Laura at 11D offers some first-hand insight into WIC.
... The vouchers are made out for very specific items. You can't blow it all on Twinkies. There were vouchers for cheese (Monteray Jack or cheddar), whole milk, frozen juice (orange, apple, or grape), and formula. Formula was the real prize. Baby guzzles about $100 of formula a month.The vouchers have very specific dates on them. They have to be used up by a certain week or they become void.
Now for the weird part. You can't redeem your voucher for formula and walk out of the supermarket. You had to buy everything, the cheese and the juice and the milk, whether you wanted it or not. Most annoyingly, they required you to purchase vast quantities of milk. Like two or three gallons per week. Far more than an average person could consume. We had to give away some of the milk to neighbors so it wouldn't go bad.
Now for the annoying part. You had to cart all that milk home. Not every supermarket accepts WIC vouchers. We had to walk to a far off supermarket over on Broadway. All that milk doesn't fit in the back of babystroller, so you had to have someone help you get it all home. I suppose if you had car it wouldn't be such a big deal. But I'll let you in on a secret. A lot of poor people don't have cars.
Surely, there was some deal with the milk farmers over this one. Some Vermont Senator got a little pork back home in exchange for my backache.
That was the abbreviated story of us on WIC. I could tell you how humiliating it was to get the voucher signed by the store manager. Or long waits at the WIC office to get recertified. Or the required parenting classes.
That Senator would be Jim Jeffords, he who titled his autobiography My Declaration of Independance. Vermont has extorted far more than its fair share of ridiculous dairy subsidies from the USDA; I presume that all the former undersecretaries of the last fifty years are even now lounging in complementary ski resort condos while hoovering down free pints of Ben and Jerrys.
This is . . . a word I won't use on a family blog. If you can't trust people to figure out how much milk they need, then they should be in a group home.
Or the required parenting classes.
I'm not sure that two people who could earn decent livings yet choose to earn poverty-level wages in order to simultaneously earn PhDs in the humanities don't need these. Vanity degrees should not come before the ability to provide for one's children.
I'm not sure that two people who could earn decent livings yet choose to earn poverty-level wages in order to simultaneously earn PhDs in the humanities don't need these. Vanity degrees should not come before the ability to provide for one's children.
There’s a definite difference in cultural attitudes between people who take responsibility for their lives and the lives of those they bring into this world versus those who think it’s the role of the “village” (read: federal and State government) to subsidize their lifestyle choice – whether that choice was to have a child out of wedlock before graduating from high school or getting a vanity degree rather than earning an honest living.
I’m less upset by the notion that we have, possibly unnecessary, dairy requirements built into the WIC program then I am at the attitudes of the irresponsible people whose lifestyle choices lead to the creation and perpetuation of such programs in the first place.
Man, being on welfare in a city seems like a lot of work.
Seems like it'd almost be easier to move to a red state and get a job.
But wait, working and living in the 'burbs is for the proles. Our well-educated protagonists shouldn't have to do that, they ought to be supported by those proles!
There is something really wrong with a welfare system where dirt-broke Mexican immigrants with eighth grade educations find themselves paying taxes to support Americans who are getting degrees straight off stuffwhitepeoplelike.com.
This does lend further support to the (well-publicized) theory that leftism is about well-educated whites trying to use their culture and education to gain status over all those icky Middle-Americans.
Actually, dan, you've got it exactly backwards. The best possible investment the rest of us can make is in subsidizing the care of children while their parents get higher degrees, including PhDs in the humanities.
There's little doubt that the ultimate payback, in terms of having much more educated and productive parents, who produce more educated and productive offspring, will be much larger than our investment.
That's to contrast with the situation where we give money to people who can't earn higher degrees, and who aren't using our charity as a temporary crutch while they train themselves for a much better paying occupation. That's just money thrown away, pure consumption. Supporting people trying to better themselves is investment.
"Independance" is a word you shouldn't use on a family blog.
