graff, an energy policy expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Lower-income people, as well as those who are Black, Hispanic, elderly, have young children or live in poorly constructed and badly insulated homes, are most at risk of this sort of energy insecurity.“For a lot of these folks, even $10 extra on their bill each month will result in difficult trade-offs, such as forgoing medicines or food for their families,” Graff said. “Increasing those bills month after month will have a big impact upon households on the margins.”Electricity price rises are regulated by the states and some jurisdictions offer help to residents struggling to pay their bills, as Maryland did last month.But such assistance is now being stripped away at the federal level, with the Trump administration seeking to eliminate the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (or Liheap), which aids around 6m US households with their bills. The reconciliation bill also deletes subsidies for the construction of energy-efficient homes and upgrades to home cooling, heating and insulation systems.“That is a lifeline for many, many Americans,” Graff said of the Liheap program. “There is this mismatch where the hardships are getting worse while we are cutting assistance for people to address that hardship.”Across the US, utilities have pushed for $29bn in higher rates so far this year, which is 142% more than the same period in 2024, a recent report found. At least 16 states, meanwhile, allow utilities to cut off power to people during extreme heatwaves if they have not paid their bills. Such cutoffs can prove deadly – last month, Shauna Thomas, a 55-year-old woman, was found dead in her stiflingly hot St Louis, Missouri, apartment after her electricity was halted for non-payment.“Air conditioning and access to electricity is life-saving, but in most states there are very limited protections for these shut-offs,” said Diana Hernandez, a researcher of energy and health inequities at Columbia University. “People are reluctant to put on their AC because of the fear of a high bill. It’s easy for them to get into a debt spiral and hard for them to get out of it. This can end up as a life-or-death matter.”Extreme heat is the leading weather-related cause of deaths in the US, with advancing global temperatures due to the burning of fossil fuels causing longer and fiercer heatwaves. This summer in the US is expected to be hotter than the long-term norm for the season, with explosive demand for cooling causing a strain upon the grid in some places – in June, 110,000 people in New York City lost power due to a surge of electricity use during a hot spell.In the hottest parts of the US, lengthy power blackouts could prove catastrophic. If a prolonged heatwave and a blackout hit Phoenix, Arizona, at the same time, half of the city’s 1.6 million residents would require urgent medical help and 1% of the population would die, a 2023 study warned.“Climate change is upon us and as it gets hotter and hotter, there will be more hardship that people face in trying to keep themselves cool,” said Hernandez.“It used to be that people thought about energy access in the winter months, to help keep them warm, but that has changed now. As we keep getting hotter years, this problem isn’t going away.”The White House was contacted for comment. More

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      in US Politics

      Zohran Mamdani’s campaign proposes free childcare. Is it finally a winning policy?

