Tag Archives: unintended consequences

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College Protests and the Law of Unintended Consequences

An intervention in a complex system always creates unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg understands unintended consequences. “[W]e all know that sometimes people mean well but cause harm nonetheless—out of ignorance, out of carelessness, out of deeply ingrained ways of thinking they haven’t examined, out of an emotional reaction that got the better of their lofty intentions, or … well, the list goes on,” she says.

There’s a message here for today’s rabid pro-Palestine student protesters convinced that their actions will bring about change.

If they are trying to emulate the protests against the Vietnam war in 1960s, the bloodiest and most dramatic of which occurred at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, they’re forgetting something. Those protests may have helped drive out President Lyndon Johnson, but they undermined the candidacy of the Democratic candidate for president, Hubert Humphrey, and invigorated the conservative supporters of Republican Richard Nixon.

In his first months in office, Nixon had the U.S. military increase, not decrease, its pressure on the battlefield and, in violation of international law, ordered secret bombings of North Vietnamese camps in Cambodia.

After he took office, another 21,200 Americans died in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, about one-third of all American deaths in the war (58,220), along with an estimated half a million Vietnamese., 

Nixon’s aggressive pursuit of the war also led to more protests on college campuses with deadly consequences. During one of those protests at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen shot and killed four students. Just 10 days later, another two students at Jackson State University were killed by police.

Paul Berman, an American writer on politics and literature, wrote in yesterday’s Washington Post, about being involved as a Columbia University student in a late April 1968 campus uprising. He wrote about how professors upbraided him, warning about the potential dangers of the protests.

“The professors were haunted by Germany and its history, ” Berman wrote.” In 1968, the defeat of the Nazis was only 23 years behind us, and the era of World War II and the catastrophe of the Jews had not yet definitively disappeared into the past — at least, not in the professors’ eyes. They wanted me to understand that Germany’s leftists in the 1930s had failed to understand Nazism’s danger. Foolish left-wing radicalism had helped undermine the German universities, which ought to have been a place of anti-Nazi resistance. They wanted me to understand, all in all, that what people think they are doing might not be what they are actually doing, and, in the name of high ideals, society might be weakened, and the worst of disasters might be brought about.”

I bring all this up to remind today’s aggrieved student protesters that their aggressive actions may not lead events to where they want them to go. 

First, despite the protesters’ assumption that their peers have their back, the annual Harvard Youth Poll, run by the Institute of Politics (IOP) at Harvard’s Kennedy School, found that  Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 are not prioritizing the Israel-Gaza conflict. 

The poll found that young people are more worried about inflation, health care, housing and gun violence. The survey listed 16 issues facing the U.S., asking respondents which of two randomly paired issues most concerned them. The conflict in the Middle East ranked near the bottom at 15th.

The general public also can’t be counted on to support the protesters. Americans are actually quite divided about how – and whether – the U.S. should be involved in the Israel-Hamas war. According to the Pew Research Center, among US adults, only 22% say Hamas’ reasons for fighting Israel are valid and roughly six-in-ten Americans (58%) say Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas are valid. 

In this environment, the student protests, particularly if they continue with violent events at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, may, as in 1968, lead to a conservative backlash that helps defeat President Biden and elect Donald Trump.

For most of the protesting students, that would surely be a worst case of unintended consequences. 

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Biden’s Federalization of Child Care Will Be Costly

“You can’t handle the truth!” Colonel Nathan R. Jessup roared in A Few Good Men.

President Biden and the Democrats in Congress apparently think the same way in explaining the costs of their Build Back Better budget proposals. Supposedly, the cost of the House Democrats’ budget reconciliation bill is $1.75 Trillion.

But this is a fiction based on smoke and mirrors.

On Thursday, the Penn Wharton Budget Model reported that if all the provisions of the bill (except green energy tax cuts) are made permanent, new spending would increase by $3.98 trillion, more than double what President Biden’s White House said.

On Friday, Nov. 5, the House passed a $1 Trillion infrastructure bill, but put the social policy bill on hold because a half-dozen Democrats withheld their votes until a nonpartisan analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) could tally its price tag, which could be delayed until at least mid-November. In other words, even the Democrats don’t know what their social policy bill would cost.social policy

One area that stands out in terms of unknown real costs is projected spending on child care. 

Child Care Services Association — Ensuring affordable, asccessible, high-quality child care

On Friday, Nov. 5, the House passed a $1 Trillion infrastructure bill, but put the social policy bill on hold because a half-dozen Democrats withheld their votes until a nonpartisan analysis could tally its price tag, which could be delayed until at least mid-November. In other words, even the Democrats don’t know what their social policy bill would cost.

The childcare part of the package attempts to spur more workers to join the childcare workforce and raise providers’ wages by spending around $100 billion over the first three years.

