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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

Seen this kind of thing several times.

"Assistance" programs meant to prop people up with so many reporting requirements and perverse incentives that punish you for improving your situation to the extent that the best path is to not even try to improve your situation and be entirely dependent on the program because when you do start earning income or saving anything, they take so much away from you that there is a significant cost to any amount of improvement until well after you'd be self-sufficient. i.e. it is more expensive to earn any income than it is to earn none, and the constant threat of losing support of the program (explicit threats) is much more anxiety inducing for the most vulnerable populations often than the situation they were trying to exit.

Being homeless, getting into a program to help the homeless, and then constantly being threatened with a return to homelessness if somebody doesn't do the paperwork exactly right is just crazy, but I've seen it first hand.

View on HN

I am in the process of applying for SSDI right now. AMAA, I suppose.

One of the first pieces of advice that I received in this process — and boy is it a process! — was, “don’t ever say anything that implies that you might want to or be able to go back to work someday.”

I mean, of course I want to go back to work someday! I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sick and below the poverty line, not to mention being sick is incredibly boring. I really want to be well and working and I feel like the vast majority of people in SSDI must be in the same boat.

Criteria for SSDI (paraphrasing) are that you must be disabled such that you can no longer do your job, are unable to do another job with your skills and level of ability and you’ll be in this situation for at least a year.

Even so, expressing even the desire to return to work someday beyond a year from now is apparently a sign that you can work right now to some examiners.

The entire process is wrapped in layers of fraud paranoia, even though the fraud rate is absolutely minuscule.

>The entire process is wrapped in layers of fraud paranoia, even though the fraud rate is absolutely minuscule.

... or possibly "due to the layers of fraud paranoia, the fraud rate is absolutely minuscule". Difficult to know, I would think?

It would be possible to change policies slightly and observe the results. The slope toward vastly less punitive benefits regimes might be slippery...

Of course; I’m sure that, if it were easy enough, people would commit social security fraud.

I know this is a subjective statement, but as I go through this process it just feels way, way, way over the top.

We could probably do with a lot less. We could probably make the process kinder. The experience is so humiliating and we do it to people who are already suffering.

Edit: Imagine, hypothetically, that the process were twice as kind but bumped the fraud rate to 1.5%. I would be totally OK with that. Maybe it’s worth spending a little extra public money to treat people with dignity.

I apologize; it was a little glib. I'm sure that the way it works isn't Pareto optimal; and there is clearly a problem in the U.S. of using shaming as a tool to discourage consumption of means-tested benefits, as opposed to focusing on actual good governance.

I wish you the best of luck.

No worries! You’re not out of line for being concerned about this stuff.

It’s like a lot of policy stuff: our congress critters have a very black-and-white approach to a problem that only comes in shades of gray.

And, thank you. I have a good support system these days and I think everything will eventually be OK. There’s just an unspecified amount of stupid stuff between here and there. :-)

Once a little fraud is possible an industry is set up to exploit it until it becomes dominated by fraud.

That’s something we could calculate, so any discussion about it is a deflection.

From my experience, it seems the fraud paranoia actually trends towards increasing the relative fraud rate. The layers of bullshit serve to trip up and exclude those the programs are meant to serve but don’t bother the fraudsters at all. Layers of bureaucracy don’t hurt people who are willing to just lie - it’s like why dishonest witnesses are often more compelling. It’s much easier to tell an internally consistent story when it’s all fabricated.

That would explain the opposite situation when it comes to tax avoidance schemes.

Yes; in fact, there's excellent evidence from the IRS that the level of misreporting on tax returns increases with the opacity and difficulty of verification of income source. There's hardly any fraud for W-2 employees, and relatively large amounts of it for passthrough businesses like partnership and S-corps.

Fraud paranoia seems to keep constant downward pressure on our social safety net. We'd rather scrap a life-saving system than accept a minimal level of fraud. Just imagine if retail businesses operated this way and shut down at the first sign of shoplifting. Instead, they mitigate where possible and treat the result as a cost-of-doing-business.

I'm pretty sure means tested welfare is specifically intended to be difficult and unpopular. If it was conceived and implemented well then it might just become a popular policy! And then that ofc slippery slopes into the US becoming a welfare state where no one wants to work (in the minds of some elites).

It’s becoming exactly the same story in the UK under the conservative government, people with lifelong disabilities forced to be assessed regularly to prove their legs or arms haven’t grown back or they haven’t grown out of their cerebral palsy etc.

According to the UK government’s own figures benefit fraud makes up 3.9% of the total amount paid out (N.B. this includes all types of benefits), and 75% of people rejected for disability benefits are successful on appeal. It seems pretty obvious that this is an ideological policy of penalising people who can’t work because people’s value as human beings is seen as equivalent to the amount of work they can do.

One solution to this is to have fixed size budgets for assistance programs. Eg. Each week 1% of GDP will be spent on XYZ assistance program.

The funding available will be divided equally by all eligible people.

Then fraud becomes not the taxpayers problem, but the problem of other eligible people. Those people will get more if they can reduce the fraud rate.

Obviously for this to happen, the eligible people need to be empowered to do something about it - and a good way to achieve that is to give the money to a charity for the blind to distribute to the blind, rather than directly to the government's list of blind people. Obviously you need to make sure the charity has suitable governance, but there are already regulations to ensure that.

Since we can ask you anything: If you're comfortable with sharing, what about your disability makes it difficult to do a tech job?

Sure. In 2017 I started getting head-splitting migraines.

From 2017 to 2019 they rapidly progressed from episodic to chronic. In 2019 I could no longer hold a job longer than a few weeks because my work was being interrupted too much. It was a sad year: I started the year in a VPE position but couldn’t hold a junior SE job by the end.

I am now in one of the phases of migraine (prodrome, headache, postdrome) virtually all of the time. My treatment plan is optimized at this point, there is no non-experimental intervention that is likely to improve the situation.

Extensive medical testing has provided no clue as to underlying physical phenomenon triggering these migraines. As far as physical medicine can tell, I’ve reached the “wait and hope” stage.

I am holding out hope in one area: I am in therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (and the reason for that is something I will not share because it is deeply personal). Research is showing increasingly that emotional trauma can have some strange physical side-effects and I’m really hoping that processing trauma will eventually reduce my migraine frequency and intensity.

Thanks for sharing and sorry to hear about that. I can relate a little to the migraines. I had some blinding migraines come on quickly a few years ago, but then leave just as quickly. The pain was so intense I could barely think straight during those periods. Thankfully they disappeared. Similarly, I had some head x-rays that yielded nothing out of the ordinary.

You've said you want to work so I hope you can at some point. I feel fairly confident that if you made an "Ask HN" post about your situation, someone could help you out with a very accommodating gig. Good luck

Honestly, part of it is that it’s not even fair for me to present myself as “able to work” right now.

I’ve tested my ability to work four times since 2019 and three of the four have ended up being a burden on the employer (the third was a wash; it didn’t work out but I decided to write off the invoice). I’ve been on the other side of the table and I can’t do that in good conscience.

My thesis is that I should focus solely on feeling better until I can start doing some sort of sustained work; from there I can work my way up until I am able to do rewarding things with my skillset again.

The problem is that (coming back around to the article) our benefits programs have a welfare trap. These systems should be designed to help people who can reach some level of rehabilitation get there and protect the people who can’t.

I assisted someone in the process to receive SSDI and it was the most kafkaesque process I've ever experienced. I think every individual person at the SSA involved in the case was trying their best, but it really feels like the organization functions in a way to prevent as many people as possible from getting the benefits they qualify for.

The process took us about a year and required us to bring back the same forms and supporting documentation over and over and over again. Of course this all has to be done in person so I hope your disability doesn't make it difficult for you to get transportation and accommodations during business hours!

You're told by Alice at the SSA that you need Form A with supporting documents. You bring back the documents the next day and find out that Alice is not there and you have to speak to Bob. Bob tells you that you actually needed Form B so he refuses to process what you brought in. A few days later you get a scary letter saying that because you didn't get Form A processed in time, your application has been denied. So you have to meet with Alice again who tells you that Bob was wrong, and they restart your application.

Not only is this frustrating but it proved to be critical when it came to calculating back pay. If you don't know, when you are approved for SSDI you receive backpay starting from the date you first applied, minus a few weeks or months. Well because our application kept getting unfairly denied, we didn't receive any backpay for over a year of trying to get approved.

