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      The uphill battle to resurrect the US child tax credit that lifted millions from poverty

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      The uphill battle to resurrect the US child tax credit that lifted millions from poverty Monthly payments became a lifeline for many families, and their lapse had a devastating effect, but the policy seems to have no path forward in the SenateIf the negotiations over Democrats’ Build Back Better Act had gone differently, tens of millions of American families would have received checks on Tuesday. Instead, for the third month in a row, the monthly payments from the expanded child tax credit were not distributed.The monthly checks, which were approved last year as part of Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief package, had become a lifeline for many families struggling to financially recover from the pandemic. But the payments came to an end in December, after Democrats failed to pass their Build Back Better Act, which would have extended the policy.Those monthly payments helped temporarily lift millions of American children out of poverty, and the policy’s lapse has had a devastating effect. According to a report from Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy, 3.7 million more American children were experiencing poverty in January, after the monthly payments ended. The increase was disproportionately high among Black and Latino children.Progressives have continued to advocate for the expanded credit, insisting an extension of the monthly payments should be included in any social spending package that Democrats can get through Congress.Progressive Democrats set out list of executive orders to push Biden agendaRead moreBut the policy appears to have no path forward in the evenly divided Senate, underscoring Democrats’ challenges in trying to advance Biden’s economic agenda. Some Democrats fear that failing to extend the expanded credit will further damage the party’s prospects in the midterm elections, making it more difficult for candidates to make a case for re-election to voters.The expanded tax credit was initially enacted through the American Rescue Plan, which Biden signed into law last March. The new policy increased the tax benefit from $2,000 a year to a maximum of $3,600 a year for children aged five or younger and a maximum of $3,000 a year for children between the ages of six and 17. The credit allowed families to collect half of the benefit through monthly checks, which were distributed between July and December of last year. The policy also made the tax credit fully refundable, meaning more low-income parents could access the funds. In December, the last month that the payments were sent out, more than 36 million American households received checks.“Talk about a program that has shown its worth in spades. So effective, so necessary. We’ve seen the results immediately,” Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Thursday. Jayapal even invited a Seattle mother of three who benefited from the monthly payments, Leanne Do, as her “virtual guest” to the State of the Union earlier this month.Despite the clear impact of the payments and progressives’ passion for the policy, Democrats appear to be at an impasse when it comes to continuing the monthly checks. The version of the Build Back Better Act that passed the House in November included a one-year extension of the expanded child tax credit. But that bill has stalled in the Senate because of Senator Joe Manchin’s opposition to the proposal.“It’s a question of what can get 50 votes. And unfortunately, we’re still coming up against that barrier,” Jayapal said. “I don’t know what to say other than it’s incredibly frustrating to a lot of us.”Democrats are now trying to resurrect components of the Build Back Better Act that can win Manchin’s approval, specifically the provisions aimed at combating climate change and lowering prescription drug costs. But as the party cautiously approaches negotiations again, there have been conspicuously few mentions of extending the expanded child tax credit.In his State of the Union speech, Biden emphasized the importance of enacting various pieces of his economic agenda, including strengthening domestic supply chains and investing in clean-energy sources. In the hour-long speech, Biden devoted only one half of one sentence to the expanded child tax credit.“Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and extend the child tax credit, so no one has to raise a family in poverty,” Biden told lawmakers.On Monday, the president acknowledged the challenges he has faced in trying to extend the expanded credit. “It was something we should be doing again, but I’m having trouble getting it passed again,” Biden said at the National League of Cities Congressional City Conference.That trouble is largely thanks to one member of Biden’s own party. Manchin announced in December that he would not support the Build Back Better Act, saying the bill’s $1.7tn price tag was too much to stomach when US inflation has hit a 40-year high. Privately, Manchin also told colleagues that he feared parents would waste the money from the expanded child tax credit on drugs, according to HuffPost. (Surveys show parents report spending the extra money on food, rent and utilities.)Progressives in Congress are continuing to fight for the policy, but they are clear-eyed about the odds of passing an extension with the narrowest of majorities in the Senate.“As far as the path forward, I would love to say yes, but at this point, I don’t see it, and I haven’t heard a lot of conversations about how to get there,” said the progressive congresswoman Cori Bush, who noted that many of her constituents were “devastated” when the payments ended.If the policy is not reinstated, it could deal another blow to Democrats’ already bleak prospects in the midterm elections. Republicans are currently favored to retake control of the House, and the failure to pass the Build Back Better Act – and specifically the extension of the expanded child tax credit – may make voters even less inclined to re-elect Democrats.Party leaders have tried to frame Congress’s failure to extend the payments as a reflection on Republicans. Chris Taylor, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, noted that not a single Republican supported the American Rescue Plan, which initiated the monthly payment.“We are going to make sure the record is clear for voters: House Democrats delivered for families when things got tough,” Taylor said. “Every single Republican in Congress voted against helping your family.”With the Build Back Better Act stalled, progressives are also trying to find other avenues for helping families who are financially struggling. On Thursday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus released a list of executive orders that Biden should sign to advance Democrats’ policy agenda. The list includes demands to lower prescription drug costs, expand overtime eligibility and cancel federal student loan debt, among other suggestions.Jayapal pledged that progressives would continue to push for the passage of the Build Back Better Act, including an extension of the expanded child tax credit. But she argued the proposed executive orders represented a strong starting point for helping average Americans’ monthly budgets, which could in turn boost Democrats’ chances in the midterms.“We’ve got to make sure that we’re addressing the increase in housing costs, in childcare, in gas prices, and all the things that we’re seeing right now – and addressing that for people who are on the margins,” Jayapal said on Thursday. “Let’s deliver some relief quickly for people. And yes, anything we do between now and November helps us.”TopicsBiden administrationPovertyUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Rowing Together to Tackle Inequality

