The Progress Report: $16 Billion for Childcare and the World’s First Climate Visa

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Zachary: What Could Go Right? I’m Zachary Karabell, the founder of The Progress Network, joined as always by Emma Varvaloucas, the Executive Director of The Progress Network. And this is our shorter form, weekly progress report where we look at some of the news that we have all missed, buried as it is under a mountain of negativity.

There are a few nuggets. Maybe Pandora’s box, like where poor little hope is left after all the evils of the world escape out. You have to remember that lingering. There are some nuggets of hope and positivity, and the point of that Greek myth, which I’m sure Emma could illuminate us in Greek, is that even with all the things and all the ills that aahh us at every given time, there are things going on in the world that are great and uplifting and ennobling and enlivening and enlightening, and that we should, because it is part of the human experience, just as much as all the nitty gritty of negativity, pay attention to some of these things because it is our way forward.

We will not construct. The world that we wish to construct for ourselves, for our futures, for our children, for the planet, you name it. With a relentless focus on everything that’s going wrong and hence the what is going right, mantra and in that spirit. Emma and her team at The Progress Network scour the planet for stories of uplift rather than stories of down drift, which is what we get all the time anyway, so we have nothing to add to the very crowded waterfront of, ah, things are going wrong.

It might be true, it might be right. But there are other things. So Emma, please, if you would, in English, not in Greek, illuminate us about all the things that are going well in the world. I mean, one day maybe we should do like the Greek version of What Could Go Right? and we could have Chat GPT translate.

Emma: There is live AI translation on I can’t remember if it’s Zoom or Microsoft Teams or Google, but you can actually do that. Like I could speak to you in Greek and it would actually translate my voice into English in real time to you.

Zachary: Chat GPT can do that too. Now, I mean, I’m sure it just uses the same set of programs, but you can, you can ask Chat GPT and put the microphone on and say, I’m just gonna speak in English. Please translate what I’m saying at a four second lag into Romanian or whatever language you happen to choose.

Emma: Mm-hmm. Well tune in everyone for an episode in Greek. For what reason? I don’t know. Yeah,

Zachary: In this case it’ll be Greek Romanian episode of What Could Go Right next week.

Emma: But speaking of Pandora’s box, let’s talk about the Pandora’s box of the Big Beautiful Bill. I think that we can rely on everyone knowing about the big beautiful Bill’s drawbacks. I think that has been well covered in the media, but for someone that has, you know, been following the big beautiful bill all over the media, I was pretty surprised to read this article in Vox that.

It’s about how much new funding is tucked into the big beautiful bill for childcare. It’s 16 billion and it updates a bunch of programs that haven’t been updated. A lot of them since like early millennium, so raising the cap on flexible spending accounts, which families can use to pay for daycare.

Expanded tax credit for working parents expanded the child tax credit. I can get into specifics, but I think people should know that it was actually Republicans. It was actually particularly Senator Katie Britt from Alabama that nudged the big beautiful bill in this direction. And if anyone wants to know exact specifics, a lot of them, these are gonna be benefits mostly for the middle class, but they can Google that.

And there’s a great Vox article about it called How the GOP Beat Democrats to a childcare win.

Zachary: Josh Hawley Republican Center from Missouri has also been adamant about extending the child, the tax credit aspect, which really got hypercharged during COVID in 2020, 2021, and then some of that expired and he’s been. Pounding the drum of, you know, this has been a cost effective, you know, essentially uses the tax hood rather than actual government outlays as a way of providing more support for families, particularly working class families.

What’s interesting is that the Republicans. Don’t seem comfortable touting this. Meaning it’s almost as if they do this, you know, with a wink and a nod or, or sub rosa because somehow if they were to champion it, then I don’t know what, like it would the deficit hawks or the free market or people would go, why are we spending government money on this?

Even though they recognize that if they’re actually going to build a sustainable electoral coalition, they need to. Be answering the needs of a lot of the people who are in fact voting for them. So you have this weird tension of, as you say, it’s like buried in the bill and wasn’t heralded as part of the bill.

Emma: And I don’t know if they are touting it to their local constituents, like, maybe if you live in Alabama, this is completely not news to you. Right? Like, they know that this is gonna be a win and they, they tell it on more constrained, you know, media platforms. But obviously the Democrats are not gonna be, I mean, okay, Vox did, but the Democrats generally speaking are not going to pull these out and say, Hey, the Republicans are doing a great job on childcare in their own Republican way.