Having been through the process myself, remember to keep your self worth guarded against the summation of what they conclude you're capable of. If you make it to a hearing a judge will gavel your disability into legality after a jury of doctors and vocational experts read your verdict. You seem like a good person and these experiences shouldn't take away from that. Thanks for putting yourself out there.

The piece of advice I can give you is: Get an attorney! It will only cost you 30% of your SSDI benefits for the first year, capped at $6,000. It's well worth the cost.

This right here. People claim tax law is bad but disability law is almost as bad in that no reasonable person could be expected to know all the details in the laws.

Even experienced disability attorneys sometimes mess up.

'The entire process is wrapped in layers of fraud paranoia, even though the fraud rate is absolutely minuscule.'

When large sums of public money are given to a company, there seems to be implication that the company is better at allocating this money than the government is. There is the idea that giving money to companies in the form of grants or contracts or even tax rebatea is 'investing in the economy'

However when pennies are given to individuals, this is immediately cause of suspicion and derision. As if individuals upskilling and bettering themselves isn't fundamental to the economy.

Is this like a weired form of self hatred?

I most recently saw that with some criticisms of Section 8 housing.

I'm paraphrasing but basically to be eligible for Section 8 housing you can't have too many assets. Good financial planning would say to scrimp and save so that you can get make a downpayment to get a mortgage but you'll be kicked out of the section 8 housing long before you've saved enough to get out yourself.

Catch-22

The only way is to put savings under your mattress and that is extremely likely to get stolen (usually by relatives or "friends"). It's an awful catch 22.

Or when you need to use that money by the police as part of Civil Asset Forfeiture during a random stop/search.

Or NFTs ;)

Get a safety deposit box for $80 a year and store your cash in it.

They're not easy to find. I got a notice last month from my credit union that I need to plan move my stuff out of my deposit box.

The Credit Union "relies on a vendor for the software that is used to open, close, and maintain Safe Deposit Boxes. Over time, the vendor stopped consistently upgrading this software and we have now learned that it is being phased out altogether. Replacing this type of system would mean a significant cost to our membership."

A few years ago they replaced the double key system (bank employee has a key, you have a key) with a handprint system to let one customer at a time into the vault. They removed the bank key.

I always have to remember which set is where my box is: they have 3 or 4 boxes labeled 131 because they acquired them from other banks or credit unions who got out of the business.

I had to settle my aunt's estate in Huntington Beach a few years ago. The Chase branch there limited people to one box per branch because they are relatively popular. But safe deposit boxes definitely skew towards grey hair.

I opened an account with my credit union because they were one of the few options for safe deposit boxes but the branch with the boxes is miles away from my local branch so I don't use it often. I would have liked to store backups there but in the end I use BackBlaze.

Eh. Why should the jump from Section 8 (subsidized rent) be straight to home ownership (and not renting with your own income)?

Section 8 might have some inefficient cliffs. But not allowing savings for a mortgage doesn’t strike me as one of them.

why should you be forced to rent for a place to sleep?

I agree that not allowing savings for a mortgage probably isn't a huge issue in practice, but discouraging saving in general is completely bonkers policy.

Oh, I agree. Savings of some form should be encouraged. Various cliffs are bad policy.

I’d rather some form of UBI-like assistance. Single program, means tested but no cliffs(just a gradual phase out of some sort), and no limits on what the assistance is spent on.

What's this business with "should"?

A big reason why we have these perverse rules in the first place is that people are absurdly concerned with controlling people who accept (certain types of) public money.

If someone can find a path to jump from dependency to ownership, why "should" aid programs be structured to prevent that?

I, for one, would be a fan of imposing similar restrictions on other aid recipients, like mortgage-interest deduction-takers and enthanol producers. I suspect many folks would abruptly notice the absurdities with such rules.

> If someone can find a path to jump from dependency to ownership, why "should" aid programs be structured to prevent that?

Because the next step from subsidized housing is to renting.

If we structured subsidizing housing programs such that they enabled people to save up for down payments, this creates a perverse incentive for normal renters to get into subsidized housing to accelerate their transition to home ownership. Any time you introduce a perverse incentive like this, you overwhelm the system as people who don’t need it start crowding out people who actually do need it.

Going straight from subsidized rental housing to home ownership doesn’t make sense. Going from subsidized rentals to non-subsidized rentals is the obvious next step.

> Going straight from subsidized rental housing to home ownership doesn’t make sense

Nice bald assertion. It doesn't make sense to trap people in dependency, but I take it you're more comfortable with these programs failing in that direction...?

> this creates a perverse incentive

Which we already have, just with the reverse valence.

This is why I said I support means-testing the mortgage-interest deduction. People don't really understand things until they've been through them, and there's no good reason wealthier people shouldn't have to put up with similar paternalist nonsense for their handout.

Right? We never means test anything when it comes to wealthy incentives / programs.

Believe me, folks don't want to live in subsidized housing, it generally sucks.

Renting is supposed to be a much shorter commitment that lets people move around. It shouldn’t be cheaper in a market that’s allowed to function. If anything, the optionality and added risk should have a cost, which is also why a hotel room costs more per day or week than renting.

> It shouldn’t be cheaper in a market that’s allowed to function.

in a perfectly efficient market, renting and home ownership costs exactly the same - not cheaper nor more expensive.

However, most home owners living in their home pay a premium for it, because they both want to secure their bid when they buy, and they are likely buying on more than just financial implications (like the location is great for their kids, etc). Therefore, a home owner is actually more likely to have a higher cost of capital over all - both the deposit and the mortgage added together, even if the mortgage interest by itself may be lower than renting.

Think of it this way - if renting was more expensive than the total cost of ownership, then an investor would borrow the capital needed for buying, and then rent it out and arbitrage the difference risk free. It is this mechanism that keeps the rent and the price of ownership at approx. equal.

In recent times, the price of ownership has grown due to the pandemic, and high availability of credit. Rent will follow, if it hasn't already, as landlords will not just eat the loss.

> Think of it this way - if renting was more expensive than the total cost of ownership, then an investor would borrow the capital needed for buying, and then rent it out and arbitrage the difference risk free. It is this mechanism that keeps the rent and the price of ownership at approx. equal.

Which is not that far from the truth. At least on the UK, rent is an extortionary and ever-increasing tax on people who don’t have 150K to pay a deposit.

> Because the next step from subsidized housing is to renting.

Why?

I mean that as a serious question. Housing costs in the US are absurdly front-loaded compared to renting, but they didn't used to be and there are other countries where they aren't. Why "should" housing be so expensive that six months or a year or careful saving on a living wage isn't enough for a down payment?

If you’re earning a living wage, you don’t need government assistance to avoid homelessness.

If you started earning a living wage this month, kicking you out of your current home immediately isn't going to make it easy to keep it.

I’m not sure what that has to do with Section 8 recipients buying homes?

I agree, however, there needs to be some sort of means test and phase-out. It’s equally absurd that somebody receiving Section 8 benefits should be able to save at a higher rate than somebody just outside the benefit range (and saving at a rate that buys a house above and beyond a reasonable emergency fund likely does that).

Phase-out is the key that's missing from so many assistance programs. It's the same with Medicaid, which really discourages you from taking that next step up to a slightly better-paying job, especially if you have a chronic health condition.

Advancing your career in a way that should gradually decrease your dependance on government assistance instead cuts it off all at once, turning a raise into a massive pay cut, thus ensuring you don't climb the ladder and stay dependent on aid indefinitely. It's utterly perverse.

SSI already has an income phase-out (not a cliff), as discussed in the article. The problem is the phase-out starts at $85 (!) and benefits steeply decline once you are in the phase-out, not that there isn’t a phase-out at all.

It also has a wealth cap, but that’s unrelated to the “make a dollar more and you’re done” idea that so many people hold, which is not how SSI income phaseouts work. The wealth cap is “you accumulate more than $2k at any one time, you’re done”, and that is different from making money resulting in a sudden loss.

It probably is not a great idea to have a wealth cap at any sort of a level that might be relevant to a middle-class individual. Someone shouldn’t have to destroy their safety net in order to qualify for benefits in the event they become disabled, and disability holders should not be barred from having enough cash to operate and to access the financial tools that would allow them to build their way out of poverty.

Maybe we could set a cap at $50k wealth or something but in the end who cares, if a few people in the top 1% end up using it that’s probably less costly than administrative costs of peering at everyone’s bank statements monthly.

Nor should there really be a wealth phase-out for benefits either imo. What is the benefit of making it harder for people who are just about to make the leap off welfare to actually take the leap?