A libertarian who can't spell independence should be in a group home.
Srapped into a bed next to the genius who uses "then" when he means than.
Carl Pham, I'm guessing you don't have a PhD, because even those of us who have them wouldn't claim that the ridiculously myopic focus of a PhD thesis makes us "better educated" in a general way that society has any resposibility to subsidize. I buy that claim about an undergrad degree. And sometimes it makes sense for the gov't to support that myopic focus, if there's a demand for that area. But the idea that someone will be a better citizen because they spent 8 years to produce a mediocre thesis on agrarian revolt than they would have been working as an insurance adjuster is absurd.
Before anyone gets hysterical, please note that I'm not claiming that the world doesn't need historians, or linguists, or philosophers: of course it does. What the world doesn't need is to have its massive, massive oversupply of incredibly specialized historians, linguists, and philosophers rationalized as necessary or important to the health of our citizenry.
Shorter me:
Supporting people trying to better themselves is investment.
But they aren't "bettering" themselves in any meaningful sense of the word. Thus the term vanity degree.
No dan got it exactly right the first time. These sort of vanity degrees are of limited (if any) practical use and don’t actually contribute to creating actual wealth in the private sector. Which is why possessors of such degrees usually find themselves living in the academic world subsisting off of the wealth that the government has confiscated from those of us who actually do something productive with our lives.
Who do I send the bill to for cleaning diet cherry coke off my monitor screen?
ROTFLMAO!
Well, dan, you guessed wrong, since I got my PhD from Berkeley in 1990.
And you're still wrong on the big point. You're appealing to some ineffable absolute standard of quality of citizenry, by which people with PhDs in English don't measure any higher than those who quit with a BA in it.
I couldn't care less about such things. I don't give a damn about the "quality" of the citizenry. (And even if I did, the idea that education a.k.a. social indoctrination could possibly make people more responsible, more likely to think for themselves, kinder and more attentive, is utterly laughable. Education routinely fails to get people to remember when the Civil War started or be able to solve linear equations, far more modest and defineable goals.)
The only important measurement here is how much dough people earn with the degree, e.g. the net average lifetime difference in the taxes they'll pay to pay me (the citizen-investor) back.
There is zero doubt that people with PhDs in English earn more than those with BAs, on average. (Your personally may not, if that's your area, but then you might just be a loser.) So by that simple, concrete, empirically measureable standard, subsidizing the higher degree pursuits of parents is a social investment that pays nonzero positive return.
I suspect that there might just be a teensy amount of selection bias in your statement "There is zero doubt that people with PhDs in English earn more than those with BAs, on average", Carl.
The comparison that you want to make, if you want to view taxpayer-funded or subsidised education as an investment in future tax revenues, is between the earning power of English PhDs and the earning power that those same people would have had they left college with a BA and entered the "real world". This isn't the same as the average of all English graduates.
Now, as it happens, I think that the whole comparison is bunk, but that's another discussion.
There is zero doubt that people with PhDs in English earn more than those with BAs, on average. (Your personally may not, if that's your area, but then you might just be a loser.) So by that simple, concrete, empirically measureable standard, subsidizing the higher degree pursuits of parents is a social investment that pays nonzero positive return.
Oof, the innumeracy. That comparison is irrelevant.
What really matters is, among the people who are capable of completing a PhD in, say, English, comparing the "empirically measurable standard" of your choice between the group that does choose to go onto grad school and the group that doesn't. That's quite a mountain for the PhDs to climb, especially given the 5-8 years they spend earning hardly anything while the other group is out earning salaries, promotions, contributing to retirement plans, etc.
A little research shows that the woman Megan cited is a marginally employed academic whose husband left academia for finance. Certainly they'd have been much better off if he had taken the finance job out of undergrad and she'd found something more steady than clinging to the underbelly of academia. And I don't mean better in merely a financial sense, although the importance of that can't be underestimated.
Or, what Sam said.
