The Stimulus Bill Screws Over Single Childless People [View all]
The recent COVID stimulus bill is expected to deliver $600 to Americans. I can just about pay my rent with that because I am married with a child and that adds up to $1,800 for the household. If you’re not, the government doesn’t seem to care about you as much.
I don’t think anyone begrudges me getting extra cash for my kid. Obviously, this quarantine has been hard on them, too. What I’m saving in tuition at her local jiu jitsu dojo I’m spending on her therapy because kids are literally getting suicidal over all this. Taking care of the most vulnerable members of our society is what society is actually for.
That said, this continued insistence that the nuclear family household should always be the ones to reap the maximum benefits of the welfare state is quite literally killing people who aren’t married and don’t have kids. This is no secret to Texans. In this state you can’t even get on Medicaid if you’re a non-disabled, childless adult under 65 since our state has refused the expansion of benefits under the Affordable Care Act. Our food assistance program is similarly stingy, and single, childless people can usually only get three months out of the year worth of help.
The over-arching theme of these assistance programs isn’t that families with children need more help. It’s that people who are “abled” and “unburdened” don’t need help except in the direst circumstances. Maybe that was true back in the ancient 1970s when you could still afford rent on a fry cook’s salary, but it hasn’t been true in my lifetime.
Read more: https://www.houstonpress.com/news/the-covid-stimulus-bill-is-bad-for-single-people-11520988
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