Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Daniel Kostzer

Quote by Daniel Kostzer

“One recurrent question relates to the conditions required to make governments implement an employment guarantee programme? How high would the unemployment rate have to be? How high would poverty have to be? And the answer in Argentina: until the protests were unbearable! When this happened, policymakers worked with real urgency to solve the problem.”

Quote by Daniel Kostzer

Book:Modern Monetary Theory: Key Insights, Leading Thinkers
Create image

Work

Modern Monetary Theory: Key Insights, Leading Thinkers

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Daniel Kostzer

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Daniel Kostzer. more

You May Also Like

“People who can see their neighbors with air-conditioning and cars, but who themselves live in shacks and often lack sewage disposal or a reliable water supply, have little to lose, and may find violence a rational option.”

SexPovertyViolenceEvolutionAggressionEvolutionary PsychologyMaleCommodities
Book:Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World
Create image

“Praestat angustus esse quam fractus! It is better to be narrow than broken." The Message: It is better to live a life of limitations, discipline, or virtue, to be narrow (lat. angustus) than to live without bounds and end up broken (lat. fractus) by the consequences (e.g. corruption, exhaustion, moral ruin, or ruinous choices). It is a call to moderation, virtue, and self-restraint over excessive freedom that leads to destruction (spiritual, financial or physical).”

LifeInspirationalPhilosophyWisdomTruthMotivationFaith
Author:Ivica Antunović
Create image

“The rest of us, on the ·other hand-we members of the protected classes-have grown increasingly· dependent on our welfare programs. In 2020 the federal government spent more than $193 billion on homeowner subsidies, a figure that far exceeded the amount spent on direct housing assistance for low income families ($53 billion). Most families who enjoy those subsidies have six-figure incomes and are white. Poor families lucky enough to live in government-owned apartments of often have to deal with mold and even lead paint, while rich families are claiming the mortgage interest deduction on first and second homes. The lifetime limit for cash welfare to poor parents is five years, but families claiming the mortgage interest deduction may do so for the length of the mortgage, typically thirty years. A fifteen-story public housing tower and a mortgaged suburban home are both government subsidized, but only one looks (and feels) that way. If you count all public benefits offered by the federal government, America's welfare state (as a share of its gross domestic product) is the second biggest in the world, after France's. But that's true only if you include things like government-subsidized retirement benefits provided by employers, student loans and 529 college savings plans, child tax credits, and homeowner subsidies: benefits disproportionately flowing to Americans well above the poverty line. If you put aside these tax breaks and judge the United States solely by the share of its GDP allocated to programs directed at low-income citizens, then our investment in poverty reduction is much smaller than that of other rich nations. The American welfare state is lopsided.”

PovertyRacismWhite Privilege529 PlansMortgage DeductionSubsidized Housing
Book:Poverty, by America
Create image

“In her book The Government-Citizen Disconnect, the political scientist Suzanne Mettler reports that 96 percent of American adults have relied on a major government program at some point in their lives. Rich, middle-class, and poor families depend on different kinds of programs, but the average rich and middle-class family draws on the same number of government benefits as the average poor family. Student loans look like they were issued from a bank, but the only reason banks hand out money to eighteen-year-olds with no jobs, no credit, and no collateral is because the federal government guarantees the loans and pays half their interest. Financial advisers at Edward Jones or Prudential can help you sign up for 529 college savings plans, but those plans' generous tax benefits will cost the federal government an estimated $28.5 billion between 2017 and 2026. For most Americans under the age of sixty-five, health insurance appears to come from their jobs, but supporting this arrangement is one of the single largest tax breaks issued by the federal government, one that exempts the cost of employer-sponsored health insurance from taxable incomes. In 2022, this benefit is estimated to have cost the government $316 billion for those under sixty-five. By 2032, its price tag is projected to exceed $6oo billion. Almost half of all Americans receive government-subsidized health benefits through their employers, and over a third are enrolled in government-subsidized retirement benefits. These participation rates, driven primarily by rich and middle-class Americans, far exceed those of even the largest programs directed at low income families, such as food stamps (14 percent of Americans) and the Earned Income Tax Credit (19 percent). Altogether, the United States spent $1.8 trillion on tax breaks in 2021. That amount exceeded total spending on law enforcement, education, housing, healthcare, diplomacy, and everything else that makes up our discretionary budget. Roughly half the benefits of the thirteen largest individual tax breaks accrue to the richest families, those with incomes that put them in the top 20 percent. The top I percent of income earners take home more than all middle-class families and double that of families in the bottom 20 percent. I can't tell you how many times someone has informed me that we should reduce military spending and redirect the savings to the poor. When this suggestion is made in a public venue, it always garners applause. I've met far fewer people who have suggested we boost aid to the poor by reducing tax breaks that mostly benefit the upper class, even though we spend over twice as much on them as on the military and national defense.”

RaceClassPovertyTaxesSubsidies529 Plans
Book:Poverty, by America
Create image