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      Beyond the health consequences of the pandemic, evidence shows that the COVID-19 crisis may result in increasing the levels of poverty and inequality for years, if not generations. This outcome is not inevitable. However, insufficient responses to the crisis have deepened inequalities both between and within countries and intensified public discontent, paving the way to “social turmoil and unrest,” says research Bruno Valerio.

      COVID Failure: A Matter of Principle

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      The costs of the pandemic are being borne disproportionately by poorer categories of society since low-income households are more exposed to health risks and more likely to experience job losses and sharp declines in wellbeing. At the same time, the pandemic has been a boon for the wealthy. In response to the economic collapse in March and April 2020, central banks injected enormous amounts of liquidity into financial markets, keeping asset prices high while economic activity slowed down. Some of the biggest winners were those with high stakes in the technology sector.

      Against this background, Kara Tan Bhala, the founder of the Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics, suggests using the Gini coefficient as a measure of how close a country or the world is to economic upheaval. “The Gini coefficient gauges the income inequality of a region, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality,” she says. “Perhaps nations begin seriously reforming economic policies when their Gini coefficients are above 0.4 (United States) and red lights start flashing trouble when a country scores above 0.5 (South Africa, Brazil).”

      But how do we tackle inequality? According to economist Etienne Perrot, “the adequate responses must … address both property [ownership] rights through anti-trust regulations to counter the abuse of a dominant position, policies through redistributive taxes and education so as not to confuse emulation and competition.” Other policy responses may include “reforms of the transparency and other features of firm governance, broader acceptance of countries’ right to control cross-border capital movements,” as Andrew Cornford points out.

      Embed from Getty Images

      To implement these policies, the first condition is that inequalities should be on the political agenda, which is not the case everywhere, as professor Yuriy Temirov illustrates with the case of Ukraine. But policy measures alone are not sufficient to reduce inequalities. They have to be complemented by a cultural, transformative process for learning to “row together” (Fratelli tutti), as Domingo Sugranyes of the Pablo VI Foundation says, to increase our socioeconomic resilience.

      By Virgile Perret and Paul Dembinski

      Note: From Virus to Vitamin invites experts to comment on issues relevant to finance and the economy in relation to society, ethics and the environment. Below, you will find views from a variety of perspectives, practical experiences and academic disciplines. The topic of this discussion is: Inequalities seem to accelerate in every part of the world due to COVID-19 and other issues. Unlike the climate debate, in social issues, we do not have a proper threshold for catastrophe. This leads to a possible overestimation of social resilience and leaves the issue as such largely untackled. Drawing on the particularities of your region or on your area of expertise, what should/can be done?

      “… perfectly predictable socioeconomic inequalities … ”

      “The pandemic only reveals perfectly predictable socioeconomic inequalities. Pope Francis had alerted the international community as soon as the first vaccines appeared. The causes of these glaring social inequalities mix the institutional side through the right of property, the politics increasingly tempted by nationalism, and the spiritual bathed in the materialistic individualism of modernity. The adequate responses must therefore address both property right through anti-trust regulations to counter the abuse of a dominant position, policies through redistributive taxes and education so as not to confuse emulation and competition, distinguishing between the elite and the financial success.”

      Etienne Perrot — Jesuit, economist and editorial board member of the Choisir magazine (Geneva) and adviser to the journal Etudes (Paris)

      “… the Gini coefficient as a measure of how close a country is to economic upheaval… ”

      “In the global climate crisis, anything over 2°C above the average pre-industrial temperature leads to unmitigated disaster. In a similar vein, I suggest we use the Gini coefficient as a measure of how close a country or the world is to economic upheaval. The Gini coefficient gauges the income inequality of a region, where 0 corresponds with perfect equality and 1 corresponds with perfect inequality. Perhaps nations begin seriously reforming economic policies when their Gini coefficients are above 0.4 (United States) and red lights start flashing trouble when a country scores above 0.5 (South Africa, Brazil). Of course, these watershed levels need further research, but it would be enlightening to have an idea of the income inequality thresholds of social disaster.”

      Kara Tan Bhala —president and founder of the Seven Pillars Institute for Global Finance and Ethics

      “… public support will be essential to act to avert a total catastrophe … ”

      “Despite its importance, GDP as an indicator should no longer be the only way we measure economic success. Fairer economy would mean tackling health inequalities and getting to grips with issues that prevent individuals from certain ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds meeting their full potential. We need to embrace means of improving wellbeing and advancing social mobility, build on promoting social inclusion as well as addressing poverty. New plans must be put in place to achieve a more sustainable economy in a more equal and socially just society, and this cannot just be an aspiration — it must be seen as critical to our survival. In recognizing the profound challenges, public support will be essential to act to avert a total catastrophe. The coronavirus is still alive, and risk lies in whether this will be possible.”