Carl Pham: There is zero doubt that people with PhDs in English earn more than those with BAs, on average. (Your personally may not, if that's your area, but then you might just be a loser.) So by that simple, concrete, empirically measureable standard, subsidizing the higher degree pursuits of parents is a social investment that pays nonzero positive return
Dead wrong.
Suppose we remove someone with a BA in English, give them six years of subsidized education, and forgo six years of taxes from them doing something.
That person takes a mild hit - slightly lower income. We, the taxpayer, on the other hand, take a significant hit - somewhere around a hundred grand would be my bottom-end estimate.
That's a hundred grand that the US government is borrowing from the central bank of China, incidentally. So that hundred grand has a certain cost. For the sake of estimation, let's say five grand a year.
That taxpayer is going to have to pay an extra $5k/yr in taxes for the US government to break even. Given that this taxpayer is likely in the 25% bracket, that means that English PhD had better be worth an extra $20k/yr of income - which it isn't.
So we, the taxpayer, are losing money.
Given your lack of quantitative analysis here, I'm guessing you spent too much of your post-graduate career in Dwinelle, and not enough in Evans.
Mr Pham again: There's little doubt that the ultimate payback, in terms of having much more educated and productive parents, who produce more educated and productive offspring, will be much larger than our investment
Bogus.
If I decide to get a degree in say pharmacy, nursing, mech e, accounting, and so on, I could take out loans to do so. After I graduate, I could practice in these fields, and a grateful society would reward my daily effort with a paycheck.
I then take this paycheck and use it to pay off the debt I previously incurred, and keep the rest. This is called "investing in myself" - I incur a debt, use it to further my business, pay off the debt, and make some profit.
Now, if I decide to take a degree in Transgendered Nahuatl Hermeneutics or NASCAR Studies, I'll never pay off the loans with my additional income, because society (rightly, in my opinion) wants more nurses more than it wants more upper-income whiners.
Thus, such people rely on grants. The difference?
Transgendered Nahuatl Hermeneutics studies students come from well-off, well-connected backgrounds, and thus get subsidized.
NASCAR Studies students come from middle-class backgrounds. Thus, they get taxed to fund the diversions of the elites.
Back to the OP: Whole milk, seriously? Who the hell drinks whole milk anymore?
Back to the OP: Whole milk, seriously? Who the hell drinks whole milk anymore?
Children between 1 and 2, or longer if their parents feel like it.
That is to say, the people who are supposed to be helped by this program.
Whole milk is good stuff. I like it better than half-and-half for coffee, which IMO tastes a bit wattered down when using 2% (and definitely watered down with 1%). Since my habit can reach 4-6 cups/day during a bad week, and I probably can't quit anytime I want, I end up drinking quite a bit of whole milk.
On the flipside, I eat very little butter.
I'm neutral on WIC, but keep the facts straight - you do NOT need to get everything on the WIC check. I work in a grocery store, and people choose not to get certain items all the time, and it's not a problem.
Fact check, Ms. McArdle. I have a lot of respect for you, and I don't want to have to give it up because you are too hasty in your posts.
Sam, the distinction is fine, but I take your point, that the subset of English BAs capable of earning an English PhD is arguably more competent in some general way than the complement of that subset. Maybe so.
But, on the other hand, maybe not. You're assuming graduate admissions committees select on the basis of general competence more than, say, fitting in with the prejudices and fads of the field, or competence and interest in the careers for which having a PhD prepares you. In the latter case, if graduate schools are doing their job right, then those BAs who are admitted to graduate school are probably less able to earn good salaries in the "real world". Maybe that's why they want to go to graduate school.
Secret asian man, I, too, could pull numbers out of my ass. But there's not much point to that, is there? If you want to make the case that lifetime earnings for an English PhD are less than those of an English BA qualifed to get a PhD, you'd better start by explaining why people -- who, duh, have a very strong personal interest in maximizing their lifetime income -- try very hard to get into PhD programs. Kind of weird if they spend 10 years being poor and working their ass off only to earn measurably and obviously less than if they didn't. People aren't normally so irrational.
