Hey, Conservatives: Why Is It Only Work if Rich Moms Do It?
In the November issue of National Affairs, Lawrence Mead’s “Overselling the Earned Income Tax Credit” appears to propose a fresh new conservative goal: reforming the EITC to force more labor out of recipients. Anyone wondering what, exactly, Republicans are likely to do with newfound dominance in the government should likely look no further than Mead’s logic and proposed reforms. Mead argues that the EITC — a means-tested benefit mainly targeted at poor families that increases with the number of children a family has — should be outfitted with more stringent work requirements: “These include mandating participation in work programs and setting some threshold of working hours that claimants have to achieve to get benefits.” Mead argues that the EITC in its present form has not encouraged work as much as it should, and that these reforms would require poor people to work more hours more consistently to qualify for assistance, thereby squeezing more labor out of them.
Much of Mead’s essay is concerned with the failures of what he calls “welfare mothers,” namely that they just don’t do enough work. But the very notion that mothers who are working and caring for children aren’t “working” is ludicrous; as discussed above, moms who come home from jobs to care for children do just as much work or more than those who care full-time for children. Some of the work is in-home and some is labor market work, but all of it is work. There’s very little room for sloth or idleness when keeping a child fed, healthy, clean, and safe.
More: Hey, Conservatives: Why Is It Only Work if Rich Moms Do It? - the Week