      Archana Sinha — head of the Department of Women’s Studies at the Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, India

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      “… rowing together (Fratelli tutti) …”

      “I don’t see a theoretical answer to this extremely vast question. My reaction can only be in terms of (modest) action-oriented commitment: ‘rowing together’ (Fratelli tutti), i.e., trying to identify social projects of high solidarity value, which help people to emerge from poverty on their own capabilities, and look for means — money, goods, time — in order to increase the scope and impact of such communities. We need business and people in business to get much more decidedly involved in these kinds of projects. This is, among many other organizations, what we try to do with The Voluntary Solidarity Fund (VSF International) and VSF Spain. Everybody is welcome to join.”

      Domingo Sugranyes — director of a seminar on ethics and technology at Pablo VI Foundation, former executive vice-chairman of MAPFRE international insurance group

      “… an effective wealth tax and a global minimum corporate tax … ”

      “With the COVID-19 pandemic, the gap between the rich and the poor, in particular the income gap, has increased as Pope Francis, among others, has stated on several occasions. It is undeniable that the trend had already started several decades ago. However, with COVID-19, inequalities have reached record levels that do necessitate strong internal reforms. If no actions will be taken, such as an effective wealth tax and a global minimum corporate tax, the possibility of social turmoil and unrest will be inevitable. In Italy, political parties are literally unable to agree and set the slightest kind of agenda for a proper patrimoniale (wealth tax or asset tax), preferring to keep the country in an extremely dangerous status quo.”

      Valerio Bruno —researcher in politics

      “… fiscal measures, transparency, control of cross-border capital movements … ”

      “Much attention has been given to the wealth as well as the income dimension of the inequalities — the associated rents of the minority at one end, and the much lower and often stagnating incomes of the remainder. The latter comprises not only the working class, but also parts of the middle class. Much commentary has also concerned the opportunities to hide wealth — and thus reduce tax exposure — provided by cross-border financial liberalization and offshore financial centers. Policy responses to the inequalities should include fiscal measures, including improved taxation of the wealth of individuals and firms, reforms of the transparency and other features of firm governance, broader acceptance of countries’ right to control cross-border capital movements, and changes in legal definitions designed to facilitate controls over firms’ domestic and cross-border access to different economic activities and industries and thus to restrict regulatory arbitrage and opaqueness in firms’ operations.”

      Andrew Cornford — counselor at Observatoire de la Finance, former staff member of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), with special responsibility for financial regulation and international trade in financial services

      “… imaginative countermeasures of income … ”

      “The fundamental dynamic of any economy is summed up in the dictum, ‘To those who have shall be given and they shall have more than they can use, and from those who have not shall be taken even what they have.’ COVID also has set it in motion. Where the effects are beneficial — e.g., the reduction in travel by air — it should be encouraged. Further good news is that the deprivation inflicted by COVID on the deprived has been met — at least in places like Geneva — not by the usual blame, scorn and exclusion, but by imaginative countermeasures of income support and new forms of communication like Zoom.”

      Edouard Dommen — specialist in economic ethics, former university professor and researcher at the UNCTAD and president of Geneva’s Ecumenical Workshop in Theology.

      Embed from Getty Images

      “… first we have to think about youth … ”

      “The social deprivation problems are persistent, and this fact routinizes somehow their existence and hinders the definition of a social resilience threshold. Differentiated priorities emerged in South/Eastern Europe after the successive waves of crisis, but first we have to think about youth since no country can sustain without giving hope to its members through a micro/macro strategy that includes: i) an immediate recovery plan with emergency income support for the vulnerable groups; ii) long-lasting work-related policies and investments on youth employment (work-based training, tax reliefs for innovative enterprises); iii) strategies of sharing the risks with interregional cooperation and job retention schemes; and iv) protection and support of childhood integrity (tackling invisible work and poverty with financial benefits for low-income families and proper child/health-care, along with future-centered support, such as home learning environment and early schooling interventions).”

      Christos Tsironis —associate professor of social theory at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

      “… in Ukraine, social inequality will not become a priority soon … ”

      “In Ukraine, social inequality has two primary sources: the legacy of the ‘socialist’ totalitarian past and deformed oligarchic capitalism. At the same time, the initial period of transformation with the exacerbation of the problems of social inequality has dragged on dangerously. From 1991 to 2014, the domination of the interests of oligarchic groups over national interests acted as a brake on reforms. After the Revolution of Dignity, there was a political will to implement unpopular reforms, but they had to be carried out in conditions of the population’s fatigue from reforms, in the realities of Russian aggression. The promotion of reforms by servants of the people is complicated by populism. In Ukraine, social inequality will not become a priority soon. At this stage of transformation, this issue cannot be a priority; the authorities do not have a correct understanding of the hierarchy of priorities, and society’s perceptions of equality/inequality are distorted by collectivism and paternalism.