Isn't there just an element of basic fairness to this? The budget for Section 8 is only so much, and people who can afford market rent need to be moving out of the program to make way for others.

If you care about people not ending up on the same program again, shoving them out the door the second they can nominally pay full price themselves doesn't help,

I mean it’s all about fairness. Even animals and babies understand the concept of unequal distribution of community resources.

This is such a strange take.

How do? Allowing recipients of public assistance to accumulate more savings than those just outside the program would be a perverse incentive to join the program.

I didn’t say they shouldn’t be allowed to save at all. Only that if they are capable of saving at the level required to buy a house and service a mortgage, they likely don’t actually need assistance.

> I'm paraphrasing but basically to be eligible for Section 8 housing you can't have too many assets. Good financial planning would say to scrimp and save so that you can get make a downpayment to get a mortgage but you'll be kicked out of the section 8 housing long before you've saved enough to get out yourself.

The progression would be Section 8 -> Renting -> Home Ownership

The purpose of programs like Section 8 isn't to subsidize people while they save up to purchase expensive assets and leapfrog past non-subsidized renters. It's to backstop people who couldn't afford normal rents.

How long should one rent for in this hypothetical situation?

Could a section 8 resident buy a house, and pay for a 1 month short term rental in the interim and meet your criteria? 6 mo? A year?

How long are the people paying their own way renting?

I don't think PragmaticPulp is saying anything about requiring people to rent before getting a house. Just that the purpose of section 8 housing is to help people who can't afford rents. If someone is saving for a house, I think that's a sign that that person can afford rents, and therefore isn't the target for section 8 housing.

If the government is going to pay or subsidize rent for someone, I’m ok with there being a requirement that such support is needed by that recipient.

If the recipient later happens to win the lottery, I’d expect them to move directly from Section 8 housing to a mansion, no waiting period needed nor desired.

That’s not what I’m saying at all.

Buying a house requires signrifajt savings for a down payment, moving costs, and so on.

Subsidized housing isn’t meant to help people build up savings and accumulate possibly six figure savings to buy a house. Subsidized housing is meant to prevent people who can’t afford rent from becoming homeless.

If a subsidized housing program is structured in such a way that it’s a net financial win to be on it than to be self-sufficient (e.g. renting on your own) then it becomes a “trap” as you penalize anyone trying to escape it and you incentivize people near the threshold to stay below it.

If someone wins the lottery or gets a new job with a huge signing bonus or gets a huge inheritance then by all means go buy a house right away and skip the renting step.

However, we need to revoke their place in the subsidized housing program as soon as they can afford to be off of it. I think people in this thread are forgetting that subsidized housing is a very limited resource and therefore we need to focus it on the people who need it most. Leaving people in the program who are accumulating six-figure house down payments from the savings would suggest that they don’t actually need the program but are taking the place of someone else who does need the help.

> I think people in this thread are forgetting that subsidized housing is a very limited resource and therefore we need to focus it on the people who need it most.

I think it’s more that the supply of subsidized housing is so low that it’s literally only people in the worst kinds of situations that qualify.

Obviously someone saving for a 100k down payment doesn’t need it, but there’s a whole sea of people in between that have no options now. Rent is too expensive, and subsidized housing is unavailable (only goes to the people that need it most). Ergo, I’m stuck in my parents’ house until I die, unless I want to pay extortionate rent for a shitty apartment.

Meanwhile, the people that do get subsidized housing suddenly have both a nice house and a lot of ability to save. I can totally see how that breeds resentment.

I’ve heard it said that the best way to get a house would be to have kids, divorce, and then become a single mother. Which doesn’t seem to be too far from the truth.

You typically need ~3 months of rent on hand to get a new apartment. That can be a really large amount of money for people on assistance

There are month to month rentals available today that don't require the down payment requirements of a year lease.

A mini rant - short term residential rentals are the housing equivalent of payday lending in finance - a market that exists by extorting impoverished people.

I was an electrician’s apprentice in college and did work for countless rental properties of all levels of quality. Short terms are built in the cheapest possible area at the lowest level of quality that’s legally allowed, and often not even meeting that low standard.

On top of all of this, the cost is outrageous. A one bedroom in a short term was typically 50-100% more expensive than my 3 bedroom in a much nicer part of town.

Wow you mean to say you don't get a discount when you pay month to month over a year long commitment? Pretty much everything is like that including virtually all SaaS pricing models.

a quick search on google seems to say that theres no asset check for section 8, just income checks(including interest/etc from assets)

Are you sure it was section 8?

There is no asset limitation for participation in HUD assisted-housing programs. However, the definition of annual income includes net income from family assets.

https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/DOC_35701.PDF

What you’re describing is true for many assistance programs, including snap, for example… but not section 8 as far as I understand.

I may have remembered incorrectly but I believe it was in the context of the New York Housing Authority and I just made the perhaps incorrect assumption that it was Section 8. I tried to find the article itself but couldn't find it quickly.

You pay a penalty on household income over x. But then get family of 4 making 500k a year and since the children don’t file or own other investments.

You can see it in the parking lots, high end cars and high end finishes in apartments.

There is very little incentive to move out in a well ran subsidized property in NYC.

I’ve managed large developments 800+ units.

You folks managing Privately Run for Profit/Non Profit Section 8 housing units management firms are just derelict in your Duty as the US Government/FCC has billions of dollars of Funding Made available for High Speed Internet assistance for the poor but the Privately Run Section 8 housing entities(For Profit or Non Profit) are not even applying for the funds because they are too cheap to hire Grant Writers to apply for the funding.

I'm currently living in a Section 8 unit that's changed ownership and is getting renovated, apartment by apartment, with residents moved to temporary units in the complex until their renovated units are ready. And the Management Company that's running things really is clueless and does not even care to even Apply for any federal programs that may be available to get proper broadband speeds to low income households.

There needs to be some Federal Requirement for Section-8 housing Management companies to be forced to apply for any Federal Programs available to them in order for the low income Residents to receive the aid set aside in these programs to help poor and low income individuals/Families get better Internet Access. And this is in a time where the Government wants every service application done online, even in the time before the pandemic. There are Jobs where folks can work from Home via online jobs/services but that requires higher speed internet capabilities than is provided/accessible to low income individuals.

Too late to edit, but I think this was actually in the context of New York City Housing Authority and not Section 8. I tried to track down the article but couldn't find it quickly.

This isn't the article I had in mind but it is related and interesting: https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2013/9/21/two-new-y...

and includes this:

> The poor family is trapped in place. If they make the mistake of earning more observable cash, their rent will be increased by 30% of the increased earnings (that's how it works at NYCHA), and then they start taking away the other benefits as well.

When I was a student and wanted to get a small job to get some pocket money, I couldn't, because after reporting it, my mom would lose some family benefits and we'd be worse off at the end of the day. This was a recurring theme until I graduated and went on my own.

It's amazing how many people see this happening, acknowledge it is wrong and severely dysfunctional, and then turn around and claim that everything will be better when the government runs everything in the economy.

It's happening mostly because the politicians advocating for these dysfunctional policies are ignorants corrupted by their business friends who really don't want people to feel safe enough to ask for more money.

At least here in Europe. Speaking from experience.

We have several people directly profiting from several ineffective policies targeting disadvantaged in the local Parliament.

How would you solve this without the government? I can't see why private companies would be incentivized to do this. And the reason this is dysfunctional is because the government doesn't go far enough in extending benefits. If there was more budget allocated to these benefits then we wouldn't have this problem.

I don't think people are arguing for no government assistance program, they're observing that it's incentivizing staying in the program rather than the assumed intended use, helping someone get on their feet again

Sometimes it's not even about budget.

I've seen clerks actively discourage people from asking for the benefits even before the official evaluation.

>And the reason this is dysfunctional is because the government doesn't go far enough in extending benefits. If there was more budget allocated to these benefits then we wouldn't have this problem.

This pov is exactly what I was describing. It's always "more money will fix it." More control, more money, and then things will be better. I promise. Compulsive gamblers have a term for this: "chasing losses"

>How would you solve this without the government?

The problem of people with disabilities needing help? Do you believe people never received help before the government came along? They were helped at a local level by charitable people who cared about each other and knew that taking care of each other was part of a healthy society. Neither business nor government replaces that.

> Do you believe people never received help before the government came along?

I do. Especially when people who need the help are from poor communities who can’t spare much - much less provide things like in home care, transportation, etc.

