@Yes First off, about the alt-EITC coming out of the Demogrant debates - I was doing some rough math with the numbers you were providing, and I seem to have come up with something interesting; if I'm right here, the difference between the maximum credit offered to a family and the poverty line is a difference of about OTL-present-$10,000, right? And the Minimum Wage has been raised to $2.00 an hour, which is roughly equivalent to OTL-present-$11, correct?
Well, if I'm right here, then it occurs to me that a single person in a family could hypothetically fill most this gap with even a part-time job - working just 20 hours a week for just 49 weeks a year would net him (or her... though I imagine it likely would be him) about $1,920 in, say, contemporary dollars (adjusting inflation 1975 to 2019 brings that to over $9,000). And if any states happen to have a minimum wage above the federal level, they number would be even higher? Now obviously, this doesn't touch upon issues of the "deserving" vs "undeserving" poor which will likely shape these programs in detail, or other likely important gaps and additional expenses, plus there's always inflation ready to destroy any serious gains this makes, even if the McGovern Administration is fighting like hell against it.
But aside from those obvious points - am I missing something else here? And if not - could TTL be seeing some interesting developments not only in the evolution of the American Welfare State, International Macro-Economic Systems, and whatnot - but also in the very "Work Culture" underlying the national and global economies as well? Could TTL manage to actually avert the decline of Leisure Time among the working poor and wealthy alike that OTL saw starting in the 1970's? And if so, could there be even more seismic changes emerging from that?
Second off, how did Marlow Cook vote again?
I like everything about this comment. Everything. Especially since it's a glorious opportunity to spitball numbers and look at the kinds of things that come up.
(We'll do it a little bit backwards though so I'll answer your last question first. Ol' Marlow was unavailable at the time of the vote, which happens sometimes even on big bills, on the face of it that's just an accident of bad timing with his schedule but he hasn't exactly moved heaven and earth to fix the problem, if you catch my drift.)
So. The key thing to remember about the poverty level is that it's calculated on the basis of "a non-farm family of four" and so should be extrapolated up or down from there depending on total family-unit size. Having said that, you've still pointed out a very interesting situation. Let's say you have the mythic non-farm family of four, and a goodly number of folks actually do, the whole "two-point-four children and half a Labrador" kinda deal. (Slightly alien to those of us with four daughters and at least three pets, but horses for courses and all that.) On top of that, let's say that one parent in that family unit has a full-time minimum wage job. We'll call it 40 hours a week at the federal floor of $2.00/hr in 1973-74 money (already losing at least a little ground around the end of that time) for 50 full weeks a year. (I'll assume that for holidays everybody takes off, days sick, and a few incidentals that the minimum-wage worker has about two work weeks of unpaid time off a year.) With the EICP credits for the family (TTL's earned-income credit system) at this low level they'd get the full $2,000, plus the $4,000 a year gross income that comes to $6,000. In OTL!1974 dollars that adds up to $30,540 in current, contemporary money, just a little above the poverty-line figure of around $24-25k in current money. That's tight, but if they have any other forms of support (food credits of various kinds for the kids, living in a state where Medicaid might stretch in their direction or there's a good brokering system for supplemental insurance) then they can do all right. It's one of the things that actually helps sell the model to more conservative congresscritters because it lets you maintain - barely - a single-income family. Indeed if you have that full-time minimum wage earner plus the second parent working half-time at minimum wage (on the same calculated basis) then you're up to $8,000 in income, or $40,720 in today's money. Then you're starting to talk about some basic economic stability on beyond near-poverty (also achieved if a single worker makes the equivalent of $3/hr in 1974 money.)
So it would take that or more with a larger family unit like the family-of-six max on the EICP. At the same time, it does provide a mechanism to get and keep a lot of families out of poverty with a single earner, if you can balance out fighting inflation and some mild cost-of-living increases to keep pace. That does seem to me to strike more of a balance on leisure time and preserve the ability of families to
subsist on a single income so that if you add a second earner there are more things the family can do with its situation, rather than fall into the modern "two-income trap." Those sure seem like significant differences. An important question will be whether Our Plucky Heroes can keep up the
absolute purchasing power of both the minimum wage and the earned-income credit, apace with or at least close to whatever inflation does ITTL.
The trick remains dealing with single-parent families in pockets of high unemployment. If, say, you have a family unit of three (we'll call it mom and two kids) and there's a way for mom to work full-time at minimum wage, then with work and EICP you can bring in $5,500 which is about an eyelash over the poverty line. It's enough to have some basic security, provided there are means for child care, probably some nutritional food supports for the kids, etc. But it's tight. There a Demogrant model still works better, even if you credited a depreciated $1,000 (it's worth less in 1974 than it was in 1972) for each family member that gets you to $7,000 total for a family of three with mom at work full time on minimum wage. There you have some genuine basic security. It points out there is still an incentive for the McGovern crew to try and turn TTL's EICP into something more Demogrant-
ish in the long term, in aid of concentrating its effects and reducing the need for other supplemental economic security programs. ITTL as IOTL the more conservative congresscritters (well, the Southerners at least and some of the Old Right Midwesterners, though not the Goldwaterite free marketeers) are OK with supporting the
working poor so that's acted as a kind of gateway drug on incomes policy. The White House will try to be the water wearing away the stone on spreading income policy more broadly and eroding that "deserving"/"undeserving" distinction. At the same time, they intend to make a real effort (mileage may vary) to get jobs to the places and people that need them.
Senator Byrd may have his moments ... but he sure hasn't had any so far.