So, good luck with that. As for Dwinelle: the only time I spent there was taking some French for amusement, and as a break from the quantum mechanics and statistical physics in LeConte and Hildebrand. My PhD is in chemical physics, and it's likely I've forgotten more science, statistics, and hideous math than you've learned, or the existence of which you're even aware. Reconsider the ad hominem line of argument, dude.
As for your second post, because probably a lot of people make the mistake you're making here, it's worth a response: you're comparing apples to oranges. People who want to get English PhDs are not going to go into pharmacy or medicine or engineering if getting an English PhD is made more expensive. That's not where their interests lie, and fortunately we don't live in a Stalinist state where someone such as yourself could dictate from above what profession a person undertakes, for the Good Of The People(TM), of course.
So there's no point to comparing what they'll earn as English PhDs to what they'd earn as physicians. They're not going to be physicians, no matter what. You have to compare what they'd earn doing what they love with an advanced degree versus doing what they don't like so much with a less advanced degree. If you think that result is likely to come back that, gosh, they'll earn more in the latter scenario....uh, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Besides all this, you've not even established that what WIC does for English PhD students is subsidize degree acquisition while being a parent rather than parenting while acquiring a degree. If it's the latter in some real sense, then you're stuck arguing that the public should not subsidize parenting. Which is, biology being what it is, not merely stupid but a recipe for social suicide. (Just ask the Japanese, who are on course to join the residents of Easter Island in the mists of legend.)
Kind of weird if they spend 10 years being poor and working their ass off only to earn measurably and obviously less than if they didn't. People aren't normally so irrational.
Carl, you need to stop writing and look up "personal utilities" and "cultural capital".
Mr Pham:
Straw man.
I'm not asserting that a PhD is a bad investment for the person who gets it. Depending on the field, it may or may not be. What I am asserting is that the PhD in the humanities is a bad investment for the American taxpayer, because we pay for the whole PhD, and only get 25% of the gains back in taxes.
That's the key point here - we only get 25% back of the additional income.
Now, if you disagree with me, you ought to quit your job right now and start a company making loans out to aspiring humanities PhDs, because there is an enormous market out there for you. Given how loose credit has been over the last decade, the fact that no one has gone out and done so means that there's probably no return there.
Dead wrong, once again.
First you assert that people do respond to incentives, and thus decreasing the cost of an English PhD increases the volume produced. I agree.
Now you say that people don't respond to incentives, and that increasing the cost will not cause the market to compensate, and this is strange.
The number of EECS students fell in *half* between 99 and 03, due to the dot-com bust. The number of econ students and Haas applicants more than doubled in the same years. Why? People were responding to the perceived futures in those two professions.
Wait a second, who's the one saying that the government should dictate what professions should be subsidized, for the Good Of The People (TM)? You're the one saying the government should subsidize those professions that require a PhD, and not those professions which require significant but non-academic training (ASE mechanic, pilot, rescue diver, fireman etc)
I'm the one saying that we shouldn't artificially subsidize one sort of profession over another, and let people inform themselves as to the likely economic prospects and enter into their professions in the numbers the market supports. In a non-distorted market people can take out loans to support the most efficient form of education available to them. I think our skewed subsidy system is why we have a huge surplus of (subsidized) humanities PhDs and a huge shortage of (un-subsidized) high-skilled technicians.
Looks like I'm the one that's advocating the market solution, not you, Comrade Pham.
The Japanese problem is not their birthrate, it's their xenophobia.
America has successfully outsourced parenting to other countries and imports highly-trained adults. We call them "immigrants". It's a good deal, really.
America has successfully outsourced parenting to other countries and imports highly-trained adults. We call them "immigrants". It's a good deal, really.
awesome!
America has successfully outsourced parenting to other countries and imports highly-trained adults. We call them "immigrants". It's a good deal, really.
awesome!