      Yuriy Temirov —associate professor, dean of the Faculty of History and International Relations at Vasyl Stus Donetsk National University

      *[An earlier version of this article was published by From Virus to Vitamin before the Ukraine War began.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Guardian view on a Kabul heist: snatching money from the starving | Editorial

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      The Guardian view on a Kabul heist: snatching money from the starvingEditorialAfghans are not to blame for 9/11, though they have paid for it many times over. Cruelly, they are being punished again The average Afghan was not even alive when planes were flown into the twin towers on 11 September 2001. This is only one of the reasons why handing money from the Afghan central bank to the families of 9/11 victims would be unconscionable. Parents are already selling their organs to feed their children, 98% of the population is short of food, and unless cash starts flowing again things are about to get much, much worse.The executive order signed by the Biden administration on Friday would allow Afghanistan’s $7bn US-held assets, frozen when the Taliban swept to power, to be halved. One half would be held pending the outcome of lawsuits brought against the Taliban by the families of 9/11 victims who have persuaded a judge to attach their case to the Afghan assets. The other half, if courts agree, would be used for humanitarian aid. The administration’s argument is that this may help get assistance to Afghanistan more swiftly, without having to await the outcome of the cases. The government can step into lawsuits to say what it believes is in the national interest, but decided that it would not object to any decision to award half the money to the families.Though central bank funds are supposed to enjoy diplomatic immunities, it appears that the administration can act if a “recognised representative of the Afghan government” approves – raising obvious questions about who might now qualify. Whatever the legal technicalities, the moral case is clear. Afghans are not to blame for 9/11, though they have paid for it many times over. Some of the bereaved have already condemned the idea of taking Afghan money as a betrayal. Thousands of American families were devastated that day, and $7bn compensation was disbursed to bereaved relatives and the injured (many of whom faced huge medical bills); another $10bn is still being paid out. This is in stark contrast with Afghanistan, where, on the very rare occasions that the US made compensation or “condolence” payments for civilian deaths, relatives usually received a small four-figure sum. The administration cannot claim the moral high ground because it proposes using some of the money for aid. Though most of it originally came from international donors, including the US, it is no longer theirs to spend, and some represents the personal savings of Afghans.In any case, humanitarian relief is no substitute for a functioning, if floundering, economy. It is not merely that it raises the prospect of starving Afghans paying the salaries of western aid workers, and of a flood of food aid causing more long-term damage by crippling agriculture. The UN had already warned that the financial system could collapse within months; seizing the central bank’s assets could be the last straw. It’s true that those funds alone can’t solve Afghanistan’s underlying problems – but they are desperately needed to stave off some of the worst consequences.Afghan experts and others have worked on imaginative solutions to restore liquidity without simply ceding control of assets to the Taliban. The problem is not a lack of means, but of will: relief is an easier political sell in the US, which is also believed to have blocked other countries from unfreezing funds. No one wants to aid the Taliban, whose primary victims are Afghans. But no one should claim the administration’s plan is in the best interests of the Afghan people.TopicsAfghanistanOpinionTalibanJoe BidenDemocratsUS politicsSeptember 11 2001United NationseditorialsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Progressives concerned as Eric Adams takes helm as New York mayor