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      Maggie Stockdale hadn’t given much thought to childcare before welcoming her first child last year. But once she learned the high price of full-time daycare tuition in Brooklyn, New York, she knew she had to find another solution.Now, her care duties are split between Stockdale’s parents, who relocated from Wisconsin to help out, and her husband, who cut his hours down to part time and arranged with his employer to let him bring their 10-month-old to work several days a week.“You feel fragile,” said Stockdale, lamenting that so many families have to choose between financial stability and their child’s wellbeing.So when Zohran Mamdani campaigned on a platform of affordability, proposing free childcare for children aged six weeks and older, it made her feel that the pain she and other parents had experienced had not gone unnoticed.Mamdani, the 33-year-old state assemblymember who won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor last month, has put forth a variety of kid- and family-focused ideas, including distributing baby baskets containing formula and postpartum supplies to new parents, building up mental health infrastructure in schools and closing off high-traffic streets adjacent to school zones. But what’s garnered the most attention is his promise of free childcare, a system he plans to fund by raising taxes on corporations and the city’s richest residents.As he told supporters in his victory speech: “We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for a city they can afford. A city where they can do more than just struggle … where childcare doesn’t cost more than [college].”For Stockdale, seeing these policies at the center of a major political campaign has underscored how childcare affordability is not only a core concern for voters – but also a winning issue.“It’s got so much support,” said Stockdale, also an organizer with the advocacy group New Yorkers United for Childcare. “People have started to realize that this should be a key component of any candidate’s platform.”In many ways, Mamdani’s platform responds to the surge of activism that New York has seen in favor of making childcare a public good – activism that first emerged at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the importance and fragility of the country’s childcare system was laid bare. Since then, elected officials have begun to take the issue seriously, explained Allison Lew, senior organizer with New Yorkers United for Child Care.A report released from the New York City comptroller’s office this year shows the average cost of center-based care across the five boroughs was $26,000 a year, and that to afford the cost of care for a two-year-old in New York City, a family would need to earn $334,000 annually. “People are draining their savings, going into debt, borrowing on their 401ks [retirement funds],” said Lew. “You have to be wealthy in order for childcare to not be an issue.”For many would-be parents, the inaccessibility is affecting their family-planning decisions, causing them to delay having kids or to only have one child, despite wanting more. “We would love to have another, but financially, we don’t know if we can afford it,” said Nancy Keith, who is raising a 15-month-old in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn. Keith says that she and her husband waited until they were in their late 30s, and more settled in their career, to have a child. Even still, they need financial assistance from their parents to afford the $26,000 a year they pay for childcare.Should Mamdani win the mayoral election in November and make his childcare vision a reality, these challenges could become things of the past, experts say.Most immediately, parents and childcare workers alike would experience improved financial security. Families would see thousands more dollars in their bank accounts every month, while childcare workers would be paid salaries and receive benefits at parity with New York public school employees.Gregory Brender, chief policy and innovation officer at the Day Care Council of New York, explains that pay parity has been a priority for the provider network for decades, making it a relief to finally see it be a legislative priority. “Early childhood education depends on a talented and educated workforce, and they need to be compensated appropriately,” he said.These family-focused policies would also improve equity in the city, as more parents – especially women – would be able to remain in the workforce. And in making the city more affordable for everyone, families from diverse backgrounds with a range of incomes would be able to remain in their communities.Down the line, such policies would also bolster the city’s economy. Collectively, New Yorkers spend as much as $15bn on childcare every year. And in 2022, families not being able to afford childcare cost the city $23bn between lost tax revenues and workplace departures as parents were forced to drop out of the workforce.“We just cannot afford to not have universal childcare,” Lew said.Universal childcare isn’t cheap. But the city has the money, said Justin Brannan, a New York City councilmember representing parts of Brooklyn and chair of the city’s committee on finance. “We have been stuck in this cycle of false austerity where we are supposed to believe that we have to choose between little and even less, and it’s just not true,” Brannan said, noting that the city’s budget totals almost $116bn (universal childcare would cost $12bn per year). “We just need to do a better job of spending our money,” he said.Implementing such a system may not be as simple as carving out room in the budget, however. Some facets of the plan – like raising taxes – need to be approved by the state legislature and the governor. Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, has already said she will not raise income taxes. Mamdani has acknowledged these challenges, saying in an interview with Morning Edition, “Any mayor that has an ambition that meets the scale of the crisis of the people that they’re seeking to represent will have to work with [the state].”Still, the ideas have momentum.New York has been a pioneer in accessible childcare infrastructure for several years, including universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds (known as pre-K and 3-K). And although many doubted Bill de Blasio’s ability to pull off his promise of universal preschool when he ran for mayor more than a decade ago, the program is now a national model. Before that, the city instituted a voucher program that enabled low-income families to access childcare for children aged six weeks to 15 years – although seats are limited. As a result of those developments, advocates like Lew say some degree of publicly funded childcare is now a “non-negotiable” for many New Yorkers.Mamdani says his campaign promises to build on those past successes. “These platform planks are rooted in very recent New York City history,” he said in an interview with the Nation. “Universal childcare is something that many candidates are in support of because of the success of universal pre-K.”New York isn’t alone in its quest for solutions to the nationwide childcare crisis. In 2022, New Mexico made childcare free for most families. That same year, Washington DC raised childcare workers’ wages through a tax on the district’s wealthiest residents. And in 2023, Vermont guaranteed financial support for childcare for all families with incomes below 575% of the federal poverty level – amounting to 90% of families in the state.Hailey Gibbs, associate director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, said it’s an issue that crosses the political aisle. “Folks, regardless of what state they represent or how far they sit in the political extremes, understand that the lack is meaningful,” she said.“It’s a unifying issue,” echoed Karen Schulman, senior director of state childcare policy at the National Women’s Law Center, pointing out that even staunchly Republican states like Alabama, Georgia and Montana have created early childhood education funds.But Mamdani’s campaign is the first in the country to put children and childcare front and center – and win, at least at the primary level. “That’s pretty bold for the US,” Gibbs said. More

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      in US Politics

      Childcare is a hellscape for most US families. Why isn’t there a bigger push for change?