But I’m, I’m glad to see it either way too. To be honest I think it’s a relief sometimes to not look at everything through a partisan lens. And if this is gonna help middle class families afford childcare more and just afford raising children better Republicans, Democrats go for it.

Zachary: And then there’s this whole Trump credits. You know, the fact that got named after him, notwithstanding a thousand dollars for a newborn. You know, the government will do a one time, $1,000 contribution to an account the way these things work and. Some of the tax laws around them are confusing and a lot of financial advisors have been skeptical, but it’s in there right as a thing along with the no tax on tips, which also you can caveat, it’s not as clean, it’s not as simple as no tax on tips, but is partly no tax on tips.

So there’s, there are definitely things in there that are actually working class supportive, even if the net effect of the bill is to lock in a kind of privileging of wealth versus working class income.

Emma: Yeah. And, and again, we’re, we’re just not emphasizing that because we assume that you’ve heard it elsewhere. That we think that that’s unimportant. So, alright, moving on. Something, more big, more beautiful, less big, less beautiful. Who knows?

Let’s talk about the world’s first climate visa. I thought this was very interesting. Australia has opened up basically a visa lottery for 280 people every year from Tuvalu which is a south Pacific Island Nation. It’s fun to say. Hopefully we’re saying it correctly. I think we are. They are a South Pacific Island nation.

Very vulnerable to climate change. Some worry that they might be underwater in a few decades. Who knows if that will be the case, but they’re very prone to flooding and Australia has essentially said, Hey. You guys can come live, work or study here, like I said, up to 280 people per year. Per year. They can freely travel between the countries.

And it’s very popular. There’s only 10,000 people that are residents of Tuvalu, and I think several thousand of them have already applied for this climate visa. I also should say that Australia is very careful to say that this is not a climate refugee program. It is a climate visa that they call a special mobility pathway for Tuvalu-ians.

Zachary: Who knows.

Emma: Who knows. I’ve never heard someone say it out loud. I’m sorry. Sorry.

Zachary: So it’s good. It’s, I guess it’s a good time to be a Tuvalu-ian to go to Australia.

Emma: I mean, it’s nice to see like, you know, the overall global picture is that a lot of rich countries, right, like don’t want to open up their checkbooks or their borders. For countries that are bearing the brunt of climate change, although like they have. Up spending in recent years for that. I think it was the latest cop, or I, I don’t remember to be honest.

It was one international summit where richer countries have agreed to establish a damage fund from, from climate change for poor countries. But there are these things that are slowly happening where richer countries are acknowledging that like, hey, they, like they do need to help out their neighbors a little bit with this.

And it’s nice to see Australia taking at least a small step in that direction.

Zachary: Absolutely

Emma: So let’s talk about something, nobody can get mad at. Let’s talk about dogs.

Zachary: Dogs.

Emma: This is a pedestrian piece of progress, but I, I think  if you don’t like –

Zachary: Not everybody likes, loves, supports, cherishes dogs. What about all the cat people? Come on.

Emma: Well, no, you can like cats. Does that mean you dislike dogs like you, you,

Zachary: I, maybe, I mean, there is a,

Emma: Zachary? Do you dislike dogs?

Zachary: I, I, I, I am, I’m ambivalent about dogs.

Emma: Okay. All right. Maybe with this

Zachary: I’m, I’m neutral about other people’s dogs.

Emma: All right.

Zachary: Really, I figure if you’re gonna get a dog, you should just have a kid.

Emma: If you get a dog, you might as well have a kid.

Zachary: Yes. Yes.

Emma: Why?

Zachary: Because the workload is, you know, particularly for the first year, not so different. And at least, you know, a kid can, there’s a lot, I think there’s a lot more to be said for the lifetime returns on having a child than lived returns and having a dog.

Emma: This is, this is a take I wasn’t expecting. You can put your dog at a crate though during the day, which is

Zachary: You can put your kid in a very large square enclosed space.

Emma: that is true. You can’t just leave ’em there on their own though.

Zachary: You’re

not supposed to, but you can’t.