If you say gov doesn’t need to be involved then please show me who is gonna help. The only ones I know of are the same that throw queer kids or male domestic abuse victims out on the street. People are more charitable when they’re rich (or more accurately, on rising incomes), but they only help out people close to them. Poor people are dehumanized. That’s why we need the gov.

Or did you not like see the lines of cars 20 miles long during covid for food assistance?

Charitable programs in places of worship existed long before government programs. These are communities of people giving their time, money, and resources, and are actually invested in the people they are helping. If you don't believe they ever helped anyone, then we fundamentally disagree on historical facts.

Literally nobody is disputing that charities in places of worship "ever helped anyone". What's in dispute is whether they would have sufficient resources and the will to help everyone.

There are plenty of stories about religious programs refusing to help those outside of their religion which presents a pretty big problem if we're supposed to rely on them for universal charity.

One recent story: https://www.propublica.org/article/utahs-social-safety-net-i...

Exactly what time period in what part of the world are you thinking of? If you go back too far, you'll hit a time when places of worship were the government, or at least so entangled in it as to make no difference. If you don't go back far enough, you'll hit a time when work houses and sanitariums were commonplace, which might be inhumane by modern standards, but definitely count as "government programs to help the poor."

> If you don't believe they ever helped anyone

I can see from your very uncharitable reading of my comment how you could see that I was saying that. I was saying that many people have not and currently don't have receive help from those charitable institutions, and also its not enough.

Look around you to see whether charitable programs are enough to solve these problems. If they were, they'd be solved. They are /helping/, but they're not enough, and often they come with strings attached like hide that you're LGBT, which some people literally can't do.

People need actual security - if charitable programs gave it to people then there'd be no problem, but they can't or won't.

Those charitable programs exist now. There's nothing stopping them from existing. So why does the problem still exist then? And more importantly: Why have other countries solved this in a far better manner than the US?

There's plenty of easy answers to these problems if we'd look to just emulate what other countries do for welfare, healthcare etc instead of pretending that we're better than them while failing at every aspect.

Do you believe people never received help before the government came along?

Depends on the time period, and honest we simply didn't have modern medicine either. Your disabled child might have been left on the streets, left in the woods to die, or sold to someone else (other children might have been sold too). An infant? Infanticide was a thing at different times. Sometimes you'd be sent away to a home, where you'd be abused.

You were often an outcast and a beggar and your life was a lot worse. And even worse, folks might have treated you like you deserved it because it was a sign of god's wrath.

In short, folks with disabilities have it better than they did in the past because we started banding together as a society and taking care of folks (government). And we still fail folks.

Also being locked away in overcrowded sanitariums.

I have definitely glossed over a lot of horrors when writing the above.

> Do you believe people never received help before the government came along?

Yes. These people simply died. Charity helps a few of them but is woefully incapable of helping all of them.

> They were helped at a local level by charitable people who cared about each other and knew that taking care of each other was part of a healthy society.

My aunt has a brain injury. She needs trained help as well as expensive doctors. Charity has done fuck all to help her - except the countless hours my parents have spent helping her. Where are these magical charities she can go to?

>except the countless hours my parents have spent helping her.

Wouldn't you be happy if more people were like your parents? If there were "expensive doctors" who felt in their hearts the need to help your aunt, free of charge? It's not an imaginary world, it just takes work to build. But the further we replace the spirit of charity with an impersonal, dysfunctional system of coercion, the harder it is to realize that world.

So I take it that you host a disabled person in your home, then?

What’s even better is, this system already exists and is being utilized beyond its breaking point.

How do I know? Well, it takes 1 to 2 YEARS to be approved for SSI or SSDI and, if you can’t work, someone has to pay for your basic cost of living. Or you become homeless.

Anyone who is applying for SSDI and isn’t homeless is being supported by someone.

We may be hosting my partner's aunt or grandmother soon, since they will likely have nobody closer to look after them. Did I pass your "is a good person" test?

OK, topic shift.

In all seriousness, I appreciate it. No snark, I don’t care if we don’t see eye-to-eye from a policy perspective, I appreciate what you’re doing.

Disability is a really hard experience. I can’t describe what it’s like to lose these things we take for granted. Being without pain. Making choices for yourself. Going to a movie.

By giving a disabled person a home, you’re giving some of that back to them. If you’ve never done this before, you might be surprised by how hard it is, the rewards for the disabled person aren’t necessarily always visible, but what you’re doing is important.

My favorite one is the process of moving between states on medicaid.

My parents wanted to retire another state. My aunt needed to come with them because they handle a large amount of her care. She was unable to apply for medicaid in the new state until dropping medicaid in the old state but there was no guarantee that she'd get medicaid in the new state. So moving was incredibly perilous.

> If there were "expensive doctors" who felt in their hearts the need to help your aunt, free of charge?

Hard to do when malpractice lawsuits are a thing.

Good thing healthcare professionals have malpractice insurance?

> the further we replace the spirit of charity with an impersonal, dysfunctional system of coercion

This is a pretty dishonest strawman on many levels. First, taxation-based disability support is "spirit of charity" at scale.

Second, local charity is not mutually exclusive with disability support and talking about "replace" makes a strawman.

Third, local charity is in no way guaranteed. Something happens and suddenly charities run out of funds and disabled people can die of hunger.

>First, taxation-based disability support is "spirit of charity" at scale.

I invite you to not pay your taxes and watch what happens.

As an individual? I would be coerced to do so - as it should be.

As a society? Societies are perfectly free to decide to stop taxation.

"Society" is not some autonomous external being that is free to do how it pleases. It is composed of individuals making decisions. If the decisions of the individuals are coerced, then the society's aggregate behavior is coerced.

Even if you could make that argument that coerced individual decisions could result in non-coerced societal decisions, you need to consider the entire implication: society is being "charitable" to itself, which isn't charity, it's selfishness. Charity is giving to others. So your point is nonsensical on multiple levels.

Nice trolling.

> Wouldn't you be happy if more people were like your parents?

I would, yes. But just hoping that the world is filled with people who are willing and capable of helping in this manner is not productive. Almost nobody has the time and resources and will to help in the ways that my parents have.

> If there were "expensive doctors" who felt in their hearts the need to help your aunt, free of charge?

That'd be nice too. I do not expect this to be a thing I can rely on.

There was some charitable support at times in history.

In the Middle Ages, monasteries often had healing clinics and hospitals, though the hospitals were for the dying, usually. And sometimes food for people in want.

Of course, in the Middle Ages, the Church was really part of the government, parallel to the kings, dukes, etc etc.

Now medical care has gotten so expensive that it's beyond the capacity of any charity except for isolated cases. Similarly for housing. Food there's some support for.

> Do you believe people never received help before the government came along?

Prior to such programs, level of help was far more variable and often dependent mostly on family.

No, they weren’t. You’re dreaming about a time that never existed, or where it did exist was completely incapable of scaling and weathering economic downturns. It’s a common conservative narrative, but it simply isn’t based on reality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/the-con...

https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-depression/...

>You’re dreaming about a time that never existed, or where it did exist was completely incapable of scaling and weathering economic downturns.

You can leave off "it never existed" if you immediately acknowledge that it did exist, but with constraints.

If the constraints/scaling are what you care about, then make the case that everyone is better off with an inefficient system of coercion and perverse incentives, versus a system where people are giving their time and money willingly out of the goodness inside them.

I am disabled and applying for SSDI right now.

Can you please point me to these charities that help the disabled afford to live that I keep hearing so much about?

The process of applying for SSDI is horrible and demeaning and I’d really love to go with one of those organizations instead!

How many places of worship have you visited and asked?

Lol. I’ve seen the most absolutely down & out “good” people who’ve eventually ended up at places of worship begging.

They get disgusting looks & “we’ll pray for your soul” (saying it as if they believe it’s already been damned to hell)

How did you get such access to first hand knowledge of multiple peoples experiences at different places of worship?

Niche subreddits for medical conditions I can’t imagine anybody would spend the time of their days LARPing in, my own medical groups in which people tend to also face severe financial issues for a variety of reasons with ~30k combined people & ~5k active

Over 12 years of dealing with things myself & making friends along the way in person & online.

Spending countless nights trolling through comments in countless amounts of old threads of very vulnerable people trying to get away from things like domestic violence while also facing severely disabling medical issues (often but not limited to younger people with abusive parents somewhat controlling their lives via their disability) & reaching out to/begging quite literally wherever they’re able & overwhelmingly being turned away.