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      Progressives concerned as Eric Adams takes helm as New York mayorHomelessness, safe housing, police brutality and racial injustice – does Bill de Blasio’s replacement have the policies to fix them? For many New Yorkers, the inauguration of Eric Adams as the 110th mayor of New York City – and only the second Black person to serve in the position – has evoked a range of feelings, from excitement at the possibility of change to confusion and concern.‘Generals don’t lead from the back’: New York mayor Eric Adams seeks bold start Read moreAdams’ rise through city and state politics was fairly typical. In addition to serving as a New York police captain, he was the Brooklyn borough president and a state senator. But he remains an unconventional, even enigmatic figure. There are questions surrounding his home address and curiosity about his plant-based diet, but information about his actual policies remain scarce.“Where Eric Adams has thrived, in many ways, is in really failing to lay out a vision,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, director of the New York Working Families party. “His transition has been defined by personality, less [by] an agenda for the city.”Progressives and advocates working across multiple sectors have voiced concerns at the slow emergence of Adams’ plans and priorities, and worry about positions he has taken including increasing the use of the heavily criticized “stop-and-frisk” policy and resurrecting plainclothes policemen units.Adams’ ascent comes at a crucial time in New York history, as the city seeks to emerge from the pandemic and the economic and social chaos that has come with it.New York’s ballooning homelessness crisis, primarily caused by a lack of affordable housing, is one of the largest issues Adam must contend with. In 2020, more than 120,000 people, including children, slept in the New York municipal shelter system, with homelessness reaching the highest levels since the Great Depression.Covid presented additional challenges, spreading rapidly among homeless populations.Advocates have widely supported Adams’ priority of increasing permanent, affordable housing in a city which has some of America’s most expensive rents. But many have raised concerns about Adams’ main plan: converting 25,000 hotel rooms into permanent apartments, noting zoning and conversion requirements many hotels do not meet.Public housing, managed by the New York Public Housing Association, is another area where Adams has faced pushback. Adams supports privatizing public housing units as well as selling air rights above public housing units. Activists have said such actions, presented as an opportunity to raise capital for blighted buildings, are ineffective and that oversight for private landlords when it comes to addressing housing issues like mold and lead paint would become even more difficult.“His focus is going to be on his big-money donors. That’s been his track record all along. That’s not a secret,” said Fight for NYCHA core member Louis Flores.“We expect him to continue down that road, and for public housing that he’s going to support policies that benefit the real estate development industry at the expense of the public housing residents.”Slice of life: New York’s famed $1 street pizza under threat from rising costsRead moreDespite ambiguities around some of Adams’ plans for addressing homelessness, some experts are hopeful delays in appointments – and Adams’ reputation for flexibility – could be an opportunity for his administration to receive input from community leaders on how to address the crisis, including through the creation of a deputy to oversee homelessness and affordable housing.”Having a bit more of a deliberative process is ultimately going to be more impactful than coming out on day one with an ambitious target for the number of units of affordable housing that should be created that might not actually have the impact of reducing homelessness and housing insecurity,” said Jacquelyn Simone, policy director at Coalition for the Homeless.Proposed changes to policing are another point of tension.Adams, who has described assault at the hands of an NYPD officer as inspiration for joining public service, has faced criticism for his plans to resurrect controversial plainclothes units, an anti-crime department in the NYPD involved in a number of shootings, and increase use of stop-and-frisk, a policy critics have condemned as racially discriminatory.While Adams and his newly appointed NYPD commissioner, Keechant Sewell, the first Black woman to lead the department, have supported these policies and vowed to use properly trained, “emotionally intelligent” officers, progressive have argued that previous training attempts have failed, with many officers continually excused for misconduct.“What does the emotional intelligence of an officer matter if he’s got you up against the wall, patting you down,” said Kesi Foster, a lead organizer with the nonprofit Make the Road New York and a steering committee member with Communities United for Police Reform.Simone said: “The ways to solve unsheltered homelessness is not through policing and pushing people from one corner to another.”Other policing initiatives Adams has sponsored have met criticism, specifically when it comes to New York’s troubled jail system.While Adams has publicly supported closing down Rikers Island, a jail with notoriously poor conditions where several people have died in pre-trial custody, he has also promised to bring back solitary confinement to Rikers, reversing a previous ban on a practice several experts have called “inhumane”.Eric Adams sworn in as mayor of New York CityRead moreAdams has publicly opposed bail reform measures, meant to curtail pre-trial detention but rolled back, citing debunked claims that releases have spurred increases in crime.“Changing the bail bill is not going to achieve the outcome the mayor wants. We’re hoping that we can convince him of that during his tenure,” said Marie Ndiaye, supervising attorney of the Decarceration Project at the Legal Aid Society.“Getting wishy-washy on bail reform is pretty scary because there’s a pretty linear correlation between the rollbacks and the jail population increasing,” said Sara Rahimi of the nonprofit Emergency Release Fund.In general, advocates contend there is more to be learned about Adams as more appointments are made, but given his comments so far, many are approaching the mayor-elect with caution and timid hope of being able to advance progressive policy.“Cautiously optimistic and cautiously pessimistic all at once would be the way to go there,” said Ndiaye.TopicsNew YorkUS politicsUS policingUS crimeUS domestic policyHomelessnessHousingnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      New York City Can’t Just Gentrify Its Way Back to Normal

