The U.S. Is One Of The Few OECD Countries Where Child Care Is Unaffordable To Many

 From The Economist

Voters Are Unhappy With The Access And Affordability Of Health Care

 

The charts above are from the recent Navigator Poll -- done between April 23rd and 27th of a nationwide sample of 1,000 registered voters, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

Health Care Costs Will Be A Big Issue For Most Voters This Year

 

The charts above are from the Kaiser Family Foundation Poll -- done between April 14th and 19th of a nationwide sample of 1,343 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

The Cost Of This Unnecessary War (And How That Money Could Be Better Used)

The following post is by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times: 

Let’s ponder for a moment the vast sums that we’re pouring into the war with Iran.

The Pentagon has requested $200 billion (more than $1,400 per American household) to fund the war, but even that understates the total cost.

Linda Bilmes, a Harvard expert on financing war, told me that most of the costs will arrive later. For example, any soldier who develops a medical disorder or aggravates an existing one will receive lifelong benefits and medical care. If today’s troops claim such benefits at the same rate as those who participated in the 1990-91 gulf war, that alone would eventually cost at least $600 billion, Bilmes said. Not to mention, of course, the human toll of all of this.

All told, she expects this Iran war to cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion.

Here are some ideas of what the war money could be used for instead. My calculations are conservative, based on Pentagon reporting that the first six days of the war cost $11.3 billion — and even that incomplete tally amounted to more than $1.3 million a minute.

* For a bit more than two weeks of this war, we could offer free college education to every American family earning less than $125,000 annually, at a cost of around $30 billion a year. 

* For less than three weeks of war, or $35 billion, we could run a nationwide pre-K program for 3- and 4-year-olds.

* For $75 million, about an hour’s worth of war, we could provide three books free to every child in America who is living under the poverty line, according to Kyle Zimmer of First Book, a nonprofit that works on early literacy. Research suggests that books like these can help get children reading and improve their outcomes.

* A woman dies in the United States every two hours, on average, from cervical cancer. Screening all uninsured women who need it would cost perhaps $1 billion and could save hundreds of lives, according to Dr. Linda Eckert, a cervical cancer expert at the University of Washington. That’s less than 13 hours of the war bill.

* We could get glasses to all 2.3 million low-income schoolchildren in the United States who need them but don’t have them. The base cost would be about $300 million, according to Vision to Learn, a nonprofit that does this work. The bill would be what we spend on four hours of this war.

* For about $34 billion a year, less than three weeks of war, we could restore health insurance subsidies that the Trump administration let expire last year. One analysis predicted an additional 8,800 preventable American deaths as a result.

The war money would save even more lives if we allocated part of it abroad. Indeed, we spent more on the first three days of war than we spent ($4 billion) on all humanitarian aid in 2025. Consider what we could achieve internationally:

* For $400 million or less, a bit more than five hours of war, we could deworm all children in need worldwide, according to Evidence Action, a nonprofit that works on deworming. This would result in stronger, healthier children and adults.

* For $380 million, less than five hours of war, we could provide vitamin A supplementation for the 190 million children who need it. Helen Keller Intl, a nonprofit engaged in this work, says this would prevent up to 480,000 child deaths each year and virtually eliminate blindness from vitamin A deficiency.

* About one day’s worth of war spending could save more than 350,000 lives from malaria, through a rigorously studied screening and prevention program, according to Esther Duflo, an economist at M.I.T.’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

* For $4.3 billion, less than three days of the war bill, we could largely end the most terrible form of malnutrition, called severe wasting. That would save about 1.5 million children’s livesannually. We would accomplish something historic: For the first time in the history of humanity, large numbers of children would no longer be starving to death.

We have to know that numbers like this are never totally reliable — but that’s true of military costs as well. George W. Bush’s administration in 2003 put the cost of the Iraq war at $40 billion; it ended up costing perhaps $3 trillion.

Moreover, my figures are based on only the initial costs of the Iran war. And even the estimate of $1 trillion for the full cost doesn’t include the bills for more expensive gasoline we’re now paying and for pricier fertilizer and food that are likely soon.

If we reallocated this war spending to needs at home and abroad, Americans would have access to school from pre-K to college and would have health insurance, and large numbers of children worldwide would not starve to death — and we would still have billions of dollars left over.

We can cough up the cash when there’s political will, such as to drop bombs halfway around the world. But where is the political will to get people health care or education, to build rather than to destroy?

A Majority Of Voters Say Health Insurance Costs Have Risen

 

The charts above are from the Change Research Poll -- done between August 5th and 10th of a nationwide sample of 1,858 registered voters, with a 2.6 point margin of error.