Of course, you can always say that they/I are LARPing & there’s not much I can do about that unfortunately.

If you’d like a bright side/silver lining to any of this - places that attract minorities/marginalized groups are often the most helpful (geeze, wonder why) & if shit ever truly hits the fan in your life, make your way to your nearest Sikh Gurudwara.

As long as you show the most basic humility & respect the few things they ask you to observe in their place of worship, they will go so far out of their way to try to help you in every way they can. Unfortunately, malicious people tend to take advantage of this in bigger cities & some are starting to get slightly jaded. I cannot blame them, such is life.

I’m not trying to say all religions orgs & charities are shit across the board. Perhaps it seemed that way. I’m just saying that they’re very much not as much of an answer that some of society seems to think they may be, & there are some truly awful people among them that will kick you harder when you’re already at your lowest point. (As with everywhere/everything)

I said "first hand" experience intentionally, and the reason is because the content that you're reading is going to be biased towards the people writing it. Just like anyone who is recollecting a bad situation and outcome, they are going to leave things out, misrepresent what was said, and sometimes straight up lie to take any blame off of themselves. They're not LARPing so much as they're extremely biased about what happened. I grew up in a Christian school, attending multiple churches, and I have NEVER once seen someone turned away in the way that you describe. Does that mean it doesn't happen? No, there are shitty people everywhere. But these places are known for bending over backwards to help vulnerable people, at least that has been my first hand experience.

> This pov is exactly what I was describing. It's always "more money will fix it." More control, more money, and then things will be better. I promise. Compulsive gamblers have a term for this: "chasing losses"

"more control" ?

"Expanding welfare programs = more control" is some tinfoil hat thinking.

I want you to pause for a moment and think critically for a moment and consider the context of the conversation.

Right now, if you're disabled, you're given a paltry $841/month, and you're told that if you ever have more than $2,000 in cash, that $841 will be taken away. The government is forcing you to live in poverty. You can't save money. Imagine you found a way to start a business despite your disabilities, and single $2000 month of income takes all your benefits away. Any attempt at improving your situation becomes an all-in endevour, so you better not fuck it up, or else the government kicks you into homelessness after the $841/month gets taken away.

How is improving this program by lifting the $2K limit expanding control? Seems like it would reduce control if you ask me by giving you the freedom to make the attempt at improving your life without worry of failure.

>"Expanding welfare programs = more control" is some tinfoil hat thinking.

It takes a special kind of mental gymnastics to call that a tinfoil hat theory when we're literally in a comment section discussion all the stupid things people on .gov aid have to do/avoid in order to ensure continued income. If that's not control what is?

...

I'm literally arguing in favor of increasing the asset limit so people don't have to jump through hoops to avoid losing their benefits. I'm arguing against those controls. How are you twisting this around?

Local charities don't even fully cover the holes in the existing welfare system. Why would you expect them to be able to bear the full burden in its stead?

Welfare policies don't have to be stupid, now do they?

This is the one-two punch that Republicans use to kill social programs.

1. Drag their feet until Democrats reluctantly agree to include something guaranteed to cause dysfunction (uneconomic means testing, perverse incentive cliffs, adverse selection, etc).

2. Point at the dysfunction they created as a reason to kill the program.

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to #2 if I didn't see so much #1.

And yet, when the Democrats control Congress and the presidency (like they do now, like they did in 2010), they do absolutely nothing to show us how wonderful their programs could be -- if only they had control!

Government programs don't need Republicans to add the dysfunction.

They don't actually have the ability to pass general bills without Republican support though. Outside of budget reconciliation, neither party has had the power to pass legislation without at least some bipartisan support since Ted Kennedy was replaced in 2010.

They do have the ability to pass general bills without Republican support, actually. They can pass a separate bill to suspend the filibuster on another bill, and suspending the filibuster only requires the 50 Democrat Senators and the VP.

They tried to do so in January but Manchin and Sinema voted against it.

So, they don't have the ability to pass general bills without Republican support. They'd need to change the rules to have that ability.

What a silly distinction. The rules aren't an actual obstacle; they can change the rules whenever they want, if all 50 Dem senators agree.

In fact they've already done so at least once:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/585192-senate-passes-bil...

I mean, I get it that the Republicans like to destroy this shit.

But according to TFA, this $2000 policy limit has been in place since 1989. What have the Democrats done? Have they not been in any position of power in the last 30 years?

Probably they have just also sat around and blamed the other party too. Sick of this passing the buck bullshit that literally gets nothing done.

Even amongst the left, the narrative of the welfare queen is strong. Eliminating means testing is so easily attacked that it is a challenging policy to propose.

This isn't to let the Democrats off the hook, only to explain that Democratic voters are not uniformly behind improving these policies.

By the standards of the rest of the world, the US Democrats are centre-right and American politics have no left. It’s really astonishing how different the Overton window is (and concerning how much my home country is importing US politics.

By a European standard they're not even center-right.

Yeah, the Democrats are right wing. You're confounding left and Democrats.

The overton window has shifted so far right that some people think Biden is a socialist.

The Overton window as already there when people were calling Obama, of all people, a Marxist.

The answer is actually quite simple.

The democrats in office simply do not represent their constituents. The democrat-voting population is farther left than the democrat politicians. However, outside of the more radical democrats like Sanders and AOC, most democrats have been bought by the wealthy just like the republicans.

> The democrat-voting population is farther left than the democrat politicians.

That is your opinion, and based on your experience in your cohort, and additionally does not really address what "more left" actually means. There are many different types of people that vote Democrat at many different stages of life, in many different industries and in different states/areas where certain things have more support than others. And that's before we even start breaking things out to being "left" socially or fiscally.

I don't think the answer is "quite simple" at all, at least not in the way you explained it.

If the Democratic Party-voting population was really that much farther left than the Democratic Party politicians, then you'd really expect that farther left candidates would be winning primaries, wouldn't you?

I notice we have not had Bernie Sanders on the Presidential ticket, despite two runs; and there is surely some reason for that.

Possibly the voters have identified that those candidates will not gain sufficient independent or Republican support to actual win in general elections.

In any case, it seems likely to be a lot more nuanced than you're suggesting.

This isn't really the gotcha moment you think it is. Primaries are, well, mostly a farce and the people that show up for the primaries are the ones that often have the most free time or ability to do so. Retirees, wealthier individuals and so forth. There's no better evidence of this fact than candidates like Bernie Sanders having extremely high popularity among the younger generation which tapers off the older people get. There's a massive and growing generational divide that's only going to get better once the voting block that enables them starts dying off.

Assuming that the primaries represent who will actually win a presidential election is as much of a mistake as assuming that polls are accurate when it comes to election day.

Shrug. The world belongs to those who show up.

The far left stays home because the democrats don't represent their views.

On the other hand, the far right thinks anyone left of Trump is a socialist and will vote Republican just to try to keep away socialism.

The media told people that Bernie Sanders was unelectable, so people voted for Biden.

OK; but no-one's even slightly suggesting that (insert any Democratic candidate's name here) is in danger of losing a race for a NY Senate seat, and that particular post has given us Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer.

I feel like this is a popular cop out answer, that while likely having some degree of truth, over-simplifies the issues in government.

Couldn't it also just be that there's a lot to keep track of for our current government (of laws and making/updating/enforcing them)? As society grows, you inevitably will have issues that fall through the cracks if administration doesn't also grow accordingly. Maybe they haven't gotten to updating this $2,000 thing because they're focused on other more important things? Hell, I doubt there's a single politician, that knows at the top of their head, all the laws and policies we as a government have in effect, along with all their nuances...

And then the other problem is that the majority has to come to agreement for things to actually change. This is often a slow process. Sometimes you have politicians trying to change stuff like this, but they alone don't quite have enough power, and it takes time for them to convince others that it needs addressing, let alone the proper way to address it.

How exactly does someone like Jeff Bezos benefit from a welfare system that is both inefficient and costly? If politicians are really so easily "bought" by the wealthy, then we'd see more legislation that wealthy people care about, but we don't even see that either. Oracle v. Google and net neutrality end up being decided by the unelected officials because Congress refuses to do anything, but virtue signal all day. Bernie actually tries to pass real legislation, but all this new wave of politicians including AOC cares about is seeking more political power. Every bill she sponsors looks like they're designed to not get passed but rile up her base.