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      Outdoor cafes and to-go cocktails are scenes from a privileged lockdown. What is the plan for neighborhoods that were struggling before Covid?On the rare occasions I have left the city over the past few months, I have been asked the same question repeatedly: “How is New York?” People want to know whether they should visit and what it will be like when they do, and I tell them that they should come immediately because they will find a place newly awakened to pleasure — to biking everywhere, to dining sheds covered in peonies, to jazz bands turning up in Prospect Park on random weekdays, to Little Island and drinking orange wine at lunch.In the city’s most prosperous quarters, people are still at home — much of the professional class is not expected to return to the office until September — and the pursuit of the good life, aided by vaccination, has now resumed unimpeded. On a recent Friday afternoon, I walked the length of Court Street in Brooklyn, to find an outdoor dining scene with the vibe of a late night in Madrid. New stores had already taken up residence in vacant spaces. March in Cobble Hill saw the arrival of Tavola Italian Market, for example, a purveyor of truffle cashews, truffle pecorino cream, truffle Gruyere and many other things that most of us were surely unaware could serve as repositories for mushroom-adjacent flavoring.The late-stage pandemic lifestyle is hardly a reality for most New Yorkers. To the contrary, a recent survey of 700 workers in Astoria, Queens, conducted by the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, found that of the third laid off during the past year, only 38 percent have returned to work. And yet from certain angles, a city once driven by ambition now seems to run on a vaporous languor. I suspect that this particular consequence of the pandemic, more than any other, explains the ocean of apathy surrounding the mayoral race, the most important election New Yorkers have faced in more than half a century. The pervasive sense of detachment has not changed even with the election a little more than two weeks away. Eight years ago, when Bill de Blasio was first campaigning to run the city, you could spot signs for his candidacy in apartment windows all over Brooklyn. Now you can walk your pandemic rescue dog around for hours and see posters for virtually no one.Embedded in the sort of neighborhood that is thriving, the high-information voter is distracted by the groove. The kind of Democrat already anxious about Abigail Spanberger’s prospects for re-election in Virginia’s crucial Seventh Congressional District next year is struggling to find evidence of a city at the brink of existential undoing. Without a reason to go to Midtown, she has little sense of how desolate it can feel. No longer in a consistent relationship with the public transit system, she might read about rising crime on the subway, but she isn’t feeling it. Whatever her worries, they are easily eclipsed by the realities of a robust housing market and the seeming permeance of the takeout margarita.What is at stake is what is always at stake — the fate of struggling communities that have only been further devastated by the pandemic, wrecked by lost lives, lost jobs, lost housing. Mayor de Blasio famously ran on a platform of mending an economically divided city, but he is leaving behind a place where the gaps between rich and poor have become only more obvious and horrific. The Covid death rate in Brownsville, Brooklyn, historically one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city, was more than twice as high as it was on the Upper East Side. Gun violence has been a problem in the city, but in Brownsville, the number of shooting victims has more than doubled since January, compared with the same period last year; over a two-year time frame there has been a 300 percent increase.During the height of the pandemic, Rodney Frazer and his organization, Collective Fare, made hundreds of thousands of meals for people in the neighborhood out of the Brooklyn Community Culinary Center on Belmont Avenue. I met him in front of the center recently, where the crack trade resurfaced last summer as people in the area desperate to make some cash found an eager market among drivers passing through Central Brooklyn looking to buy drugs. What was different about Belmont Avenue all of a sudden, Lucas Denton, who runs a related organization, the Melting Pot Foundation, told me, was the parade of out-of-state license plates.I asked both of these men and others deeply invested in Brownsville what a new mayor could do to make a big difference and their answers were consistently simple and specific in a way that made it painfully clear how little the city’s ruling political class has really listened to people with deep roots in the community. Mr. Frazer wanted to know why the native tech talent of so many teenagers has not been harnessed and deployed to serve a food industry now ever more dependent on app-enabled delivery and digital marketing. “I mean you have a problem with your phone and can’t figure something out and you hand it to your kid, right?”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Daniel Goodine, a longtime activist in Brownsville, who lost one son to gun violence 17 years ago and another to prison, continues to be astounded by the fact that there is no trade school in Brownsville, something that would have a huge and immediate impact on the lives of teenagers who might otherwise be drawn to gang life.“Why don’t I have a trade school, like the one on 96th Street, when I can take a pistol out of a kid’s hand and give him a nail gun?” he asked. Mr. Goodine was very involved in getting food to the hungry during the pandemic, and what struck him was how this effort was nearly thwarted almost from the beginning by inadequate storage capacity. A lack of warehouse space in the neighborhood meant that the emergency operation had to rely on trucking, which complicated a process already full of logistical difficulties.That same effort revealed again the extent to which poor neighborhoods are regarded as dumping grounds for a broad range of economic problems. During the height of the Covid crisis, dairy farmers were in a panic; schools and restaurants were now closed to them. As a result, a lot of surplus milk ended up in Brownsville. “There was all of this infusion of dairy, and there was no infrastructure to receive it,” Rae Gomes, the executive director of the Brownsville Community Culinary Center, told me. “People didn’t necessarily want it. Because what do we know about Black and brown people? A lot of us are lactose intolerant.”Wednesday night’s mayoral debate focused on crime and public safety with not nearly enough discussion of the economic conditions that are intricately linked to their rise and fall. Eric Adams, who has strong support in Brownsville, did make the connection. But no candidate really has a comprehensive plan to eradicate deep poverty in neighborhoods where rates have remained virtually unchanged since the 1970s. No one really knows what to do with a neighborhood that cannot gentrify its way to glory. Brownsville isn’t struggling with the question of whether or not to keep outdoor dining sheds. It doesn’t have any. More

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      in Elections

      Andrew Yang Responds: ‘My Targeted Plan for the City Will Be a Lifeline for Many’

      by

      The candidate for mayor of New York responds to a column by Paul Krugman.To the Editor:In “Andrew Yang Hasn’t Done the Math” (column, April 16), Paul Krugman criticized a proposal I have not put forth as part of my run for mayor of New York.My plan is a targeted $1 billion cash relief initiative to distribute $2,000 a year to the 500,000 poorest New Yorkers.This will mitigate the disproportionate impact of automation on Black, Hispanic and Asian New Yorkers. A new report by the Center for an Urban Future found that nearly half of all job tasks held by Hispanic men can be automated.We know that targeted cash relief works. The Atlantic and Bloomberg recently reported on the success of a pilot in Stockton, Calif. Compared with the control group, several positive outcomes were found for the 125 people in lower-income neighborhoods who received $500 a month.Likewise, the federal stimulus checks also played a crucial role in lessening the economic disruption of the pandemic. Despite big job losses — most felt by women of color — the poverty rate actually fell after people received cash deposits.My 2020 presidential campaign elevated cash relief as an anti-poverty solution, and if I am elected, my targeted plan for the city will be a lifeline for many.The research is there.Andrew YangNew YorkThe writer is a Democratic candidate for mayor of New York. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘I knew they were hungry’: the stimulus feature that lifts millions of US kids out of poverty

