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Comment by femiagbabiaka | Hacker News Reader

> In 2021, 9.6 million people were kept out of poverty due to refundable tax credits. This number declined to 6.4 million in 2022 as the pandemic era expansions expired. The effect declined for each of the major age groups, with 3.5 million children lifted out of poverty in 2022 compared to 4.9 million in 2021.

Purposefully casting millions of people back into poverty for political purposes is one of those American things I hate.

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The virtue signaling put me off as well. Although I'm not sure it's specific to America.

The data is the data, and the way it's phrased with "kept out" and "lifted out" both to say the same thing which as I understand the data is that each of these groups were either over or under the poverty line as a result of the incentives. Adding extra weight and flower to the movement is a distraction with the intent of persuasion.

It’s virtue signaling to say that policy shifts brought a million+ kids back under the poverty line? Seems like pedantry. If the data is the data, then the statements in the article are either correct, misleading or false.

What do you mean "political purposes"?

It was a temporary Covid program. It was never intended to be permanent, so there were no "political purposes" to ending it.

It was a smashing success at stamping out poverty and should have been continued. The right went on a campaign with all the typical tropes: “people need the dignity of work”, “this is why nobody wants to work now” etc.

So again: letting the program lapse put kids back under the poverty line. And it was done to win political points.

I'd rather not have a temporary programs that was supposed to address the impact of a pandemic suddenly become a new social program.

Sounds common sense until you look at history and remember the New Deal exists.

>> It was never intended to be permanent

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before."

-- Rahm Emanuel

Something to consider the next time a politician proposes a "temporary" aid program.

I have no idea what you mean.

Is there some conspiracy to provide Covid aid?

>> Is there some conspiracy to provide Covid aid?

But it's not Covid aid anymore. It was aid that was begun during Covid, and now that Covid is over, there's pressure from people (see elsewhere in this thread for example) to keep those programs in place.

In 2019 you couldn't have enacted those aid programs, in 2020 they were enacted, purportedly temporarily due to Covid, and now there is pressure to make them permanent.

That's no conspiracy, it's not a conspiracy when you say out loud in public what your strategy is. Politicians use a crisis to enact policies they couldn't otherwise enact. They admit this.

An example on the other end of the political spectrum would be the second US invasion of Iraq, after 9/11. Before 9/11, an invasion of Iraq with the goal of regime change would have been unthinkable. Iraq was completely unrelated to 9/11, but the crisis was used to enact policies that wouldn't have otherwise been possible. Again, this is no conspiracy, Donald Rumsfeld said it out loud, someone's notes of that meeting read "Need to move swiftly – Near term target needs – go massive – sweep it all up. Things related and not."

What I am saying is, keep this in mind the next time there is a crisis.

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program"

-- Milton Friedman

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