Democrats have had the power to pass legislation without Republican support during the following periods:

* The 1993 - 1994 congressional term[1], during which they tried and failed to do healthcare reform, but succeeded in passing bills for medical leave, NAFTA, gun control, violent crime, taxes, and education.

* June 30, 2009 - February 4, 2010 (72 working days total)[2], during which they passed a major healthcare reform bill, the Affordable Care Act.

From 1981 - 1992, 1995 - 2008, and 2011 - 2020, Republicans have held the presidency or at least one house of Congress. During 2009-2010 and 2021-present, they have also abused the Senate filibuster to obstruct almost the entire Democratic agenda, with the goal of making the public perceive Democrats as ineffective. (As you have seen for yourself, it worked!) In the current term, the Democrats have a bare 50%+1 majority, which means that the most conservative Democrat (usually Joe Manchin of West Virginia) effectively has a veto.

On top of that, the Supreme Court has been controlled by Republican partisans since 2006, when Samuel Alito was appointed. Currently there is a 5-vote majority of extreme Republican partisans. This creates an additional Republican veto point for effectively any Democratic legislation.

One can (and should) criticize the Democrats for not ending the filibuster when they had the chance. But the reality is that the American legislative process involves a lot of veto points, and it only takes control of one to kill a bill.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/103rd_United_States_Congress#M...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress

> the 1993 - 1994 congressional term[1], during which they tried and failed to do healthcare reform, but succeeded in passing bills for medical leave, NAFTA, gun control, violent crime, taxes, and education.

NAFTA doesn't really count here since it was passed over strong (but not unanimous) Democratic resistance with almost unanimous Republican support.

Or maybe it does, since while it was a break from the existing and prior policy orientation of the party, it was a Clinton policy which presaged the emergent dominance of the anti-worker neoliberal capitalist wing of the party that dominated the party from after it's defeat in the 1994 midterms until now (weakening a bit in the last several years.)

There's nothing stopping the single party wealthy states like CA and NY implementing whatever they want. Just raise taxes on the rich and do whatever you want with their money, right?

Which social programs have the Republicans killed?

> This is the one-two punch that Republicans use to kill social programs.

While there is that, welfare traps are not limited to the US, and through countries with very different levels of “social democratic” focus, so they are clearly a broader and more compelling thing somehow.

These kind of labyrinthine policies happen because they're attempts to appease people who don't want these programs to exist at all.

Yup. People complain about freeloaders taking advantage of these systems so they demand policies like this.

Yep. Shut down the whole system because there are some people who might cheat on it.

It's like if we shut down Home Depot because there's people stealing merchandise.

Welp, buncha fuckin freeloaders stealing tools again! Better get rid of all the Home Depots so nobody can steal.

And even if people aren't cheating it, just make up stories about people doing to so to justify shutting it down! The "welfare queen" archetype is so strong in the minds of people in this country that it prevents all sorts of useful policy.

Well, it is the government that’s providing the help in the first place.

They just need to fix the qualifications at the margin, but that is often met with hostility from other voters for the misguided reason that people are just leeching off these programs, when the reality is exactly what is described, that the paperwork and punishment for extra earning is exactly what makes that happen, to the extents that it does.

For the record I absolutely don’t want the government handling everything, I’m just tired of hearing that everything the government does is disfunctional and everything private enterprise does is great and noble, cause it’s not true.

It’s amazing how people could see this happening, acknowledge it is wrong and severely dysfunctional, then go around insisting we add more means testing to benefits because it would be horrible if people got help who “didn’t deserve it”.

Just a hint, the people causing this dysfunctional state of affairs are probably not the ones who are trying to expand government benefits to cover as many people as possible.

Very snarky response. I think the poster you replied to was trying to point out that the reason this happens is because the government prints money and if they don't take the money out of circulation via taxes then inflation becomes an issue.

“For decades most airplane crashes have been caused by trained pilots and yet we continue to put trained pilots in the cockpit.” This form of argument almost looks compelling until you realize that it is predicated on some unspoken belief that there is a clear better alternative.

It's not the fault of government per se, but puritanical conservatives in government who think any assistance to disadvantaged people is coddling lazy slackers.

See for example, drug testing of assistance recipients. It turns out, as the testing has proven, that most of the people who get a little bit of cash are most likely to use it on food and essentials. Oh, and the people who run the for-profit drug testing happen to be cronies of the politicians who advocated for the testing - such a surprise.

Another example: Don't let people withdraw all their money at once or they will waste it. Instead give them debit cards with a small withdrawal limit. Oh, and there's a withdrawal fee that eats into the meager cash ... and cronies of the politicians who advocated for the policy own the ATMs in the stores which collect those fees.

As I get older I see more and more of “reducing gov’t waste” as a means to funnel money into private individuals’ pockets. See also for-profit prisons, charter schools, bussing, medical care, etc etc.

The alternative is worse. My aunt is on disability. Yes, systems suck and if she could hold a temp job she'd be discouraged from doing so.

She'd be dead in the ground if conservative policies ran everything.

Sounds like you are pro-immortality!

It's the politicians with your antigovernment attitude that make these programs so awful. Then they turn around and point at the mess they helped create as the reason they're antigovernment.

It’s easy to pass blame; harder to realize that we are the people who are supposed to fix it.

Do economists and politologist not acknowledge the problem?

We want to help people who don’t make a lot of money. Governments are imperfect institutions yes, but what alternative is there to send money to people who need it ?

And yet, some countries and cultures have safety nets that work.

It is not surprising that the government functions like the people that elected it. If your community is comprised of assholes, you get cruel policies.

> And yet, some countries and cultures have safety nets that work.

Welfare traps are definitely a thing in countries and cultures with “safety nets that works”, fwiw.

Aren't most of these absurd rules the result of elected legislators putting on a show for their voters rather than the result of professional beurocrats making arbitrary rules because they felt like it?

> "Assistance" programs meant to prop people up with so many reporting requirements and perverse incentives that punish you for improving your situation...

It's a legitimately difficult problem, though. The interests and perspectives of the people who depend on these programs and the people who pay for them are often badly misaligned. On the one hand, you want to make it easy for the people who depend on these programs to improve their lot and achieve independence. On the other hand, the people who pay may be legitimately resentful when their money is going to strangers who don't in fact need it. It's a fine line to walk between those things, and the likely outcome is something that's biased towards one side or the other.

It's actually super easy to do. See, you just...make sure that rather than cliffs, you have percentage based reduction of benefits. I.e., you lose $1 of benefit for every $2 you make, or whatever. And something similar with assets (though admittedly the details would be trickier to avoid it being gamed).

Neither the group that needs help (and their supporters), nor the group that doesn't want to give hands out to people who refuse to work but could, have reason to object to something like that.

The actual problem is the red meat that welfare/socialism is to our political bases in the US, and the incentives of politicians, on both sides of the aisle, to ensure it persists. If you do the obvious thing to actually address the problem, neither side can use it any longer to stir up the base. So the incentive is to not actually fix it.

As discussed elsewhere in the comments here, and as discussed in the article, there is indeed a phaseout for income. Every $1 you make above $85 reduces your benefits by $0.50, so they are doing exactly what you suggest.

The $2000 number is a cap for wealth, not income.

The problem isn’t having a phaseout or not anyway - we could set a wealth cliff of $50k and that would be perfectly fine. It’s the numbers that matter, where the phaseout or cliff is placed and how steep a phaseout. $85 a month is a redonkulous place to put the phaseout even if phaseouts are “better” - that is a worse policy than a 50k a month cliff!

And you’re right, the reasons the number hasn’t been adjusted since 1935 (in 1989 the number was inherited from a prior program, it wasn’t adjusted at that time) is because of political will. Social spending on anyone other than the elderly is extremely unpopular in the US.

Not for SSDI. There’s a strict cutoff that’s adjusted every year. This year it’s $1350 — if you make more than $1350 any given month, you do not receive benefits for that month.

I don't know why you'd have any wealth cutoff. This is a replacement for their income because they can't make any income due to disability. What business does anyone have dictating anything else about their life. None. That's very authoritarian.

From my post - 'And something similar with assets (though admittedly the details would be trickier to avoid it being gamed).'

I honestly don't care if $85k is the cutoff. I don't care if there is a cutoff at all (but I recognize some people don't like the idea that if a millionaire becomes disabled he'd be eligible for some amount of money from the government). If someone becomes disabled or whatever, and they have money saved from working, why would they not get benefits? Why do they have to deplete their savings first to get shitty benefits? Social security doesn't have an income or asset cutoff; why does disability?