      by

      A few months into the pandemic the tooth fairy didn’t show up. Mary Beth Cochran was caring for her six-year-old grandson, Howie, in the small town of Canton, North Carolina, and having lost her Kmart job and with it more than half her income, she couldn’t afford food let alone a dollar under the pillow.Howie woke that morning and shouted out to his grandmother: “Memaw, my tooth’s still here, what happened?” He frantically scoured the bedding for a note or coins, then slumped to the floor and cried.Cochran was tempted to say to the boy: “Tooth fairy couldn’t come because she’s run out of money.” But she didn’t. “You know, sometimes tooth fairy can’t get to all the children,” she said.Cochran, 52, is no stranger to the hardships that living in poverty in the United States can bring. She has had to put her marriage on hold because she can’t afford it – living together with her husband would cost them hundreds of dollars in lost benefits.But the Covid-19 crisis has pushed her to new extremes that have tested her ability to provide for Howie and his sister Annie, 11. Cochran has cared for the children over the past five years after her eldest daughter, their mother, fell into drug addiction and homelessness. Howie and Annie’s two other siblings are looked after by another of Cochran’s daughters who lives nearby.With $814 a month in disability pay and $236 in child support, from which she must subtract $600 in rent, Cochran has $450 a month and food stamps to feed and clothe the two children in her care.As weeks of the pandemic passed by and resources tightened, necessities started to peel away. Clothes and shoes that Cochran used to buy for the kids from thrift stores and bargain basements now became strictly second-hand.When even cast-off shoes for the rapidly growing Howie became beyond her reach, Cochran skipped buying the medicines she takes for her own chronic back problem and bipolar disorder.The toughest part has been the knowledge that there have been nights when the children have gone to bed hungry. “It breaks my heart,” she said. “I know it’s not my fault, but I wish things could be different. I wish I could give them everything they need.”Now Cochran has a chance to give her young charges everything they need. Joe Biden’s $1.9tn pandemic relief package, the American Rescue Plan, signed into law by the president earlier this month, contains a relatively unheeded feature that could radically improve the lives of Annie and Howie and millions of other American children like them trapped in poverty.The provision, known as the child tax credit, is so much more than the cold, bureaucratic transaction suggested by its title. It will transform the way that welfare is addressed in the US, bringing it into line with European and other wealthier countries by discarding the old shibboleth of deserving and undeserving poor that has dogged America’s approach for a quarter of a century.Most significantly, it will have the potential to cut child poverty in the country in half by lifting more than 5 million American kids out of its iron grip.“Millions of children will benefit,” said Kathryn Edin, professor of sociology at Princeton. “It’s amazing. It’s dignifying, it doesn’t stigmatize, it no longer segregates poor children but tells them they are important and allows them to live as part of society.”It no longer segregates poor children but tells them they are important and allows them to live as part of societyUnder the new provision, families will receive $3,600 a year for each child under six, and $3,000 a year for each older child. The money will be paid monthly, rather than the current annual lump sum, easing the burden throughout the year, and it will no longer be tied to any work requirements.Its impact will spread far and wide. A family like Cochran’s will benefit with $500 a month, no strings attached, doubling her available cash for her grandkids.Almost 70 million children will be included in the scheme – that’s more than 90% of all American kids. And the impact, social scientists believe, will be transformative.The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University has calculated that about 5.5 million children will be lifted out of poverty – more than half those currently plagued by it. The injection of cash support will have a stunning effect especially in communities of color.One in five Black children are currently locked into poverty in America; they are projected to see a 55% drop in poverty rates. Hispanic children too are expected to see a boost, with 53% lifted out of poverty.“This would be the biggest poverty reduction legislation since the introduction of social security in the 1960s,” said Zachary Parolin, one of the Columbia authors. “We could look back on this moment, and this legislation, as an historic turning point in the development of the US welfare state.”So what does all this mean to the actual kids – to the Howies and Annies of America?Edin has a strong take on that question, having helped focus public attention on the crisis of child poverty in America with her 2015 book, $2 a Day. It delivered the gut-wrenching news that there were 1.5 million families in the US – including 3 million children – eking out a virtually cashless existence on no more than $2 a person a day.Edin began studying poverty in the early 1990s, and had a front-row seat on the 1996 welfare reforms that dramatically changed the way the US interacted with its poor. The move scrapped cash aid for low-income families with children and replaced it with a work requirement that meant that those without a job were disconnected from state help.The sociologist watched aghast as more and more families – especially those which were African American, Hispanic or headed by a single mother – were forced into direst need by a diabolical catch-22. Many of them were too poor to work, and because they weren’t in work they were deemed undeserving of benefits.“In $2 a Day we told the story of the woman who couldn’t work because she couldn’t put gas in her car. Once you end up in that kind of spiral it’s very hard to get out of, and it puts your kids at risk.”As a result of what Edin calls the “toxic alchemy” of the 1996 welfare reforms, by the mid-2000s one in five single mothers were neither working nor receiving any welfare benefits. They were dependent on food stamps and living essentially cashless in the richest nation on Earth.The terrible hardship that Edin watched unfolding is prevalent today. A separate 2019 Columbia University study found that more than one in three children in the US are penalized because their families earn too little to be fully eligible for benefits.That includes 23 million children who are too poor to receive state aid.This hard-edged approach has separated the US from many other high-income nations such as Canada, the UK and Australia, which offer large swaths of their populations a guaranteed income to rear their children. The work-related path taken by the US essentially abandoned its most vulnerable children to the vagaries of food insecurity, eviction and all the mental and physical health problems that flow from being poor.You can see what those harsh winds can do through the experiences of the Cochrans during the pandemic. Every month when Mary Beth received her disability money, Annie, a nervous child racked by anxiety instilled by her unstable early childhood, would approach her.