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Comment by kweingar | Hacker News Reader

> I'd hardly call a reduction in "money we take from you" a "handout".

This always ends up being a metaphysical debate. It’s all relative.

Suppose I make $100,000 and after taxes $80,000 is left. After a new law is passed, I now take home $81,000 after taxes on the same income.

Does it really matter if the government gave me an untaxed $1,000 “handout” check or if they “reduced the money they take from me” by cutting my taxes by $1,000?

Politicians play this game all the time, implementing social spending as tax credits and rewarding the wealthy with tax breaks.

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> Does it really matter if the government gave me an untaxed $1,000 “handout” check or if they “reduced the money they take from me” by cutting my taxes by $1,000?

Yes, it matters.

First, reducing what they take is more efficient than inventing new bureaucracy to send out checks.

Second, I cannot rely on a random bonus but I can rely on the taxation tables therefore I am more likely to plan on doing something useful with reduction.

Actually sending money directly to the poor is a very efficient form of government program.

It's the exact contrary of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is deciding for the poor what they are allowed to do with the money on the wrong assumption that they wouldn't know better than you what to do with it. In fact the less money you have, the more careful you are with it. Obviously. And at the extreme end of the spectrum, if you are rich like Elon Musk, you spend 44 billions on something dumb.

>First, reducing what they take is more efficient than inventing new bureaucracy to send out checks.

No, this depends on the specifics. If they are sending every tax filer an extra 1000 then that would be very efficient (setting aside those people who do not file federal taxes). If the tax reduction is complex, requires knowledge of complicated eligibility criteria, going in person to a local SS office or for a notary public, it's very inefficient.

As a general rule, then, this claim is bogus.

In the GGP's example, the tax rate dropped from 20% to 19%. It requires changing 1 number. Everyone already had to file taxes using whatever number the government provides.

If we send every person a check it requires, at the very least, envelopes and postage.

My first claim is not about the efficiency of how the money is used by the beneficiaries. My claim is about the efficiency of getting the money gets into people's hands in the first place.

> inventing new bureaucracy to send out checks

We already have an efficient system for sending out checks—the Social Security Administration

My father worked for the SSA for most of his working life and he strongly believed in its mission. I don't think he would call it a particularly efficient way to cut checks.

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