I actually personally agree with the sister post of just...paying people based on their disability, without caring about how much other income they're able to generate, or assets they collect. But I recognize how politically untenable that is.

One issue if that if you have multiple benefits, and each phases out over a similar range, the combined total loss can be over 100%.

Suppose that between $25,000 and $35,000 income, you start paying taxes, you lose food stamps, you have to start paying toward your medical insurance, you lose your daycare assistance, free school lunches, etc., etc... each one of those could be staggered, but the net result is just overwhelming.

I'm not a big fan of social programs; but if we're going to do them, they should at least be done sensibly.

Oh, agreed; it's why I don't call out specific benefits (since I know they have different rules and such). My intention there is to generalize to all of them.

> It's actually super easy to do. See, you just...make sure that rather than cliffs, you have percentage based reduction of benefits.

It's even simpler: stop means testing individual programs, that's what progressive taxation is for. If you are going to give someone benefits due to a particular level of disability, give them benefits calculated based on that. If they have more outside income than you would expect with that disability, good for them, and they’ll also pay more taxes. Same with other special-circumstance aid qualifications (for general poverty support, this reduced to UBI.)

> On the other hand, the people who pay may be legitimately resentful when their money is going to strangers who don't in fact need it.

Fair. But I'm resentful of the big fraudsters like Rick Scott.

> On the other hand, the people who pay may be legitimately resentful when their money is going to strangers who don't in fact need it.

I understand that this is probably a stupid question, but I'm coming from a place of ignorance: Do people who dislike/resent this not also get upset that ex. their insurance pays for things people don't "need"? Or would the kind of person who makes this complaint also not be likely to have insurance?

Insurance in the US is often private. Private insurance companies push pretty hard to not pay for things that people don't need (to the point of sometimes not paying for things that people do need, but that's a different topic).

But to me, the emotions don't match the financials. There's always a trade-off between false positives and false negatives; the more you prevent people cheating the system, the more you deny benefits to people who need them, and vice versa. And enforcement has its own cost. But nobody feels bad about paying for too much enforcement.

I'd use the same idea in the justice system, where the presumption of innocence is paramount, and apply it here. It's better to let 9 criminals go free, than to jail 1 innocent person by accident, and it is better to assist 9 extra people in need, than to let one person in need to not get it due to the rules.

Somebody needing assistance is presumed to need it, until proof is found that they are cheating the system. This will let some people use the system fraudulently, but it ensures that it catches the vulnerable that truly need it.

There is not fine line we are just flat out dumber than rocks. Its incredibly simple in fact. Lets talk about subject of the article disability income.

Someone with a projected lifespan of 20-30 more years, 2000 a month income, and no projected time frame in which they are expected to be able to earn an income who is actually successfully subsisting on that income of 2000 a month needs an input of 24000 per year to go on subsisting indefinably adjusting for inflation.

If they had $48,000 in the bank it wouldn't meaningfully effect their need. In fact making them spend down everything they have before helping them is pretty stupid it renders their life very fragile and less likely to be stable long term and doesn't even save much money. The equation begins to change only when funds on hand are sufficient to meaningfully change inflow or pay for capital investment like buying a home outright or buying a second property for income.

The turnover figure where someone doesn't NEED to have an actual income is actually reasonable measured in YEARS of income whereas the actual figure is now a single month of income.

For an alternative look at health insurance. It's possible to go from free insurance to no insurance based on a 10c an hour raise at your part time job. Most reasonable upward economic trajectories move through successively better paying positions towards healthy finances. However if you can in a single small raise go from +2% wages to -50% actual economic health moving upwards might be a quick path to homelessness before you can actually complete your upward path. This is especially true when yourself + spouse costs not 2x the cost of insuring yourself but more like 3x.

A non moronic idea might be to allow poor people to keep the same insurance that used to be free at an increasing cost such that any raise at all was ALWAYS a step up.

> the people who pay may be legitimately resentful when their money is going to strangers who don't in fact need it.

Sane solutions are not found by appealing to the emotions of ignorant, selfish, hateful people. They are found by doing math and projecting the probable results of the effect of alternative policies.

> If they had $48,000 in the bank it wouldn't meaningfully effect their need. In fact making them spend down everything they have before helping them is pretty stupid it renders their life very fragile and less likely to be stable long term and doesn't even save much money.

It's one thing to give someone benefits to support their person, it's another to give them benefits to support their person AND their existing savings. It's pretty natural to be less generous to someone who already has the money to pay for what they're asking you to pay for.

> Sane solutions are not found by appealing to the emotions of ignorant, selfish, hateful people.

You're not going to get "sane solutions" with that attitude. You're going to get people to feel good about ignoring your ideas because you insulted them.

> It's one thing to give someone benefits to support their person, it's another to give them benefits to support their person AND their existing savings. It's pretty natural to be less generous to someone who already has the money to pay for what they're asking you to pay for.

Nope. This makes no sense. You're replacing their income because they can't generating any. That's it. You have no business in their rest of their life at all. Your job is to determine whether they can generate income or not and give them money if they can't, nothing else.

> Nope. This makes no sense. You're replacing their income because they can't generating any. That's it.

So, in your view, a disabled multi-millionaire should be able to collect government disability payments?

You may think this is a problem narrowly scoped to income, and that's fine. However that doesn't mean that's the only way to look at it, and that anyone who looks at it differently is doing it wrong.

> You have no business in their rest of their life at all. Your job is to determine whether they can generate income or not and give them money if they can't, nothing else.

Sorry, no. That's not how it works.

I filed for unemployment for a few months during the pandemic (film industry. Literally no work available). The most insane revelation, as this was my first time filing, was that I had to file every single week. All for a paltry $247/wk (without the federal addition during Covid).

The process to get started was so opaque that the local 600 (camera union, I’m not even a member but they didn’t care) held a live zoom session where they screen shared with us and had us all follow their exact instructions on what boxes to check, what to fill out, etc. Folks still had trouble.

Again, it was quite the revelation.

Just think of the folks in your local Theater/Trade Show Union branch and the Broadway season ends and the slow summer months begins where at the same time the Trade Show season is at its low point(Summer Months), And UI insurance is sometimes the only way to make it through the Summer Months In the Big Easy and for Union members that are not high up on the Seniority roster. You are Studio Mechanics/Related Local folks and if you can get some Movie/TV production work over the summer you have it good there as after summer is over you can go over to the Theater/Trade Show local in the non summer months and get some extra work there.

That weekly job search/reporting requirement is not so hard for anyone working out of a union Hiring Hall as one needs to just go to their local and get the Union Rep to sign their weekly job search booklet and they have that over the phone reporting maybe but I used to go weekly to my UI office as I lived only a few blocks away from the office but that was a few decades back and not over any pandemic where the UI Offices where closed.

It doesn't even have to be the case that, as you say, "it is more expensive to earn any income than it is to earn none". That describes an implicit tax rate of >100% which would certainly discourage work, but even if it were, say, 75%, I don't think you have to be a hard-core republican to believe that that might disincentivize work and be on the far side of the Laffer curve.

If you consider the (conditional) basic income in Germany ("Grundsicherung") as given, and it's partial reduction in the face of more than 100€/month income as income tax, one reaches the asymptotic effective (average, not marginal) tax rate of the super-rich at about 180~200€/month. It's progressive until around 1500€/month of income (if it was salary), after which it's regressive.

UBI would fix those perverse incentives (80% marginal "tax rate" for the next few hundred after the first 100 (per month), then an about 300~500€/month wide band with 90% marginal tax rate, followed by iirc another couple hundred at 0% marginal, and then hitting around 20% marginal (going up in piecewise-linear progression)).

I always have to ask: How does UBI not just result in inflation and we end up in the exact same situation as we are in now but with extra steps?

If UBI is paid out through printing extra currency, it will induce inflation.

But if UBI is paid out via extra taxation, then it will not induce inflation (or at least, not overall - it might induce some inflation in goods/services which wouldn't have been in demand but for the UBI, such as low cost labour). The higher taxes taken from the higher income people will reduce their demand, and thus balance out.

Thanks. That makes sense.

UBI is a pretty small money faucet compared to the endless spending on foreign wars that the US political establishment regularly undertakes. Just give out the same amount of money to poor people instead of using it as a middle-class jobs program that kills foreigners.