“Memaw, are you OK?” she would say. “Do we have enough food to last this month?”The honest answer was, no. By the third week in the month the cash was gone, the food stamps dried up. Cochran stopped buying fresh salad – Annie’s favorite – because it was too expensive, turning to less healthy packaged foods such as hotdogs and burgers.Even then, there was not enough to feed the children. By the end of the month there was no way out of it. Cochran, who doesn’t own a car, would have to beg a lift to the soup kitchen.“It hurts so much,” she said. “I feel like I’m letting them down. I knew they were hungry, and there was nothing I could do to change it.”The devastating shift in 1996 away from cash aid to work-related tax credits was founded upon the view that poverty is a moral deficiency, a form of victim blaming that stems back generations in America. It was signed into law by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, and received strong backing from Biden, then a US senator from Delaware.Biden tried to justify the reform’s tough work requirements by arguing at the time that “too many welfare recipients spend far too long on welfare and do far too little in exchange for their benefits”.Today, Biden finds himself at the forefront of a movement that is beginning to undo some of the damage wrought by that legislation he supported 25 years ago. But his about-turn hasn’t come without a shove.Until relatively recently, Biden remained agnostic about the idea of addressing child poverty amid the destruction of the pandemic. It took the energetic intervention of a Democratic congresswoman to force the child allowance on to his coronavirus relief package.That congresswoman was Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who has been striving to get subsidies for children on to the statute books for almost two decades. In 2003 she introduced her first “advancement of the child” bill, re-entering it every two years only to see it die repeatedly for lack of political support.These were the lonely years in the wilderness when child poverty was considered insignificant. “It wasn’t a question of opposition, it was a question of indifference,” she told the Guardian. “So for a while, yes, I was a lone voice.”But she kept her eyes doggedly on the prize, driven by her deep understanding of children in need based on her own personal experiences. When she was nine, her family in New Haven fell on hard times and were evicted from their home.She went to live, like Annie and Howie, with her grandmother. “My family struggled financially for most of my parents’ lives. My own background inspires me to keep pushing,” she said.Now all those years of effort have paid dividends. “For the US this is historic,” she said of the new child allowance. “It’s akin to what Franklin Roosevelt did with the New Deal through social security which lifted 90% of seniors out of poverty – President Biden is lifting millions of children out of poverty.”So what changed? What led the US to pull back from 25 years of a policy that, at best, could be described as tough love, at worst looks like cruelty towards its most defenseless children?DeLauro ascribes the shifting mood to the pandemic, which she says has “shone a bright light on the health and economic inequities and the racial disparities in our system”.Edin agrees that if it hadn’t been for the pandemic we might not be here. Such glaring hardship for so many Americans has made it impossible to continue to victim-blame the “undeserving” poor.“The undeserving-deserving divide breaks down when people who do deserving things don’t get what society has promised them. The labor market is so fragile, and so many people feel on the edge, you really don’t have two groups any more.”The other great driving force behind the new provisions has been race. The eruption of racial justice protests last summer following the death in police custody of George Floyd has led to a renewed focus on police brutality and the treatment of Black communities within the criminal justice system.But it has also put new vigor in movements to challenge the growing inequality between racial groups in the US and push back against the white supremacist narrative unleashed by Donald Trump. One of the beneficiaries of this new energy has been the cause of child poverty.The Rev Dr Starsky Wilson is himself an example of the links between the struggle for racial justice and the battle to lift children out of poverty. He was co-chair of the Ferguson Commission, an independent review of the impediments to racial equality convened in the wake of the 2014 police killing in Ferguson, Missouri, of the unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown.Today Wilson is president of the Children’s Defense Fund, a leading US advocacy group whose mission is to make sure every child in America has what they need to thrive. He views the new child allowances as a corrective to generations of public policy skewed against communities of color, which resulted in the vast 90% wealth gap between African American families and their white counterparts.“The movement for racial justice, starting in Ferguson and culminating in the largest racial justice mobilization in history in 2020, has absolutely changed our ability to talk about public responsibility to respond to racial inequality,” he said.It’s going to mean food on the table in July when they are out of school and there is no summer feeding programsWilson evoked a young child living in Lower St Louis where he used to pastor, and pondered what the new $300-a-month allowance for their family would mean for them. “It’s going to mean food on the table in July when they are out of school and there is no summer feeding programs. It is going to mean the child feeling settled and safe, each and every day.”The challenge now for Wilson and all the others who have campaigned for so long for a better deal for America’s children is to make this victory last. Under the pandemic relief package, the new allowances will be in place for one year only, but the hope is that they will prove so popular that Congress will be obliged to make them permanent.Mary Beth Cochran would certainly welcome that. Once she starts receiving the $500-a-month checks this summer she plans to pay off her bills and then maybe buy a used car. She won’t have to skip her meds any more or go to the soup kitchen, and when the pandemic lifts she plans to drive to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee so Annie and Howie can play in the rivers.And the tooth fairy will be back. More