The bill would guarantee that families making up to 250 percent of a state’s median income would not have to pay more than 7 percent of their annual income on child care.

“How can we compete in the world if millions of American parents, especially moms, can’t be part of the workforce because they can’t afford the cost of childcare or eldercare,” Biden said in October. 

All well and good, but what’s going to be the actual cost to the federal government if the Democrats’ bill passes and gets signed by the President? The House will be out on recess next week, returning the week of Nov. 13. If there is a CBO score by then, it’s possible that the House could move immediately to a final vote on the bill.

First of all, the program would supposedly come to an end in six years, but that’s just part of the Democrats’ budget trickery. The assumption that spending on the child care program will cease in six years reduces its overall cost during the 10-year budget window that Congress uses to determine whether a bill will add to the federal deficit. But Democrats are counting on parents becoming so fond of the government largesse that Congress will extend the program.

President Biden has said the child care subsidies would save the average family $14,800 per year on child care expenses. In other words, the federal government would pick up $14,800 in childcare costs now paid by the average American family. 

,Using Oregon as a test case, median family income in 2020 was $76,554. On that basis, no Oregon family making less than $191,385 would pay more than 7% of their income on child care. Families earning more than $191,385 would, however, likely pay more once all the government’s mandates kicked in. Higher wages for childcare workers, for example, would likely be passed on to parents by child care providers.

Under the House bill, all the teachers and staff participating in the child care workforce, would have to be paid at least $15 an hour. Many child care workers are now so low paid that more than 15 percent are below the poverty line in 41 states, according to a Sept. 2021 report from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Similarly, nearly half of child care workers use public assistance, such as the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

According to ZipRecruiter, as of Oct 30, 2021, the average annual pay for a child care worker in Oregon was $18,969 a year or approximately $9.12 an hour. 

Under the Democrats’ bill, child care staff with the qualifications of kindergarten teachers would have to be compensated as such, according to The White House. Kindergarten teachers Oregon must have finished a degree program that includes a teacher education component. Teaching kindergarten also requires passing several exams before earning a license. According to ZipRecruiter, as of Oct 30, 2021, the average annual pay for a kindergarten teacher in Oregon was $33,785 a year or $16.24 an hour.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says there are 494,360 child care workers in the United States. Oregon has about 13,000 of those. 

According to the White House, child care providers will also “receive funding to cover the true cost of quality early childhood care and education–including a developmentally appropriate curriculum, small class sizes, and culturally and linguistically responsive environments that are inclusive of children with disabilities.”

Under the House bill, the federal government would also pay for child care workers to receive job-embedded coaching and professional development to help child care workers grow their skills during their careers.

The federal government would have to pony up a lot of new money to pay for all this. Not only that, but the states would have to step up, too. States would not be required to match any funds for the first three years, giving them time to ramp up their programs while funded entirely by the federal government. After three years, states would have to provide a 10% match to the federal funds. Where’s that money going to come from?

In addition, President Biden has said he would “ensure families have access to the quality care their children need by working in partnership with states to ensure providers meet rigorous quality standards. These standards will include a developmentally appropriate curriculum, small class sizes, and support positive interactions between educators and children that promote children’s socio-emotional development.”

To say that the Democrats want to federalize child care would be an understatement.

Although the goal of affordable child care seems worthwhile, I can’t help but think this particular proposal is going to have major unintended consequences if it becomes law.

For example, it is likely the proposal will lead to higher childcare costs overall, particularly for those not under the subsidy umbrella. As the Acton Institute has written, “There is little reason to expect that large increases in government subsidies toward childcare would lead to declining overall costs. All prices are relative prices. Increasing the demand for childcare services through subsidies while directing that demand to more formal, regulated, and already stressed institutions is a recipe for…cost explosions.”

Jonathan Bydlak of the R Street Institute makes the same point. “The idea of using subsidies to essentially engineer some sort of outcome is not exactly a great idea,” he says. “Any time you end up subsidizing something that represents a market manipulation. There’s always a potential, as we’ve seen in areas like education, for example, where… education costs are almost certainly higher as a result of the ways in which we subsidize that system.”

Many have argued that years of government subsidies for college have raised the spending power of the average person for higher education, but not necessarily to their benefit. Colleges and universities, those people say, have taken note of families’ increased spending power and raised their tuitions accordingly, resulting in the sky-high tuition rates that exist today.

At one point recently, President Biden said his Build Back Better plan would cost nothing because rich people and corporations would pay the bill. “The fact of the matter is, my Build Back Better Agenda costs $0,” Biden said.

If you believed that, or if you think the Democrats’ proposed child care program is only going to cost $100 billion over its first three years, you’re smoking some pretty potent weed.