This is what many low income buildings become. They take 30% of your gross income so any small raise get's immediately reduced by half and sucked into the machine. Unless you can get a huge salary increase above the average wage you can never save enough to move into a property outside of the system even after your rent reaches parity with average rent prices. The only thing one can do is to quit working legally which reduces the rent and frees you up to find cash work.

this is way worse. medical expenses for disabled people are high enough that this takes over 100% for a lot of jobs

That's way less of a problem. It's not great when half a raise goes to rent and half goes into your pocket, but it doesn't hold a candle to policies where the entire raise disappears or you actually end up with less money.

And a situation like that definitely won't stop you from saving money. It doesn't trap you. If a wage increase takes your payment from significantly below market rent up to market rent, you'll be able to save up a security deposit and moving expenses pretty quickly.

Lower the percentage some or make it a third of net income and it sounds like a pretty great system.

As a resident this is absolutely the least of the difficulties in such buildings.

When I went to Europe backpacking the rude shocker was waking up in the middle of the night because that seat was not reserved. I thought that train only had unreserved seats. From next day I started adding reservation with that extra cost every time I had to reserve seats or berths and then seeing a lot of Europe essentially had just buses as public transports and not trains (esp. when I moved towards Eastern Europe -- also in Sarajevo I believe the pass didn't work, I had bought that in AMS).

Maybe next time I will manage it better. Is there a pass that doesn't require you to pay extra every time you want to reserve a seat/berth on the train if you already have a pass?

You're talking about the welfare trap. That's not what the article is about. The article is about disabled people who are unable to work being kept poor. Many people will never work because they can't and this punishes all of them.

We also have a crazy system where a graduate is a fool to pay back the education loans.

You mean pay them at all or pay more than minimum payments? I believe the latter but I don’t understand the former (maybe you’re talking about the covid deferments?).

What do you mean? People who don’t pay their student loans face all kinds of negative consequences from being unable to buy a home / car due to credit dings, tax refund garnishment & wage garnishment on top of fees & interest

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2022/05/19/if-biden-...

Why would someone be a fool to pay? Biden was previously advocating for only $10k which doesn't cover the median federal student loan amount. $50k may not even happen. Right now you can pay down some of the principle at 0% interest in case your loans aren't forgiven.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-loans/you-c...

It's much more complicated than calling people "fools" for paying.

TBH the program is a disaster and it's really, really disappointing that the loans won't just simply be forgiven. I personally know many people held back from economic participation because of federal student loans. Even if you want to be all bs moralistic about the responsibility of paying debts back, from an economic perspective the loans should be forgiven.

If you pay back your loans responsibly, and another doesn't and gets their balance forgiven, who's the fool?

> all bs moralistic about the responsibility of paying debts back

It's dishonorable to not pay back money you borrowed. I'm sure if you loaned someone money, and they said "bs" when you expected repayment, you'd be very put out.

P.S. I've had people who've stolen money from me contact me years later wanting to do business together. I don't understand modern morality, or how they'd imagine I'd ever work with them again.

> If you pay back your loans responsibly, and another doesn't and gets their balance forgiven, who's the fool?

Neither?

What was the purpose of paying back the loan? I think it's foolish to give away large sums of money for no effect.

I think the basic disconnect you're running into here is that for many people the government-backed educational loan establishment is not "someone" worthy of any moral consideration, but rather just a poorly-constructed piece of political machinery that only exists because of the failings of the government in regards to public education.

Every person with a loan got it of their own free will and signed a contract asserting of their own free will that they were going to pay it back.

The fact that the promise was made to the taxpayers doesn't make it honorable to break one's word.

It's also a major insult to every person who worked hard and paid back their loan.

This forgiveness program is a classic "moral hazard".

There's another disconnect here: you're treating contracts as a moral imperative, rather than as a civil agreement with failure clauses to be rationally considered. The government does the latter; why should an individual who makes a contract with the government treat it differently?

What part of the contract says: "if you don't want to pay back the loan, no problem, we'll just forgive it!" ?

I've never heard of a loan contract that says that.

I don’t understand your point. if you’re saying it would be wise to take advantage of current 0% interest and/or deferment policies to pay as little as possible until it’s clearer whether or not any kind of loan forgiveness will happen, then sure. not paying at all is really not an option over the long term.

I am not optimistic that Biden will attempt to use executive powers to make any broad student loan cancelations.

From a legislative standpoint, Biden is not likely to sign any more bills into law other than military & police power / budget expansion and some occasional filler.

If you believe there's a meaningful likelihood of that happening any time soon, then sure, you might consider stopping payments for some short period of time to see if it plays out. But that's hardly what I would call "a crazy system where a graduate is a fool to pay back the education loans."

Getting people who are on your program off your program is not how the bureaucrats in charge of these things grow their budgets, get more reports and advance their careers.

Show me the incentives...

It's almost like it's done on purpose.

SSDI is basically a “disability pension.” The idea is that you are permanently disabled and will never work again.

It really sucks that there’s a huge gap between, short-term disability and permanent disability. One you are on your for, the other the state covers 100%.

We need a comprehensive social safety net.

Yup, the same thing happens with independent minors in the care of the State - they get a benefit from the state every month but if they have above [a tiny number saved] or earn above [a tiny paycheck every month] the subsidy is reduced, dollar for dollar. It’s an awful system.

If we want to help people, I think the first step is to assign each person/family an advocate. Someone who looks out for the person in need and reaches out to them. That person could help navigate the bureaucracy, explain to people their options, etc.

Sadly, most people have to advocate for themselves. They have to research what they need to do to get benefits, try to figure out how to navigate the poorly designed system, make calls, fill out paperwork, submit documents, etc. Poor people may not have the mental/emotional energy to go through all this.

I know, I know. Sometimes this is the system behaving as designed. The government makes it hard for people to get benefits so it doesn't have to pay as much. Such design is despicable.

> If we want to help people, I think the first step is to assign each person/family an advocate.

The first and last step is to just give them cash. Give everyone cash indiscriminately. If we want to help people.

To ensure the the wealth is not being transferred from poor to wealthy, you have marginal income/wealth or marginal sales tax rates.

You mean progressive rather than marginal, but yes.

You can give people cash. You also have to kill a lot of restrictive zoning laws, because new housing can't be built until they go away. You need to require new housing to pay for new infrastructure to support itself, and then you need to require old housing to pay for maintaining their infrastructure, too. You need to kill off local funding of education in favor of universal funding of education, because otherwise the poor kids get substandard schools and teachers.

You need to fund public transit, and it needs to be aimed at getting people not just from their homes to work and back, but also to schools and stores and entertainment.

Everything has to be automatically indexed to inflation, or else you get the same problem ten to twenty years later.

Yeah, but it won't ever happen because it lays bare the function of taxation as (mostly -- sin taxes and virtue credits being the exception) the vehicle for a wealth transfer from rich to poor. And if we actually admit that then we have to deal with the awkwardness that is why even bother taxing people below the breakeven point?

While I think UBI is an interesting idea, it most certainly is _not_ the only thing to be done; it is not a silver bullet that will solve all problems related to money.

Interestingly, UBI is usually regressive for disabled people.

It’s just straight-up more expensive to be disabled than non-disabled.

This was a big discussion in the disabilities community around Yang’s UBI in 2020.

I find UBI intriguing, but it wouldn’t necessarily free us from complexities like this.

Yes, there may be situations where certain people need more assistance than others. And it would require a bureaucracy to qualify and whatnot, but that is the same as the situation now. At least with a minimum amount of straight cash to everyone, a significant portion of the population no longer has to jump through hurdles.

“And it would require a bureaucracy to qualify and whatnot, but that is the same as the situation now.”

I’m certain it would be less onerous than what we deal with now. It’s hard to describe the disability process as anything but “onerous”.

As long as those with needs greater than the average population are accounted for, I (cautiously) favor this idea. One of the hardest things about being disabled is that suddenly many people feel entitled to make choices for you. I sorely miss having the control and choice in my life that I had when I was able to work.

Yes, I meant that at least most of the overhead is removed, and society can focus other resources on those who can use additional help.

I thought one of the big benefits of UBI was that it does away with all other social programs? Are you saying that is no longer the case?

I do not think that is possible, assuming society wants ro provide greater assistance to those with certain disadvantages, such as disabilities.

Also, how does it not just end up in inflation where disabled people can't afford to live, back at the original problem but now with extra steps?

Increased taxes on on higher income/wealth people. The goal would also be to reduce income/wealth gap.

That's quite the employment program you're proposing.

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