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      In 2021, Bri Adams was pregnant with her first child and began signing up for waitlists for childcare – eight, to be exact. She was thrilled when she found a spot, but was quickly horrified when the childcare shut down abruptly.It “kind of broke my brain a bit”, said Adams, a 34-year-old tech director from Falls Church, Virginia. Scrambling again, she found a new location close to the family’s home.Like Adams’s household, two-thirds of US families with young children – including middle- and upper-middle-class families who frequently command politicians’ attention – have had all available parents in the workforce since the late 1990s. Yet parents still struggle mightily to access quality childcare; large majorities say it is hard to find and afford care, and the cost of care continues to rise at a faster rate than inflation.As near-universal as these challenges are, there is a persistent and surprising lack of a mass movement demanding major childcare reforms. US parents are basically on their own to figure out solutions for their families. Adams “considers herself lucky” that she and her husband, who take home $11,000 each month after taxes, can spend more than $50,000 a year on their two kids’ childcare. Childcare remains their biggest expense, costing a whopping $4,300 a month – $800 more than their mortgage. As Adams asked: “If I am feeling such intense financial stress when we make $300,000 a year, how on earth are people managing who make so much less and have zero safety net?”View image in fullscreenOther countries like Canada, Germany and Ireland have made transformative changes to their previously inadequate systems, partly spurred on by parents like Adams. In February 2020, for instance, more than 30,000 parents and childcare providers flooded the streets of Dublin, an event credited with elevating childcare to a top-tier political issue and securing more public funding. Despite the long-broken American childcare system, there has never been a successful and sustained mass mobilization demanding the government do something to fix the problem.So what has held the US back from achieving such a program, even though polling suggests it would be widely popular for families, and a boon to our communities and economy?The historical divide in childcareThe US has long had a fraught and contradictory relationship with childcare, one wrapped up in clashes over the role of the family versus the state and tainted by sexism and racism. These tensions culminated with an epic failure in the 1970s, the consequences of which still reverberate today.For most of the 19th century, working- and middle-class families lived on self-contained farms or ran small family businesses. Young children worked on those farms or in those businesses, and childcare responsibilities were shared among family members. For families of means, beginning with slavery and continuing well into the present day, women of color have provided unpaid or undercompensated care for upper-class families, even while frequently being unable to care for their own families.During the second world war, with men at war and women taking on the manufacturing jobs at home, the US briefly created a successful, publicly supported childcare system. However, many workplaces restricted mothers from the workplace when the men returned.But by the late 1960s, mothers were entering the paid labor force in droves, representing one of the largest labor market shifts in modern American history. Organizing efforts came together in 1971 to help Congress pass the Comprehensive Child Development Act, a bipartisan bill that would have begun creating a nationally funded, locally run network of childcare centers.View image in fullscreenBy this time, however, the progressive New Deal coalition of the 1930s – riven both by the disaster in Vietnam and cultural conflicts at home – was giving way to a free-market order marked by a distrust of government intervention. The act was subsequently vetoed by Richard Nixon on the grounds that it would assert the government’s authority “against the family-centered approach”.In a span of only 30 years, while the US’s European counterparts began investing in broad-based childcare systems as they needed women to work and rebuild countries devastated by war, the United States went from considering the idea of a federally funded childcare system to entrenched opposition.Childcare as a ‘private family issue’Access to childcare has deep economic implications, and it’s also a social issue mired in cultural policies that ask: who gets to work and who should be at home watching kids? Through the 1950s, many companies explicitly discriminated against married women or mothers in hiring or retention. Popular TV shows of the era, from Father Knows Best to The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, reinforced a traditionalist view of gender dynamics around care. Even today, many parents continue to say that it is primarily parents’ responsibility to figure out how to make childcare work.Sandra Levitsky, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who has