The Trump Tariffs Are Now Affecting Business Costs

 

From The Washington Post

Musk/DOGE May Be Costing As Much As It Saves

 

The following is part of an article by Zeeshan Aleem at MSNBC:

We’ve watched as DOGE chief Elon Musk’s promised pot of savings from his “efficiency” operation has shrunk from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to what he now claims is $150 billion, or 7.5% the amount initially promised. Now new estimates suggest that the way Musk has gone about his cost-cutting crusade might cost nearly as much as — if not more — than what he claims to have saved taxpayers.

As The New York Times reports, DOGE hasn’t been cheap for the federal government:

The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization that studies the federal work force, has used budget figures to produce a rough estimate that firings, re-hirings, lost productivity, and paid leave of thousands of workers will cost upward of $135 billion this fiscal year. At the Internal Revenue Service, a DOGE-driven exodus of 22,000 employees would cost about $8.5 billion in revenue in 2026 alone, according to figures from the Budget Lab at Yale University.

Put those two figures together and you’re approaching $145 billion in costs. And that’s not counting, as the Times notes, the legal fees the federal government is incurring to defend against dozens of lawsuits contesting DOGE’s authority. . . .

The estimates raise serious questions about DOGE's net savings — and that’s assuming Musk’s quoted savings numbers are reliable, which they often haven’t been. Moreover, the estimated lost revenue from the IRS cuts would be a recurring phenomenon. Musk’s degrading of the administrative state and social services while potentially saving nothing helps underscore how scammy the DOGE enterprise, and sheds light on how this whole operation is at its core not about fiscal discipline.

Musk and his team were perversely creative in devising ways to fire workers en masse. But as a group of cocky political outsiders who confused speed with efficiency, they weren’t equipped to anticipate the legal restrictions on what they could do. Their rash approach has resulted in lots of rehiring and back pay for people wrongly fired — and lost productivity along the way. Musk and his team put their faith in a kind of “shoot first, ask questions later” strategy, but that resulted in administrative whiplash. “Accidentally” canceled programs have had to be re-assembled. And blanket firings of “probationary workers” resulted in the squandering of expensive hiring and training processes for hyperspecialized positions that could cost up to $1 million for positions like spies, the Times notes.There is a possibility that Musk is delivering the opposite of taxpayer savings — a worse government at roughly the same cost.Social Security is under siege, foreign aid has been eviscerated, and the IRS is less equipped to stop tax cheats (which in turn means less government revenue). But, according to the estimates reported by the Times, no significant sum of money is being saved, and there’s no way the “savings” from what we’ve seen so far will net out to massive “DOGE checks” for the American public.

Do Americans Realize The Huge Cost Of Massive Deportations?

Part of an article by Michael A. Cohen at MSNBC:

It’s a question that Americans might be asking pretty soon themselves. Is the price of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants worth the cost? . . .

What was omitted from Trump’s anti-immigrant diatribes were the significant economic costs of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants.

According to one estimate from the pro-immigration advocacy group American Immigration Council, arresting, detaining and deporting the 13.3 million people who are either in the United States illegally — or are in the country temporarily without legal status — could cost $315 billion. . . .

Even deporting 1 million people yearly could cost nearly $90 billion. Apprehending immigrants, detaining them, court procedures and transporting them out of the country makes mass deportation a complicated and costly endeavor. Indeed, the estimated cost of deporting a single undocumented immigrant is estimated to run as high as $13,000. . . .

To achieve his anti-immigration goals, Trump will likely need Congress to authorize billions of dollars in new spending and hire tens of thousands of new government employees. 

Let’s suppose, for a moment, that Trump is actually successful at getting the mass deportation project off the ground. In Trump’s words, there can be “no price tag” on such an effort. In reality, there is a price — and it will quickly be felt by American consumers. 

Today, undocumented immigrants represent 5% of the U.S. workforce, and because two-thirds of them are between the ages of 25 and 54 (compared to less than 40% of the U.S.-born population), they are overrepresented in the workforce.

Many undocumented immigrants take on dangerous, menial and low-paying jobs. They are maids and housekeepers, construction laborers and agricultural workers. Indeed, a whopping 45 percent of agricultural workers are undocumented along with 15 percent of construction workers. 

If millions of undocumented immigrants are forced to leave the country, these industries will bear the brunt — as will consumers. 

Farms, construction companies and restaurants may find themselves short-staffed and unable to bring on new workers at a time of low unemployment.

the labor disruptions will almost certainly lead to higher prices on everything from food to housing. And working class Americans — many of whom voted for Trump — will get hit the hardest.

There are other indirect costs that many Americans who voted for mass deportation probably didn’t consider. For example, many undocumented immigrants work in child care. If they are forced to leave the country, the number of women in the labor force could decrease. 

