What absolutely blew my mind in this article, and not in a good way but in a how-on-earth-is-this-a-thing way, was that there is a "phase-in" for tax credits. That is to say, you literally have to hit a certain base income, even though it is tiny, to recieve tax credits, even for your children. This means that people who are living in the worst conditions in America don't receive tax relief because they don't make a certain amount. And that means that their children subsequently don't recieve aid, perpetuating the cycle of poverty.

I guess the ideological argument against this is that if you don't hit a base income, you are not contributing to the economy and don't deserve a tax credit. While this might be fair to say to independent adults, it is simply not fair to penalize the children associated with them. This new reform removes this "phase-in," even if it's only for a year, which can help bootstrap some people and children during these difficult times.

With this setting to expire in a years time, I guess the fight would be to see how this money is used. That's difficult with tax credits, that are essentially turned into cash that gets lost in the sytem. I think that something like WIC is beneficial in this sense, because you can track how the money is used and where (at least in some sense). Although many people are going to shout "surveillance" or "loss of freedom," I think that China is potentially making strides forwards with state-led digital currencies, as mentioned in this The World Today article: https://www.thecommonsapp.com/discussion/145.

I think that a lot of the hesitation around giving people money is because working people think they are getting the short end of the stick. They think that people are using this money for useless things. If it were a digital currency, the government would have direct insight into what they are spending these tax credits on, which could significantly reduce the stigma around these sorts of policies.