Just wanted to highlight a post from January 2017 as to how I think about and prioritize policy evaluation:
I want to lay out one of my key heuristics for policy analysis and evaluation for the next four years. But first I need to go back a little in my life to two time periods.
1992 sucked for my family. I am one of five kids. My mom worked a retail job as she was mainly trying to get all of us going in the right direction while managing half a dozen minor chronic conditions between all of us. My dad was a union electrician. Construction is a pro-cyclical industry so when times were good, they were very good and when times are slow, they are really bad. The 80s were good as Boston boomed. The late 80s after the S&L crisis plus the overbuildout of Boston sucked….I remember crying in happiness one day when my parents decided to get me a treat of sweet canned corn instead of frozen corn…..
Mid-2008 my wife had gotten laid off as her organization got a new CEO who wanted to quickly leave their mark for decisiveness and wiped out several profitable but not exciting departments. She was pregnant with our daughter. I was working as a program evaluator for a behavioral health care coordination program. It was funded by a federal grant that was due to run out at the end of FY09. We were trying to transition our funding to local and foundation money. By mid-2009, my wife was working part time at a position far below her skill level, our daughter was happy making faces at her parents, and there was absolutely no local or foundation money as 51 mini-Hoovers were in effect for state level austerity. I got laid off. The next year I stayed home with our daughter as the combination of unemployment insurance and not paying for daycare …. [made the most sense]…
The past
sixten years have been great for my family. My career has taken off. My wife’s career has launched. We have two great kids. We have stability and we have a cushion… We’re in good shape.Some of this is a humble brag. But most of this is how my policy evaluation heuristic is formed. If a policy helps 2009 Me or 1992 Me out more than it helps present day me out, I’m most likely for it. If
20172021 Me is advantaged over either 2009 or 1992 Me, I’m highly likely to be opposed to it.
Since I wrote this four years ago, we have even more stability and shock absorbers. My wife saw a CNN headline that the proposed $1,400 check might be means tested and we would not be getting the entire check. Her response to that was to laugh and say “we made it….” And we have.
1992 and 2009 shape how I view the world. Those years shape what I prioritize and value. And those values inform what I implicitly weigh when making trade-offs. Realistically, my family is doing well to very well. Programs should not be targeted at us. I want programs to be targeted at people who actually need the help even if that means my taxes go up a bit. I want programs to be well run and comprehensive enough so that if something happened, I could count on them but most things should be not be designed to tickle my fancy. This was true four years ago. It is even more true today.
Chris
You`re a little younger than me but I use the same metric. (For me it was the early 80s that sucked in my family) If it helps me now..a mid 50s professional at the top of my career…it’s probably mistargeted. And welcome to NC..(years late I know but probably my first time commenting since you moved)
sanjeevs
David
This is OT but when ACA first came in the individual mandate was said to be a pillar of the policy.
But the individual mandate as I understand doesn’t apply in many states now because of the Trump tax cut bill.
Why do you think it seemingly hasn’t had much impact on ACA enrolment and finances?
David Anderson
@sanjeevs: Really good question — the idea of a mandate was 2 fold.
Those were the theories of the case.
And it probably worked. Dan Sacks and co-authors found that it worked (https://dansacks.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/hslmandate.pdf)
The mandate was not that big and it was not aggressively enforced so it did not work hugely, but it worked in the expected direction if not magnitude.
In 2019, when it disappeared in most states (some states ran their own state level mandates), there was also a huge policy shock via silverloading which massively increased effective subsidies. Silverloading effectively was a partial substitute for the mandate.
OzarkHillbilly
You’ll never get rich with that attitude.
sanjeevs
@David Anderson: Thanks – that makes sense
wvng
Those are my metrics as well. Help those who need it, not everyone because that’s “fair.”
Mathguy
“…as her organization got a new CEO who wanted to quickly leave their mark for decisiveness and wiped out several profitable but not exciting departments. ” America wants to thank the bidness schools for producing such extraordinarily moronic MBA grads that need to mark everything, male dog style.
HinTN
David – Your final paragraph is one of the finest summaries of the goals of liberal thought that I have ever read.
stinger
Thank you, David. I wish more people would think about Then Me instead of Now Me; better yet, think about Them more than Me. There are always millions of Americans living in their own 2009 or 1992 (as I know you know). Alas, too many people who are in relative prosperity at the moment just want to hang onto that at all costs, and damned be everyone else.
