Why The Child Tax Credit Is So Important, Even If You Don’t Have Kids

Look, I already know that all of my readers are card carrying Mensa members, otherwise you would never be able to figure out what I’m talking about. But as we celebrate the passage of the Covid relief bill, I want to present an angle on something I believe is being overlooked, the Child Tax Credit. Not that part itself, but what it actually means when you look deeper.

I will start this article with a personal revelation, since I’ve actually been where some of the majority of the families that will benefit from the Child Tax Credit will help, and so I know of what I speak.

Over an 11 year period, 1980, 1981, 1986, and 1991, I sired 4 daughters. For the purposes of this discussion, and it’s importance, I am only going to speak of circumstances during the period of my raising my first two daughters.

I never graduated college, so at the age of 23, when I had my first daughter, I wasn’t pulling down a high 5 digit paycheck. But due to a combination of luck, hard work, and particular skills that showed themselves at the right time, I was never a minimum wage worker with a family either. But I was most certainly in that majority of the lower middle class that didn’t have $300 in savings to cover an unexpected expense.

And if you’ve ever been a parent, then you already know that life is nothing but an endless march of unexpected expenses. Having a child is like living the movie The Money Pit, except with a pulse and more noise. And this is what makes the Child tax Credit so important, and not just for the young parents of modest needs that it will help.

When I had my first two daughters, if I ever got word from the federal government that they were going to start slipping a cool $600 a month into my checking account to help me to raise my kids? I would have cried until my tear ducts fell out.

Because people like me don’t have investment accounts, we’re not day traders, and none of us even know what a Capitol gains Tax is. That $600 a month would have gone out every bit as quickly as it came in. Groceries, clothes, shoes, school supplies, and yes, since you’re a parent, a little at Toys-R-Us, a pizza night. And with a little luck, and a steady paycheck, it might leave a little left over to start working on that $300-Rainy-Day-Nest-Egg.

But here’s why the Child Tax Credit is so important, and not just to the families it will lift out of poverty. Because lower class, and lower middle class families tend to spend their income where they live! And all of those groceries, and clothes, and shoes, and pizzas I talked about above will be bought from local merchants.

This Child tax Credit won’t just lift up the families that receive it, it will lift up entire lower and lower middle class neighborhoods where the recipients reside! Remember, people spend money where they live. And increased spending in these neighborhoods will lead to increased demand, and increased employment when new stores open to replace stores that fell to the virus.

Mark my words, the Child Tax Credit is going to have an impact far beyond the simple family lives that it touches. It is going to improve and gentrify lives through entire neighborhoods. This is the brilliance of ensuring that this part passed into law. The influx of income into lower and lower middle class neighborhoods will almost surely ensure the starting of new, small, local businesses, all hiring locally, to replace the ones that were lost to the virus. And in doing so, will drive the engine of recovery throughout the nation.

This is what Trump never understood. You can’t repair the economy until you get the goddamn virus under control. And once you do, nothing will happen until you give people the money to start to spend again, and to generate the starting of new small businesses that drive the economy. Biden got the memo. And the Republicans that voted against this bill are going to look like shit.

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