studied US care movements, explained that deep-seated ideologies were “hard to shift” and believes the leap from being seen as a private issue to a public one is “at the heart” of what needs to change for the movement to expand. “If it couldn’t happen [during Covid] – when women were literally quitting their jobs to care for their kids – what is going to happen now?” she said.On a national level, childcare has what political science calls a “salience” problem. Today’s voters say they support childcare measures, even regularly approving measures on state and local ballots. Yet very few politicians are elected or defeated due to their childcare stance.When parents get politicalHistory has shown that parents can, however, be a remarkably effective and galvanized voting bloc: parents led organizing efforts following the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre by launching Moms Demand Action, and conservative parents concerned about Covid school restrictions responded by forming Moms for Liberty. It was a bereaved parent who started Mothers Against Drunk Driving, while in an earlier era, mothers’ groups were instrumental in the fight against child labor through pamphleteering, hosting public lectures and pressuring legislators.Since the pandemic, multiple major parent organizing efforts with childcare as a main pillar have launched or scaled up, and more philanthropic dollars have flowed to the movement. The increase in childcare advocacy funding is consequential: for decades, childcare organizers have scraped by with limited resources, the equivalent of bringing a horse-and-buggy to the political racetrack.Chamber of Mothers, of which Bri Adams is a part, was formed in 2021 by a group of social media-savvy mothers incensed after $400bn in childcare funding was dropped from the Build Back Better legislation. The chamber now has dozens of chapters across the nation where mothers come together to build community, learn about public policy issues and organize politically. Another group, Moms First, developed out of an effort to create a “Marshall plan for moms” in the midst of the pandemic, and founder Reshma Saujani was the one who asked then candidate Donald Trump a childcare question during the presidential campaign; Trump’s rambling response about how “the childcare is childcare” went viral. Additionally, several philanthropic entities in 2018 created the Raising Child Care Fund, which provides funding to 20 social justice-focused childcare organizing groups. Collectively, these initiatives point to the type of energy and infrastructure that can help issues leap from private matter to public concern.The final piece that is missing is a shared vision.View image in fullscreen“We don’t have a clear definition of what the what is,” said Natalie Renew, executive director of Home Grown, a philanthropic collaborative focused on strengthening home-based childcare options. “We don’t have a shared consensus to define what childcare is and who benefits from it, and what those benefits and outcomes look like.” Renew points to the divide between groups that organize for childcare using economic arguments to support parents doing wage labor, and groups that organize for childcare using kindergarten readiness as a means to support pre-kindergarten. “But pre-K is not childcare,” Renew said. “It can be part of a childcare solution, but it’s not childcare.”For all of the challenges, we know change is possible – even on long-held social beliefs – in a relatively compressed period of time. In the past two decades, the US has normalized and enshrined into law the rights of gay people to marry and participate fully in society. We’ve also changed paternity leave from a rare fringe benefit to an increasingly expected workplace leave policy. We may have deeply held beliefs about who takes care of children, but as more generations with different expectations about who can care for their children become parents – and after the wake-up call of the Covid pandemic – we can see a shift potentially beginning to take hold.Renew, too, is heartened by the changes she has seen in childcare policies and structures at the local and state levels, advances that arguably provide a proof of concept. Buoyed by Covid relief funds, localities had a chance to invest in childcare. “We saw cities and towns putting their flexible dollars to childcare, and they became stakeholders in the conversation,” she said. And as states begin to invest more in childcare systems locally notably in Vermont and New Mexico – more localities are beginning to take notice and have seen how such efforts boost their local economies and families’ wellbeing.America’s history, prevailing cultural attitudes and an underpowered advocacy ecosystem have all contributed to the current childcare hellscape. But it’s possible that enough parents have begun to look around and ask: why is the United States making this harder than it needs to be? Real change will come when it’s no longer just parents asking that question. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill is built on falsehoods about low-income families | Brigid Schulte and Haley Swenson

