Tricked by Measurement: The Story of the EITC and Baby Bonds
Added 2019-01-28 16:23:41 +0000 UTCMatt is here with a solo ep (dual ep releasing soon) about one of his great wonk irritations: policies that seem to have a big impact only because they take advantage of quirks in the way we measure certain things like poverty and wealth inequality. These policies achieve great "success" defined as getting a certain statistic to move a lot but actually do not meaningfully address the bigger evil -- the reduction of material deprivation in the case of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the wealth difference between the black and white community in the case of baby bonds.
Comments
Matt, I truly love how you explain things. You have a way of making the most dry statistical things crystal clear to understand.
2019-05-25 02:35:18 +0000 UTCAgree with Brendan. Using the $15 trillion number overstates the size of the problem. The policy I would support, and I suspect most others would too, is to close the wealth gap between working class (broadly defined) black Americans and working class (also broadly defined) white Americans, with perhaps wealth functioning as a proxy for class to make the measurement easier.
Uri Strauss
2019-02-19 12:40:14 +0000 UTC