Emma: Alright. Anyway, this is for the dog lovers that does not apparently include Zachary, which we ask our listeners not to judge him for.

Zachary: Don’t judge.

Emma: so-

Zachary: I don’t care. Judge me. Judge me.

Emma: too late now. Too late. You’ve, you’ve outed yourself.

Zachary: Go to town.

Emma: oof. Anyway –

Zachary: The one thing that’s gonna blow up. Of all the things we’ve done. We’re gonna get just, this is gonna be the thing.

Emma: Yeah. If you ever get canceled,

Zachary: who said do dot, dot, dot. First of all, they’re gonna look at me, give me crap for the kid versus dog thing, and then the kid in the enclosure.

Emma: I, that was a wild take. If you’ll get a dog, you might as well get a kid. Never, never heard that before,

Zachary: All well. All right, let’s back to back to the subject at hand.

Emma: Back to the subject at hand. The FDA has approved a new shot that prevents dogs from getting ticks or fleas. Any dog owner, which is not Zachary will know that you have to usually apply these treatments every month or every few months. This is a shot that can last up to a year. It’s somewhere between eight to 12 months.

Zachary: You have to make sure your kids don’t get ticks or fleas too. You know,

Emma: Do not give your kids this shot.

Zachary: I’m just saying. Back to the, there are things and there are things, I mean, you’d be good to develop that for. Okay. Anyway –

Emma: Anyway,

so that’s just a cute one, you know, to, to send people off with a aw factor in

Zachary: Aw-

Emma: Life is easier for dog owners, at least in the United States right now. So.

Zachary: okay. That’s, that’s good. Do you, do you feel better now?

Emma: but I, listen, I, I, I told my partner who loves dogs, and he was really enthusiastic about that piece of news. So I thought to myself, Hey, this is a great one to put on the podcast.

Everyone will love it, but I wasn’t expecting this. So

Zachary: Yeah, there’s always somebody

Emma: it’s just always a Debbie Downer ready to bring their rain cloud.

Zachary: I am clearly that guy right now.

Emma: Okay, I’ll give you one more since that reaction

Zachary: one more. Gimme one

Emma: I’ll give you one more. I thought this was cool too. I don’t know if you know, or our listeners will know that we can now grow mini organs in a lab. So, they actually test drugs and study diseases by growing little miniature hearts and lungs and livers and things like that.

And if you could imagine those kind of creepy, like. Things that they suspend in water and horror films like heads and like limbs and fingers and stuff. It’s kind of like that, but it’s like little mini organoids. They call them organoids.

Zachary: They’re like living tissue of those little things you did in the game operation. Remember, except this time, they’re real.

Emma: yes, except they’re not quite living tissue because up until now they don’t have blood vessels. So. What they need to do to actually grow these things, to be like actual human size and be more relevant for tests and studies is to get them to be to scale, shall I say. And what they need for that is for it to have a blood system, but they haven’t been able to create one as of yet.

They’re still pretty far away from actually creating the whole system, but for the first time, they have been able to have those little mini organs grow their own blood vessels. So pretty cool. Pretty cool.

Zachary: Yeah, I’m totally stuck on the operation game. Imagining little squishy kidneys and hearts with those tweezers that you can’t touch the sides with, except.

Emma: Mm-hmm. Not too far off. Well, look, it’s, I imagine like, like a lab flask filled with liquid, and then there’s these, like, as you say, these like little squishy, like mini organs floating around with them.

Like that is exactly what it looks like.

Zachary: All right then. All right, well, on that note, dogs and mini organs and Tuvalu, go to Australia. We will leave you with our eclectic ever rotating set of unexpected offbeat, and on the whole constructive stories about what humans are doing to make the lived environment a more secure, healthy, stable.

You name it, lived environment. And at any given time there are a plethora of such stories, even though there is a dearth of attention to them. And if you have stories you’d like us to highlight that you have found in your perusing of the interweb, please do send them to us at hello at The Progress Network dot org and please tune into our longer podcast interview based one as well as this one. And we hope you are wherever you are, taking a little summer respite from whatever hectic, busy, intense lives you have. Hopefully there are some times for friends, family, and just moments of stepping back and recharging of which maybe this podcast is part of that mix.

So thanks very much and we will. Talk to you all very soon.