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      As they race to deliver Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill, Republicans in Congress are using familiar tropes to justify massive cuts to the safety net that will leave millions of low-income children and families without healthcare or sufficient food. The programs, they argue, are rife with waste, fraud and abuse, and the people who use them just aren’t working hard enough. So work requirements are necessary to force the obviously lazy “able-bodied” people to get to work.Here’s the reality check: a majority of those receiving this aid who can work are already working. More than 70% of working-age people who receive nutrition benefits or Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income children and adults that covers one in five Americans, are already working, according to the Government Accountability Office. Those who aren’t working, research shows, are mostly ill, disabled, caring for a family member, or in school.Take the story of Ruaa Sabek. When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, she and her husband worked at a fast-food restaurant in Philadelphia. Both their hours were cut, but they didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits because they remained employed. With two young children at home, their carefully managed budget began to crumble under rising prices and reduced incomes.What saved them wasn’t extraordinary luck or family wealth. It was the streamlined and expanded government support programs that turned what economists predicted would be a financial apocalypse into a springboard toward financial stability for some families.One analysis of Medicaid work requirements by KKF, a health policy research organization, found that most working people with low enough incomes to qualify for Medicaid typically work for small companies or in sectors, like agriculture, that don’t offer employer-sponsored health insurance, or the rates are unaffordable. In other words, their jobs don’t pay them enough to afford basics, don’t offer benefits, and they have no other choice but Medicaid.There’s no doubt that safety net programs like Medicaid could be improved. They’re rife not so much with waste, fraud and abuse, as conservative lawmakers say – though there is some – but confusing red tape; disincentives to upward mobility, because benefits cut off sharply as soon as incomes start to rise; and cumbersome, punitive rules designed to dissuade people from applying for benefits in the first place.Fueling the Republican drive to slash public benefits is a long-held belief among many conservatives that the reason most people live in poverty is because they don’t work, or don’t work hard enough, and are instead lazing about, dependent on government largesse, and robbing Americans of their hard-earned tax dollars.That view features prominently in Project 2025, the playbook for the Trump administration authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The foreword reads: “Low-income communities are drowning in addiction and government dependence.”And it was clearly on display in recent House congressional hearings on how to slash $1.5 trillion from the federal budget in order to pay for extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. “That little gravy train is getting ready to run out,” one Republican lawmaker said of federal safety net programs like Medicaid and food and nutrition aid for people living in poverty. “The spigot is getting ready to be turned off.” The billionaire Elon Musk, charged with cutting federal spending, has even posted a meme calling people who rely on federal spending the “Parasite Class”.Here’s another reality check: Three in 10 Americans, more than 99 million people, rely on some form of federal aid to live. That includes nearly half of all children in the United States. Another 52 million households, 41% of all US households, make too much to qualify for public safety net benefits but still not enough to survive. Nearly 40% of Americans would struggle to cover a $400 emergency expense.There is a problem with making policy decisions based on the unfounded belief that poverty is about people with bad moral character making bad choices, or on debunked racial tropes of undeserving “welfare queens.” (In fact, white people make up the largest group receiving public food and healthcare aid.) Shaping policy around false stereotypes, rather than the complex reality, prevents policymakers from working together on real solutions.In fact, if you talk to people living in poverty, what they say they want tracks nearly exactly with what Project 2025 aims to foster: “empowering individuals to achieve economic independence.”“If I earn good money, I’m not going to be looking for benefits. I’ll take care of my bills,” said Blessing Aghayedo, a licensed practical nurse in Minnesota. Instead, she earns barely more than the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009.Breathing roomIn the Sabeks’ case during the pandemic, expanded Medicaid and enhanced nutrition benefits helped weather health emergencies and soaring grocery prices. Rental assistance prevented them from losing their housing when they fell behind on payments. Stimulus checks and the expanded monthly child tax credit provided crucial cash that covered essential expenses like milk, diapers, children’s clothing, utility bills, and car repairs when they needed a new transmission.Perhaps most significantly, public subsidies for childcare and the Head Start program reduced their childcare expenses from an overwhelming $1,300 per month to $120, enabling Ruaa Sabek to continue working part time and enroll in a banking training program. “I feel like, ‘Oh my God, peace of mind,’” she said of the breathing room the public benefits gave her and her family. As a result, she landed a full-time position in 2023 as a personal banker that pays $45,000 annually with benefits – a dramatic improvement from her previous part-time $12-an-hour cashier job with irregular hours and no benefits.The family is now thriving without public assistance, aligning with decades of research. “You can’t actually figure out how to get to flourishing until you’re in a stable and secure situation,” said Megan Curran, director of policy at the Center on Poverty and Society Policy at Columbia.Research shows that when families have a stable foundation, they are healthier and live longer. Adults are more likely to keep working, and children are more likely to stay in school, graduate, get better jobs, and pay taxes as adults. Even babies’ brain development is improved.And the stability pays for itself: the Child Tax Credit, for instance, returns $10 for every $1 spent every year. The United States remains the only wealthy country with no national paid maternity leave, yet the return on investment for paid family leave is 20:1. For childcare, it’s 8:1.Meanwhile, rather than saving taxpayers a ton of money, as Musk promised, slashing safety-net support ignores the real problem that keeps families from economic independence: 44% of the workforce in the United States, the wealthiest country on earth as measured by GDP, is low-wage, a share far higher than in many economic peer countries.Squeezing families already struggling financially could increase the share of those already waking up hungry, homeless, or worried they soon might be. The United States already has one of the highest rates of child poverty among wealthy countries. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine estimates that high poverty rate costs as much as $1tn a year in lost adult productivity, increased crime and poor health.Childcare is keyIf lawmakers are serious about adding work requirements for safety net programs, then ensuring families have access to affordable childcare is critical. Compared with other advanced economies, the United States invests the least in childcare. That means childcare costs are second only to mortgage or rent for most families who have to pay out of pocket. And federal childcare subsidies for low-income parents come nowhere close to covering those eligible.The lack of affordable childcare sent Kiarica Schields, a college-educated hospice nurse and single parent in Georgia, spiraling into a cycle of joblessness, eviction, instability, and poverty. “Childcare. That’s my issue,” she said.Trump has said he wants families to have more children. Yet surveys show that young people aren’t having children, or having as many as they’d like, because they can’t afford childcare.Kel, a divorced parent of four, wants lawmakers to think of public benefits for families like hers as a short-term investment with long-term benefits. Kel, who asked not to use her last name, fled an abusive marriage, struggles to pay bills, though she works as much as she can, and relies on Medicaid for life-saving physical and mental health treatments for her and her children. “Lifting me and people like me up will have a cascading effect on so many lives in a positive way,” she said. “We will give back to our communities tenfold, a hundredfold. It’s worth that investment in us. We’re a really good investment.”