Dan
But if they means test based on 2019 tax returns, the person who made $70k in 2019 and didn’t get laid off will get more than the person who made $100k in 2019 but was laid off for most of 2020.
David Fud
I use the same metric for a number of things, including Social Security. I grew up for several years with a survivor’s benefit, which made a significant difference in my life. When I hear people dragging SS or talking about how it isn’t fair or whatever, I try to get them to an empathetic place. Literally, a place with widows, newly parent-less children, old people that used the be on the edge, and folks with disabilities. And, damn, if it is fairly rare that these folks acculturated to Randian selfishness, class warfare, or white supremacy as justifications for selfishness can’t find their way to any empathy. If you can’t empathize with these folks, what kind of walking flesh bag are you?
narya
I agree with this so very completely. There are two different periods in my life–one after grad school, when I was unemployed (for more than a year!), deeply in debt, and trying to find a new career/job, and another when I was trying to change careers (and Do What I Love So I Never Work a Day!), but several of the conditions for that to work fell apart–so I was making $9/hr and purchasing health insurance out of pocket, in my late 40s/early 50s. And, let me add, if things had not improved, I could have moved back to my parents’ house (which, let’s face it, would not have been a fun thing to do), so I would have been extremely miserable but NOT homeless, which makes me extremely lucky compared to so many folks. Tax me–and especially the folks making a lot more than me–more, so that everyone has shelter, and good food, and access to high-quality health care.
Crusty Dem
@David Fud:
Exactly. My grandfather died when my father was young and he wouldn’t have had food and housing if it weren’t for SS benefits. And it stuck with him for life. You never met anyone so happy to pay his taxes. My mother, who came from some money, would grumble and he’d say “Well, we had a good year”. That attitude always stuck with me. I wish more people viewed taxes as a patriotic duty..
Chris Johnson
Universal programs cannot be so easily demonized as only helping the unworthy poors… and then easily removed.
Bear that in mind?
Brachiator
Coming late to this very interesting thread.
No. No. No. No.
The pandemic is a unique event. The smarter economists have noted time and again that it is not like a recession and more like what it is, a goddam disaster.
The government has the money. And the economy has been largely artificially shut down. It is not a matter of trying to goose consumer spending. It is trying to help people maintain, and perhaps help boost any eventual recovery once everyone has presumably been vaccinated.
This is very true. The short-sighted analyses recommending targeting the stimulus payments reference adjusted gross income (AGI), but do not know how many families have seen a decline in income since the various lock downs.
Also, even the Democrats emphasize getting money to families with children through stimulus payments and enhancements to the child tax credit. But this falsely assumes that single workers and married couples without children don’t need as much help.
The stimulus payments are fairly innovative, especially since they are tax free. It is a good idea and should be as broad as possible.
Lobo
The “means tested” vs. universal application is a hard one. In theory means tested would be the ideal, i.e., safety net for those less fortunate. But in the real world and given how we act, universal benefits work better. Take school lunch. Free and reduced lunch can carry a stigma. Middle class and up have no personal incentive to support them. The meals are crappy without broad based support. So I support more universal benefits with any advantage to me being taxed back. So for school lunches I support universal free breakfast and lunch. Yes, middle class and up get a benefit but school lunches have more personal support and lose a stigma. Sure, my good year self benefits but so does my bad year self. My good year self just takes it as a benefit to be taxed. Means test it through taxes.
David Anderson
@Chris Johnson: then tax me on the fucking back-end
dnfree
Excellent explanation, and I completely agree. I’m one of the first baby-boomers, and being on the early edge made things a lot easier for me all the way along. Looking back, we had some tough times growing up because my dad started his own business which was also cyclical, as you describe your youth. But after that? As my husband said, when he graduated from college with a major in philosophy, he had no trouble getting hired. There wasn’t the surfeit of college graduates there is now. Nothing we experienced in our working years compared to the young people who graduated in the Great Recession and then got hit with a pandemic economy. As a retiree, my income changed almost not at all in the past year.
People my age who pat themselves on the back for being successful haven’t really considered how much luck had to do with it, for better or worse. I feel sad for those who have gotten caught in events beyond their control, at any age.
Cephalus Max
I am delurking from down the road in Chapel Hill to say “A-fucking-men,” David.