Weekly Writers Round-Up: Tax Hikes, Universal Basic Income, and Child Protection Policies

Each week, we’ll be featuring the work of the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. For more information on how the program can help launch your career in writing, see here.

Sanders Just Dropped Another Confiscatory Tax Proposal by Andrew Wilford (Spring 2017) in The Daily Caller
The 2020 Democratic primary field is getting crowded, and contenders are busy trying to outbid each other with new anti-wealth policies. In the wake of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) proposal to raise the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) came out with a wealth tax that would confiscate two percent of one’s assets every year. Not willing to cede the mantle of most anti-wealth Democrat so easily, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders followed these proposals up with one of his own — an estate tax with a top rate of 77 percent…

The Fix for Basic Income Proposals Is a 30-Year-Old Conservative Idea by J. Cal Davenport (Fall 2018) in The Washington Examiner
With the massive 2020 presidential campaign rollout from Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., on Jan. 27 will come more talk of one of her policy proposals: the LIFT Act, a $500 monthly tax credit to help struggling working families. It is not quite a basic income, a sum of cash paid out monthly to citizens as a modern form of welfare and income redistribution, but it comes very close. Combined with the not-quite-basic-income proposal from candidate Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., — “baby bonds” that give $1,000 to newborns, and supplementary deposits to children of poorer families, that will grow to five figures by the time most are 18 years old — the idea of simple cash transfers or tax cuts as a cutting edge welfare policy is sure to be front and center from now through 2020…

Families Must be Treated With More Prudence by State Lawmakers by Stephen Lusk (Spring 2018) in Y’all Politics
It was early 2018 when Lynn and Jason Albertson, Mississippi parents of a special needs child, noticed their otherwise outgoing daughter Bonnie becoming increasingly reserved. As time went on, Bonnie continued to change. Beset by obvious anxiety, she began talking to imaginary people and secluding herself to her room for extended periods of time. Worried, but lacking the money for treatment, Lynn and Jason crowdfunded nearly $6,000 for their daughter to be examined by a neurological specialist in Atlanta, GA and began giving her legal, THC-free, CBD oil in an attempt to keep her calm. Thankfully, it helped…