Then there are the tax implications. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid close to $50 billion in federal taxes and nearly $30 billion in state taxes. They also contributed more than $28 billion to Social Security and Medicare (even though they don’t benefit from those programs).  

Migrants are also consumers. Removing them from the country means decreased spending, further undermining the economy.

By nearly any appreciable measure, immigration to the United States is a net economic positive, contributing to higher growth, greater productivity and even a reduced budget deficit. 

Conversely, mass deportations will almost certainly lead to slower economic growth, increased unemployment and, ironically, higher inflation. 

Only 21% Say Things Are Going Well In The United States

The charts above are from the recent CNN / SSRS Poll -- done between June 13th and July 13th of a national sample of 1,459 adults, with a 3.3 point margin of error.

Only 21% say things are going well in the country today, while 79% say things are going badly. The biggest worry (75%) is the current cost of living.
 

The BBB Bill's Cost Is Far Less Than Not Passing It!

 

The cartoon above and the post below are from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

I’ve been implementing or teaching public policy for five decades (OMG has it really been that long?), and I never cease to be amazed at what occurs when the bean counters and columnists have at it.

You’re going to hear a lot in the next day or two about the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates of the cost of Biden’s Build Back Better plan, along with how much of it will be covered by proposed taxes. Beware. Putting aside the accuracy of these estimates, the exercise omits the cost of doing nothing.

Tackling climate change will be expensive, but doing nothing about climate change will cost far more. If we don’t adopt ambitious measures, untold numbers of lives will be lost and trillions will be spent coping with the consequences of our failure.

Expanding Medicare would be costly, but the price of not doing so will be in the stratosphere.  The nation already pays more for health care per person and has worse health outcomes than any other advanced country. (It’s estimated that Medicare for All would save $450 billion and prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths every year.)

Investing in universal childcare, universal pre-K, and public higher education will be expensive, too, but the cost of not making these investments will be astronomical. American productivity is already suffering, and millions of families can’t afford decent childcare or college.

It’s not just official bean counters who are failing to assess the cost of doing nothing. The media also focuses on the costs of tackling big problems without mentioning the costs of doing nothing about them. Journalists wanting to appear serious about public policy routinely rip into progressives for the costs of their proposals but never criticize so-called “moderates” for the costs of doing nothing or too little about the same problems.  

The frequently-asked question “how are we going to pay for it?” is similarly nonsensical without an assessment of the costs of doing nothing. Even if taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations were to cover only a fraction of the costs of tackling a large worsening problem, so what? As long as the costs of tackling it are less than the future costs of not doing so, it makes logical sense to tackle it.

Republican administrations have repeatedly doled out gigantic tax cuts to big corporations and the wealthy without first announcing specific cuts in public spending or other tax increases to pay for them because -- despite decades of evidence to the contrary -- they claim that the cuts will generate economic growth that will more than make up for any lost revenue. Yet when progressives propose ambitious plans for reducing verifiable costs of large and growing public problems, they’re skewered for not having ways to pay for them.   

Finally and relatedly, I’m often barraged by conservatives claiming that progressive proposals are just too big. This argument might be convincing if the problems were growing slowly. But experts on climate change, the state of the nation’s health, and childcare and education are nearly unanimous in their view that all these are worsening exponentially. 

Cautious incrementalism is wise under most circumstances. But where headwinds are turning into gales, incrementalism drives us backwards. Calling progressives “extremists” or “radicals” is absurd when they’re seeking to remedy problems that are themselves extreme and will radically harm Americans if left unattended. The status quo is not sustainable. (In my experience, young people understand all this, perhaps because they’ll live longer than the rest of us and bear the brunt of the cost of inaction.)

We can no longer pretend that climate change, a wildly-dysfunctional health care system, lack of childcare, deteriorating schools, and unaffordable higher education pose small or insignificant challenges. Doing nothing or too little about these problems has made all of them worse — and will make them far worse if we continue to do nothing or too little.

Obsessing about the costs of addressing them without acknowledging the costs of failing to address them is dangerously irresponsible.

The United States Has A Critical Child Care Problem

 

The charts above are from The Center for American Progress. It shows the cost of child care in each state for various ages of children in licensed child care centers, and for a family home-based child care that meets licensing requirements. 

Republicans would have you believe that many Americans are refusing to go back to work because they are lazy, or want to milk the unemployment system. I think that's ridiculous. Workers want to work, because it gives them self-satisfaction and dignity. But they must be able to afford to take a job. And the cost of child care is one thing that prevents that.