      Brigid Schulte is the director of New America’s work-family justice program, Better Life Lab, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and the author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life and the New York Times bestselling Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play when No One has the Time. Haley Swenson is a research and writing fellow for the Better Life Lab More

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      in UK Politics

      Voices: ‘Raising taxes is political suicide’: Readers tackle uncomfortable truth behind UK’s growth slump

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      As Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to deliver her first major Spending Review, Independent readers have weighed in on one of the thorniest issues in British politics: how to restore the UK’s fragile public finances.A new warning from the OECD urging Reeves to act quickly – with a mix of tax rises, spending restraint and welfare reform – has reignited debate about the long-term sustainability of the nation’s economy. It comes amid rising borrowing, downgraded growth forecasts, and geopolitical tensions, including Donald Trump’s revived trade war and pressures to dramatically increase defence spending.The discussion has sharpened as the government faces calls to find billions to protect benefits and pensions, while also making the country “war ready” with a potential jump in defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP. But where should that money come from – deeper cuts to services or higher taxes?In the comment section, readers explored whether the current tax system is fair, whether austerity has run its course, and if bold moves like taxing wealth, equity, or luxury goods could be part of the solution. Others warned that without more efficient public spending, no amount of tax will be enough.Here’s what you had to say:Raise taxes or continued austerityTwo choices really: either raise taxes significantly, or continue mild austerity – limits to public services spending (and quality), and small cuts here and there to welfare spending.The problem with raising taxes is we are already taxed quite heavily in the UK, and further increases will hit people’s spending and economic growth… unless, of course, only the wealthy are targeted for tax rises – but good luck with that.ChrisMatthewsMoney is not the issue – resources areIt makes no sense to discuss national spending and budgets in terms of money. That works for individuals (to whom money has value), but not for nations (since all the money possessed by one member is a liability of others… it has net zero value to the nation*). We need to talk in terms of productive/economic resources and start from the obvious point: they are finite. Allocating more resources to e.g. housebuilding (essential) means fewer available for other uses – no matter who builds the houses, public or private sector. That means we will, on average, be worse off in the short run, in terms of personal spending.Discussion in terms of money makes it all seem like our personal budgets… that leads to seriously wrong thinking.*Unless it is foreign money, which has value to the nation.much0adoWant to share your view? Add it in the comments here.Wealth inequality is getting worseBearing in mind the shift in wealth distribution:1995–1998: The top 10 per cent held 47 per cent of total wealth, while the bottom 50 per cent held 9 per cent.2020–2022: The top 10 per cent now hold 57 per cent of total wealth, while the bottom 50 per cent hold just 6 per cent.(ONS, Wealth and Assets Survey)The UK should seriously consider some form of wealth taxation. There are several economies that have this; the UK could look at how effective this form of taxation is, and what the drawbacks are.I’m not saying the UK can’t work something out for itself, but the track record isn’t great – in anything.wolfieThe poorest pay a greater share of taxTaken from the Equality Trust using ONS figures:”The poorest 10 per cent of households paid on average 48 per centof their income in tax in 2022/23. The richest 10 per cent of households, however, paid on average just 39 per cent of their income in tax.Council tax is a key source of disproportionate taxation, with the poorest 10 per cent paying 7 per cent while the richest 10 per cent pay just 1.2 per cent.Similarly, VAT hits the poorest harder, with the poorest 10 per cent paying 12 per cent while the richest 10% pay just 3 per cent.The post-tax income for the richest 10 per cent is £112,874 – over 12 times higher than the poorest 10er cent’s post-tax income of £9,651.00.”We really can’t afford to support the lifestyles of the mega-wealthy.TalkingSenseTaxes are already too highLabour has already raised taxes above what was already the highest ever level in history. Such ever-higher taxes lead to ever-lower growth, and even declining GDP. Taxes need to be cut, and health and welfare overspending cut back.MarkLook to ScandinaviaOur party system has failed.And capitalism itself has failed.But at least Scandinavian countries have the sense to employ much fairer and more humane versions of it.As the quality of life in those countries incontrovertibly proves, including their health systems, social services, benefits, and transport systems.Cyclone8Minimum wageWhat politicians avoid discussing – including Farage and Starmer – is whether taxation is equitable in the UK, and whether the UK government spending so much on top-up benefits could be reduced by raising the minimum wage and making sure it’s enforced.forumCutting benefits unacceptableCutting benefits is an unacceptable method of balancing the books. Taxing the rich is currently impossible unless done in a coordinated global way. The only things left – as we are already being ridiculously austere –are to have the middle classes carry the burden and continue to make savings via management of immigration.BigDogSmallBrainTackle public sector inefficiencyI think taxes have been raised enough, and it’s high time public sector inefficiencies are addressed. Of course, with a governing party beholden to the unions, this is very unlikely.Ian RobinsonHyper-luxury VAT could helpA 100 per cent VAT on private jets, luxury yachts, caviar, Ferraris, handbags that cost more than the average weekly shop, diamond tiaras, and hundreds of other hyper-luxuries would benefit the many and impact the few. If you can afford a third home, a fourth holiday, or a private chef, you can afford to pay a lot more in taxes.FishPappPeople want services, but not taxesThe problem, as I see it, is that people want a nice country. They want public services, clean streets, no potholes in the roads, healthcare, police, fire brigade, etc. But they don’t want to pay for it. Hence why raising taxes is political suicide.ChopperBillTax property equity to cool the marketThey could tax property equity – it would lower house prices, making them more affordable. The owners won’t be going anywhere for the sake of a few percentage points. But it needs bravery and vision. What the UK lacks is someone capable of selling it to the public.NotRedorBlueSome of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity.Want to share your views? Simply register your details below. Once registered, you can comment on the day’s top stories for a chance to be featured. Alternatively, click ‘log in’ or ‘register’ in the top right corner to sign in or sign up.Make sure you adhere to our community guidelines, which can be found here. For a full guide on how to comment click here. More

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      in UK Politics

      Rachel Reeves U-turns on plan to cut Isa limit to £4,000

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      Rachel Reeves has confirmed she will not reduce the £20,000 annual limit for individual savings accounts (Isas) in a move set to benefit savers across the country. The chancellor had faced pressure from banks not to press ahead with plans to cut the limit in a bid to kickstart growth, which is one of the government’s key objectives.Earlier this year, Emma Reynolds, the economic secretary, pointed out that “hundreds of billions of pounds in cash Isas” were preventing money from being invested in the London Stock Exchange, fuelling speculation that the annual limit could be cut.But Ms Reeves told the BBC: “I’m not going to reduce the limit of what people can put into an Isa, but I do want people to get better returns on their savings, whether that’s in a pension or in their day-to-day savings.“And at the moment, a lot of money is put into cash or bonds when it could be invested in equities, in stock markets, and earn a better return for people. But I absolutely want to preserve that £20,000 tax-free investment that people can make every year.”Cash Isas, which are held by 18 million people, who added a combined total of almost £50bn to them last year, allow households to save without paying income tax on the interest.Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves attends a reception for UK and EU businesses in Downing Street, London. Picture date: Monday May 19, 2025. More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans are attacking childcare funding. Their goal? To push women out of the workforce | Moira Donegan