LeConte... Evans... Dwinelle...Hildebrand...
Isn't this a bit too...*inside*... for general consumption? Or is this going to be the new standard for criticizing each others' intellectual horsepower?
Lessee, I'll see your LeConte and raise you one Birge and one Gilman. Fun!
On topic: what I want to know is the justification (in CA) for spending my tax dollars to support the various Milk / Egg / Dairy "Marketing Boards". Why is it a necessary function of the state to advertise staple foods?
(Actually, in CA, the real & recurring budget problem is the seeming inability of the legislature to understand the long-term consequences of bribing state employees with pension/retirement health promises in lieu of paying them *now* and letting them plan for their own futures, like the rest of us peons. Peons who, by the way, are too dumb to vote them out of office.)
The problem with CA is simple - tax-payers are moving out and tax-eaters are moving in.
Um, not to disagree with "Laura at 11D" but my family is currently on WIC in Texas, and things are a little different.
We get a couple vouchers a month. They must be used by the end of the month. One voucher gives us milk (1 and a half gallons), beans (1lb), cereal (2 boxes), juice, and cheese (1 lb) besides formula. The other two vouchers are just milk.
There are prohibitions on what you can get. Each grocery store has a little different selection but it's always the cheapest milk/cereal/etc available.
We are not forced to buy whole milk, so we get 1%.
We can opt not to get everything on the voucher and often do. We're Vietnamese, and eat rice, but no beans. So we don't take the beans. We also don't get the milk offered if we haven't finished the milk we currently have.
And I'm sorry "Laura at 11D" had to walk. I ride a bus almost everywhere, and it gets me and my groceries home just fine, when I don't have use of a car.
We sign our vouchers in front of the cashier -- not getting them signed by the manager.
As far as being embarassed, that's a personal issue. As someone who's been in the workforce, paying taxes (hence funding WIC), and now is back at school -- subsisting on just enough loans to survive -- I don't feel bad about using WIC. I wouldn't have the money to support my child without it. It's a temporary stop measure until I graduate school, at which time I'll be back in the workforce paying MORE taxes, and therefore repaying what I borrowed from society plus a whole lot more.
There might be (and are) problems with WIC and other government programs, but -- at least in Texas -- they aren't what "Laura at 11D" elaborated.
And why is your wife unable to work, Triet?
As someone who's been in the workforce, paying taxes (hence funding WIC), and now is back at school -- subsisting on just enough loans to survive -- I don't feel bad about using WIC. I wouldn't have the money to support my child without it. It's a temporary stop measure until I graduate school, at which time I'll be back in the workforce paying MORE taxes, and therefore repaying what I borrowed from society plus a whole lot more.
Not exactly. You'll pay those future taxes regardless. But by choosing to take a handout instead of taking enough loans to pay your living expenses (or, better yet, having actually saved something during your time in the workforce), you offload your family's burden onto all of us.
The intent of my post was not to debate whether WIC is good or not, y'all do a fine enough job on that as it is -- but to highlight that Laura's experience with WIC was diametrically opposite my own. This weakens arguments that WIC has milk because of Senator Jim Jeffords and the dairy lobby.
Not that they don't work for their own self-interests possibly at the expense of the greater good (I wouldn't have knowledge of that), but that WIC in Texas is far more flexible, and addresses most of the concerns Laura had.
Specifically regarding your reply, Dan, I see your complaint, but you don't sway me.
WIC is a societal decision to encourage people to have families before they may be able to support them on their own.
I am currently in medical school. My wife holds a college degree, but her salary would not have covered daycare and gas to and from her job had she stayed working after our child's birth. So, we made the decision to have her stay home and raise our son.
My social contract with WIC has allowed me to have a child in medical school. If we waited for me to graduate, we'd be in our mid-30s. WIC allows us to have children spaced out more reasonably, have the amount we want, and generally have a happier family life more in line with our values.