The sad fact is that a single person with a child making minimum wage just cannot afford to do that. The national minimum wage is only $7.25 an hour. That's about $15,080 a year. Note that the average cost of child care for an infant in the U.S. is $15,900, for a toddler is $13.200, and for a pre-schooler is $10,700. Once the child care is paid (for only one child), there is not enough left of a minimum wage paycheck to support the family! And this is the cost for basic child care. High quality child care costs significantly more -- $28,800 for an infant, $22,400 for a toddler, and $17,200 for a pre-schooler.

Raising the minimum wage would help. A $15.00 an hour minimum wage would translate to about $31,200 a year. That would allow a family to struggle by while paying for basic child care, but still falls far short of allowing them to take advantage of high-quality child care. Doesn't every child deserve high-quality child care? Other developed countries provide high-quality child care for their citizens, and the United States (the richest nation of Earth) could do that, if our politicians cared as much about working families as they do rich families.

Looking at those figures, it should be obvious to everyone that something must be done to help workers afford childcare. President Biden's American Families Plan would do that. Under his plan, no working class or middle class family would have to pay more than 7% of their income for high-quality child care. That would be about $1,056 a year for someone making $7.25 and hour, or $2,184 a year for someone making $15.00 an hour. That would allow them to actually support a family -- especially on the $15.00 an hour wage.

Passing the American Families Plan would enrich the lives of millions of Americans by allowing them to work their way out of poverty, or maintain their middle class lifestyle. It would be a sound investment in the people of this country, and one that would pay dividends for the country in the future.

Unfortunately, the Republicans oppose the plan. The only entities they care about helping are corporations and rich families. The Democrats are going to try to pas the American Families Plan by using the reconciliation process (to avoid a GOP filibuster in the Senate). I hope they can succeed, but it will be close -- and it will require the Senate votes of all 48 Democrats and both Independents. There is not margin for error.

The children of this country deserve high-quality child care. And our federal government should help American working families be able to afford that high-quality child care.

Capitol Riot Has Cost Taxpayers $30 Million (& Still Rising)

The Pro-Trump Capitol riot on January 6th caused damage to our democracy (especially our electoral system). But that wasn't all it cost this country. Repairing the damage done to the Capitol Building and providing security for it is also costing taxpayer money -- about $30 million so far, and that cost will rise further.

Here is how National Public Radio (NPR) is reporting this: 

The cost of repairing damages from the attack on the U.S. Capitol and related security expenses have already topped $30 million and will keep rising, Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton told lawmakers on Wednesday.

The events of Jan. 6, he said, were "difficult for the American people and extremely hard for all of us on campus to witness."

Blanton said that congressional appropriations committees have already approved a transfer request of $30 million to pay for expenses and extend a temporary perimeter fencing contract through March 31.

But more money will be needed, he added: "History teaches us that project costs for replacements and repairs beyond in-kind improvements across campus will be considerable and beyond the scope of the current budgetary environment."

The price tag will go even higher, Blanton told lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee, if the fence and other security measures are needed beyond March.

In his prepared testimony, Blanton described how his employees tried to minimize the threat to the Capitol and lawmakers on Jan. 6, when thousands of former President Donald Trump's supporters breached security perimeters at the Capitol grounds. Many of them then engaged in a pitched battle with police and security personnel.

"[Architect of the Capitol] employees sheltered congressional staff in their shops to protect them from the roving mob," Blanton said, adding, "Other members of our team raced to the roof to reverse the airflows within the building to help clear the air of chemical irritants, like bear repellents and pepper spray, while more team members rushed bottles of water and eyewash stations to Capitol Police officers in need of assistance."

When the mob thronged the Capitol, the Architect of the Capitol's painters and artisans were laboring to complete the massive task of readying the campus to host a presidential inauguration.

"Over the course of a couple of hours, the hard work of our team was destroyed," Blanton said.

"The [inauguration] platform was wrecked. There was broken glass and other debris. Sound systems and photography equipment was damaged beyond repair or stolen. Two historic Olmsted lanterns were ripped from the ground, and the wet blue paint was tracked all over the historic stone balustrades and Capitol building hallways."

In the Capitol building complex, historical statues, murals and furniture were damaged, mainly from pepper spray accretions and residue from chemical irritants and fire extinguishers, requiring expert cleaning and conservation. Work crews covered gaping holes with plywood and cleared "a small mountain of debris left behind on the west and east fronts," Blanton said.

Blanton also said many lawmakers have asked his office about preserving mementos from the unprecedented violence wrought by U.S. citizens on their own Capitol. While most damaged items had to be removed because of safety concerns, he said his staff preserved the panels of the historical Columbus Doors on the east front "for a potential presentation or display."