https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/29/opinion/child-care-biden.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Good Luck to Republicans if Biden’s Family Plan Becomes Law
April 29, 2021
Sasha Arutyunova for The New York Times
Conservatives beware: If the main elements in Joe Biden’s American Family Plan
become law, they’ll be very hard to repeal. Why? Because they’ll deliver huge,
indeed transformational benefits to millions.
I mean, just imagine trying to take away affordable child care, universal pre-K
and paid leave for new parents once they’ve become part of the fabric of our
society. You’d face a backlash far worse than the one that followed Republican
attempts to eliminate protection for coverage of pre-existing health conditions
in 2017. And that backlash quickly gave Democrats control of the House and set
the stage for their current control of the Senate and White House as well.
So what’s the Republican counterargument? Well, much of the party appears
uninterested in debating policy, preferring to lash out at imaginary plans to
ban red meat or give immigrants Kamala Harris’s children’s book.
The official G.O.P. response to Biden’s speech on Wednesday, by Senator Tim
Scott, seemed low-energy; Scott is still complaining about “big government” and
denouncing Biden for spending money on things other than roads and bridges. The
closest thing to a real argument was the claim that Biden is proposing “the
biggest job-killing tax hikes in a generation” — presumably a reference to Bill
Clinton’s tax increase in 1993.
Indeed, Biden intends to pay for his proposals with higher taxes on
corporations and high-income individuals, including a dastardly plan to give
the Internal Revenue Service enough resources to crack down on wealthy tax
cheats.
It’s important, then, to realize that the family plan would, if enacted, be a
major job creator. That is, it would increase the number of Americans — women
in particular — in paid employment substantially, probably by several million.
Editors’ Picks
She Turned Her Audacious Lens on Herself, and Shaped the Future
April 22, 2021
After Covid Upended a Dying Woman’s Rome Dream, Her Twin Stepped In
April 26, 2021
A Small Two-Bedroom or a Big Studio With a View? Here Were Their Options.
April 22, 2021
‘While I Was Away, My Boss Had Flowers Delivered to My Apartment’
April 25, 2021
‘Jackpot’ Looks at How Inequality Is Experienced by the Very, Very Rich
April 28, 2021
W. Galen Weston, Who Transformed a Family Food Empire, Dies at 80
April 26, 2021
What Doomed a Sprawling City Near St. Louis 1,000 Years Ago?
April 24, 2021
‘Citizen Kane’ Is No ‘Paddington 2,’ Says Rotten Tomatoes
April 28, 2021
Malcolm Gladwell on the Hard Decisions of War
April 25, 2021
I’m Buying a House. Can the Seller Really Take the Chandeliers?
April 24, 2021
To understand why, the first thing you need to know is that while Republicans
always claim that raising taxes on the rich will destroy jobs, they have never
yet been right. Scott’s rejoinder to Biden appeared to suggest that the 1993
Clinton tax hike killed jobs; in reality, the United States added 23 million
jobs on Clinton’s watch. People also seem to forget that Barack Obama presided
over a significant hike in high-end taxes at the beginning of his second term;
the economy continued to add jobs rapidly, at the rate of about 2.5 million a
year.
Oh, and employment in California boomed after Jerry Brown raised taxes on the
wealthy in 2012, defying conservative declarations that the state was
committing economic suicide.
It’s also instructive to compare the United States with other advanced
countries, almost all of which have higher taxes and more generous social
benefits than we do. Do they pay a price for these policies in the form of
reduced employment?
Many Americans would, I suspect, be surprised to learn that the truth is that
many high-tax, high-benefit countries are quite successful at creating jobs.
Take the case of France: Adults between the ages of 25 and 54, the prime
working years, are more likely to be employed in France than they are in
America, mainly because Frenchwomen have a higher rate of paid employment than
their American counterparts. The Nordic countries have an even larger
employment advantage among women.
Paul Krugman’s Newsletter: Get a better understanding of the economy — and an
even deeper look at what’s on Paul’s mind.
How can employment be so high in countries with lots of “job-killing” taxes?
The answer is that taxes don’t visibly kill jobs — but lack of child care does.
Parents in many rich countries are able to take paid work because they have
access to safe, affordable child care; in the United States such care is
prohibitively expensive for many, if they can get it at all. And the reason is
that our government spends almost nothing on child care and pre-K; our outlays
as a percentage of G.D.P. put us somewhat below Cyprus and Romania.
The American Family Plan would completely change this picture, providing free
preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds while limiting child care costs to no more
than 7 percent of income for lower- and middle-income parents. If this raised
employment of prime-age American women to French levels, it would add about 1.8
million jobs; if we went to Danish levels, we would add three million jobs.
Just to be clear, making it possible for more women to take paid jobs isn’t the
principal point of this plan — and there’s nothing wrong with parents’ choosing
to stay at home and care for their kids. Instead, it’s mainly about improving
the environment in which children grow up, partly as a matter of social
justice, partly so that they eventually become healthier, more productive
adults.
But higher employment — jobs generally expand to meet the available work force
— would be a significant and more immediate side benefit. And it would also
offer a partial fiscal offset to the direct cost of child care and pre-K, both
because newly working Americans would pay taxes and because they would be less
likely to need support from safety-net programs like food stamps. No, Biden’s
spending plans won’t pay for themselves. But they’ll cost taxpayers less than
the headline numbers might suggest.
And if these plans improve life for millions of Americans, will anyone besides
professional ideologues care if they’re “big government”?
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d
like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some
tips. And here’s our email: letters@xxxxxxxxxxx.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion)
and Instagram.
Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a
Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He
won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on
international trade and economic geography. @PaulKrugman
A version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2021, Section A, Page
22 of the New York edition with the headline: Helping Families Will Help Create
Jobs. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Suggested newsletters for you
Daily
The Morning
Make sense of the day’s news and ideas. David Leonhardt and Times journalists
guide you through what’s happening — and why it matters.
See the latest
As Needed
Breaking News
Alerts when important news breaks around the world.
See the latest
Weekly
Paul Krugman
A deeper look at what’s on the mind of Paul Krugman, a world-class economist
and opinion columnist.
See the latest
Macroeconomics, trade, health care, social policy and politics.
Subscribe for $1 a week. Limited time offer.
Subscribe for $1 a week. Limited time offer.