My child will spend less time in the doctor's office because he's not at daycare. He will enter the workforce sooner because we did not wait until after medical school to have him. My familial happiness will correlate into increased productivity at work. By having our children earlier, we drastically reduce the odds of having complications with labor & delivery or genetic abnormalities. In the short term these decisions decrease the burden on our health care system (and your taxes), and in the long term they increase the odds of more, able-bodied Americans joining the workforce and paying into the same system so that you can be assured of your Social Security check when you retire.
My family's "burden" is definitely not offloaded onto you. I have used the social contract available to maximize the contribution my family can make to this same society.
Now, my situation does not mean that there aren't people who suck on the system without giving back. It also doesn't mean that the system in general is running fine. It may need to be changed or scrapped all together. But for my specific situation, I think the system is achieving its purpose.
I'll take Triet becoming a doctor over the other people becoming humanities PhDs any day.
Triet, I'm sure there's not a single person who had a child that they were unable to care for who didn't convince themselves they were in the right. "I'm an exception." "My circumstances are different."
People like you and your wife are able to shirk caring for your child only because the majority of us choose to be responsible about our family planning and provide for our families.
Just to clarify, I don't oppose WIC. I think it's a great program, actually -- children suffering years of malnourishment is not in society's best interest.
What I do oppose is attitudes like Apt. 11D's and Triet's, suggesting that their and their spouse's willfully choosing a handout instead of desparately needing one is somehow better. I think it is the public's responsibility to help kids whose parents are truly unable to feed them. I don't think it is the public's responsibility to help parents acheive their preferred child spacing, or pursue vanity degrees, or be a housewife who considers herself above work.
Just to clarify, I don't oppose WIC. I think it's a great program, actually -- children suffering years of malnourishment is not in society's best interest.
What I do oppose is attitudes like Apt. 11D's and Triet's, suggesting that their and their spouses willfully choosing a handout instead of desparately needing one is somehow better. I think it is the public's responsibility to help kids whose parents are truly unable to feed them. I don't think it is the public's responsibility to help parents acheive their preferred child spacing, or pursue vanity degrees, or be a housewife who considers herself above work.
Ouch. I fail to see how working towards a medical degree while my wife raises my child is somehow "shirk[ing] caring for [my] child." I think I care for him quite nicely. And you insinuate that I am not responsible about my family planning or provide for it? I will not glorify that asinine comment with a rebuttal.
I will however argue your clarification that I have willfully taken a handout and that my situation is somehow better than someone desperately needing the help.
I think I need the help just as much as anyone else on WIC. In order for me to qualify, I must make very little, just like everyone else. I also have the added wonder of having the federal government tell me -- because I'm in medical school -- how much loans I can receive. And as I've previously elaborated, my wife working would have been a null sum experience.
I only elaborated my situation so you can realize that no, many on WIC do not sit there with their hands out, waiting for free money. We do not consider it a handout. We are grateful we live in a country that offers such help, and I feel that America will be better off for helping me with WIC than if WIC didn't exist.
Your position about the public's responsibility is a philosophical one I doubt I will ever sway you from. That's fine. We can agree to disagree. Philosophically, I feel that it is definitely in the public's best interest to promote happy families, spaced in their best interest, with the optimum number of children, born early enough to maximize future potential to productively contribute to society. WIC is one of our society's ways at achieving that.
But that's what makes America wonderful. You can feel WIC should be limited to only those parents who had children while fiscally solvent and then fell on hard times, and I can believe WIC is and should be distributed to a larger population of women and children. At the end of the day, I'll still fight with all my strength to help you if you show up at my hospital, and I think you'd reciprocate, because we're all in this together.
I just stumbled upon this blog and am stunned at the ungenerous appraisal of graduate education presented here. Need I remind you all that graduate students actually work while earning their degrees? We teach your kids for paltry wages to keep your tuition costs down so that the university can continue not to hire full-time professors. I don't consider the small amount of money I earn for the work I do a "subsidy."