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As someone on the left, my read is that welfare programs are designed to fail, and that’s a bipartisan consensus.

Republicans don’t want to spend the money and democrats only want to help people who “need” it. So you can’t get food stamps if you have more than $2,500 in the bank, which sends the clear message: don’t even bother trying to get ahead.

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I should note I'm not entirely against wellfare like programs - but like you pointed out, their current implementation doesn't help much.

I get that sometimes, people just need some cash to get through the day. But how can you make sure your program doesn't train people to be dependent on it?

I wonder if there is a clever optimization hiding to this problem somewhere.

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