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      Last month, the White House issued a proposed budget to Congress that completely eliminated funding for Head Start, the six-decade-old early childhood education program for low-income families that serves as a source of childcare for large swaths of the American working class.The funding was restored in the proposed budget after an outcry, but large numbers of employees who oversee the program at the office of Head Start were laid off in a budget-slashing measure under Robert F Kennedy Jr, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, Kennedy said funding for the program would not be axed, but more cuts to childcare funding are likely coming: some Republicans have pushed to repeal a five-decade-old tax credit for daycare. The White House is entertaining proposals on how to incentivize and structurally coerce American women into bearing more children, but it seems to be determined to make doing so as costly to those women’s careers as possible.That’s because the Republicans’ childcare policy, like their pro-natalist policy, is based on one goal: undoing the historic gains in women’s rights and status, and pushing American women out of the workforce, out of public life, out of full participation in society – and into a narrow domestic role of confinement, dependence and isolation.The New York Times reported this week that the White House is now not only looking for ways to make more women have children, but to encourage “parents” to stay home to raise them. “Parents” here is a euphemism. Roughly 80% of stay-at-home parents are mothers: cultural traditions that encourage women, and not men, to sacrifice their careers for caregiving, along with persistent wage inequalities that make women, on the whole, lower earners than their male partners, both incentivize women, and not men, to drop out of the workforce and stay home when they have children.This state of affairs has been worsened by the dramatic rise in the cost of childcare, which is prohibitively expensive for many parents. The average cost of childcare per child per year in the US is now well north of $11,000, according to Child Care Aware of America, an industry advocacy group. In major cities such as New York, that price is significantly higher: from $16,000 to $19,000 per year. Existing tax credits need to be expanded, not eliminated, to reduce this burden on mothers and their families and to enable women to join the workforce at rates comparable to men and commensurate with their dignity and capacities. Currently, 26% of mothers do not engage in paid work, a figure that has barely budged in 40 years. Largely because of the unequally distributed burdens of childcare, men participate in the paid labor force at a rate that is more than 10% higher than women.One might think that the solution would be to invest more in high-quality childcare, so that providers could open more slots, children could access more resources, and women could go to work and expend their talents in productive ways that earn them money, make use of their gifts and provide more dignity for women and more stability for families. This is not what the American right is proposing: Brad Wilcox, a sociologist who promotes traditional family and gender relations, has called such policy initiatives “work-ist”. Conservatives are proposing, instead, that women go back to the kitchen.The Trump administration, and the American right more broadly, wants the rate of women’s employment to be even lower, because it is advancing a lie that women are naturally, inevitably, uniformly and innately inclined to caregiving, child rearing and homemaking – and not to the positions of intellectual achievement, responsibility, leadership, ingenuity or independence that women may aspire to in the public world. “We cannot get away from the fact that a child is hardwired to bond with Mom,” says Janet Erickson, a fellow at the rightwing Institute for Family Studies, who once co-authored an op-ed with JD Vance calling on “parents” to drop out of the workforce to raise children. “I just think, why should we deny that?”This kind of vague, evidence-free gesturing toward evolutionary psychology – the notion that babies are “hardwired” to prefer mothers who are not employed – is a common conservative tick: a recourse to dishonest and debunked science to lend empiricism to bigotry. There is in fact no evolutionary reason, and no biological reason, for mothers, and not fathers, to abandon independence, ambition or life outside the home for the sake of a child. The only reason is a sexist one.Over the past decade, the left launched few vigorous defenses of a feminist politics that seeks to advance and secure women’s access to public life, paid work and fair remuneration. The American left has launched vigorous criticisms of the “girlboss”, a figure of malignant female ambition who seemed to make the exploitations of capitalism more offensive by virtue of her sex, and it has instead offered critiques of women’s ambition and romantic defenses of the labor of “care” that just happens to overlap with women’s traditional – and traditionally unpaid – roles in the home. This leftwing rhetoric has at times mirrored the similar romanticization of the unpaid housewife of yesteryear from the right, which has embraced tradwives, homesteading fantasies and an aestheticized rustic simplicity that aims to contrast feminist gains in the workforce with a fantasy of women’s rest. Together, these strains of rhetorical opposition to women in the workforce have made anti-feminism into a new kind of “socialism of fools” – a misguided misdirection of anger and resentment at the rapaciousness of capitalism towards a social justice movement for the rights of an oppressed class.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut what is on offer from the political right is not about the refashioning of work and life to be less extractive and exploitative for women, and particularly for mothers. It is instead about a sex segregation of human experience, an effort to make much of public life inaccessible to women. Combined with the right wing’s successful attack on the right to abortion, the Trump administration’s dramatic cuts to Title X programs that provide contraceptive access, and the rescinding of federal grants aimed at helping working women, what emerges from the rightwing policy agenda is an effort to force women out of education, out of decently paid work and into pregnancy, unemployment and dependence on men.Theirs is an effort to shelter men from women’s economic competition, to revert to the regressive cultural modes of an imagined past, and to impose an artificially narrow vision of the capacities, aspirations, talents and desires of half of the American people.Murray Rothbard, the paleoconservative 20th-century economist whose ideas have had a profound influence on the Trumpist worldview, once vowed: “We shall repeal the 20th century.” As far as the Republican right is concerned, it seems to want to repeal the gains of 20th-century feminism first.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      in US Politics

      This Mother’s Day, lets talk about why birth rates are really declining | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      Mother’s Day is here, and while Donald Trump may seem an unlikely celebrant of the occasion, his administration has recently floated several proposals to incentivize motherhood – or, more accurately, giving birth. There’s the $5,000 “baby bonus” for every American mother, free classes educating women on their menstrual cycles and a National Medal of Motherhood for moms who have at least six children. (Want to guess which regime also awarded such a medal?)As usual, the president has offered ridiculous solutions to a very real problem. He’s certainly right that every American should be able to afford to raise children, and that programs like social security depend on stable demographics. But of course, every other action he has taken to undermine gender equality would suggest that this sudden interest in the wellbeing of mothers is less than sincere. That’s exactly why progressives have an opening to break up what the Republican party believes to be its ideological monopoly on pro-family policies.The roots of the fertility crisis engage the bread-and-butter issues that have long been the domain of Democrats. US birthrates have hit a record low not because the nation has become “almost pathologically anti-child”, as JD Vance asserted to the New York Times. Instead, surveys have shown that would-be parents want to own a home, repay student debt and have money for childcare before starting a family. Yet the average age of a homebuyer has climbed to 56, almost double what it was 40 years ago. And 43% of young people currently carry student debt, compared with 28% in 1993. The problem isn’t lack of interest – it’s too much interest being paid on record high loans.But most of the Trump administration’s floated fixes are unoriginal swipes from the undemocratic leaders they admire. In 2017, Vladimir Putin declared a “Decade of Childhood in Russia”, an innocent name for a program that calls for everything from defending so-called family values to encouraging conjugal trysts during workplace coffee breaks to censoring “childfree propaganda”. Meanwhile, Viktor Orbán has dedicated 5% of Hungary’s GDP to pronatalist policies, which include nationalized IVF services and lifetime tax exemptions for mothers with three children. These men are carrying on an authoritarian tradition begun by the original strongman, Benito Mussolini, whose “Battle for Births” portended literal battles that decreased Europe’s population by 20 million people.That’s why those who really care about real solutions would be wise to start offering their own plans, and, in fact, some already have. What the Trump administration didn’t plagiarize from autocrats, they took from progressives, which is why “baby bonuses” sounds an awful lot like the “baby bonds” proposed in 2021 by Senators Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker and Representative Ayanna Pressley. The legislation would put $1,000 in a savings account at birth for every American child. The Biden-era American Rescue Plan also almost doubled the child tax credit, which nearly halved the child poverty rate. Though making that expansion permanent received bipartisan support, it was ultimately killed by the centrist triangulating of Joe Manchin.Four years later, Democrats have the chance to embrace a genuinely progressive agenda that doubles as a pro-family platform. Bernie Sanders has long called for cancelling all student debt, Elizabeth Warren has campaigned for universal childcare, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the first politicians on Capitol Hill to offer three months of paid parental leave to her entire staff. The Congressional Progressive caucus has also called for a whole raft of policies that would lower the cost of living, from expanding Medicaid to investing $250bn in affordable housing. They understand that real relief will come not from handing out medals but from having the mettle to fight for working families.Still, even if Democrats manage a progressive populist revival not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it probably wouldn’t be enough to lift birthrates. In social democracies like Finland and Sweden – which offer 13 months of paid parental leave and cover 90% of preschool costs, respectively – fertility remains below replacement levels.Does that indicate the problem may be more fundamental? One sociologist, Dr Karen Benjamin Guzzo, has attributed this dilemma to apprehension: “People really need to feel confident about the future.” But whether it’s 60% of young people feeling very worried about the climate crisis, or 80% of new mothers feeling lonely, or 90% of voters feeling that American politics is broken, the state of the world doesn’t seem too conducive to domestic bliss. The right’s response to this anxiety is embodied by Elon Musk, who keeps siring children with women he meets on X to create a “legion-level” brood “before the apocalypse”.To help avert said apocalypse, what should be on offer are authentically family-friendly policies that benefit parents and non-parents alike. In doing so, there’s a chance to persuade Americans that the next generation still might have a brighter future than the last. Or, at the very least, that progressives have a more compelling vision for American families than the one whose budget is about to take billions from children’s education, food and healthcare.It’s one thing to incentivize giving birth. Americans deserve leaders who will fight for those kids after they’re born.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times More