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Comment by nfriedly | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, I used to do work on freelancing sites ~10 years ago and just tended to ignore the race to the bottom. I initially charged $50/hr, and regularly raised my rates so that I was up over $150/hr by the time I stopped doing it.

Of course I got passed over for a lot of jobs in favor of cheaper folks. But the jobs I did get were from clients who actually respected me. Also, more than once, a client who initially passed over me for someone cheaper came back a few months later and asked me to do the job after all.

So, perhaps something like that could work for you.

Regarding the $1,200 per month limit, I'm not sure what the rules are, but perhaps you could set up a corporation that takes on the freelancing jobs and then pays you a salary of $1,200 a month? That way you wouldn't have to turn down a job for paying too much.

Maybe have the corp owned by a trust rather than you personally?

I wouldn't want you to get in trouble and lose the disability, though, so talk to somebody who actually knows what they're talking about before doing any of this stuff.

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Lawyer here, but not legal advice:

Look into a Special Needs Trust. You may be able to sock the money into the Trust without it becoming income to you, and thus jeopardizing your benefits. It’s usually used to keep assets low enough for benefits, but maybe there’s an income reducing benefit as well. Your state likely has multiple providers —- fees, if any, are typically quite reasonable

One way to legally get the end-run around SSDI is to work on open source projects and accept donations.

SSDI allows income from sources other than work, unlike SSI, which bars pretty much all income. SSDI allows you to get things like Financial Aid for school without impacting your SSDI. You can even trade stocks and gain money from stock sales and not have it impact your SSDI. Your spouse can have income and it won't impact SSDI. Most forms of income that are not strictly "work" are allowed by SSDI. SSI is the more strict of the two programs (and is more generally aimed at people who have been lifetime disabled and never worked or paid into social security).

Open source development + accepting donations seems like a sweet spot for the disabled on SSDI. You're not accepting pay for the "work" you do, thus the donation income is legally acceptable.

OP doesn't specify whether they are on SSI or SSDI, but if they had worked for years before they were disabled, its likely they were able to get SSDI.

Do you know many people who are doing this with > 1000 per month average donations?

It bugs me that almost all the people I know that have gotten on disability have come from upper-class families, frequently the parents are part of the "business class" and work with lawyers on a regular basis.

Conversely I've known many people who come from lower class or middle class families that have hit hard times who are seriously mental ill (e.g. addicted to cigarettes but so thought disordered that it takes three hours to smoke a cig after waking up.) It strikes me as unfair that somebody who is "lawyered up" can find loopholes to protect their income whereas for many disabled people the process of applying for disability is like going to the moon or becoming a Navy Seal.

> It strikes me as unfair that somebody who is "lawyered up" can find loopholes to protect their income whereas for many disabled people the process of applying for disability is like going to the moon or becoming a Navy Seal.

This has been an inherent flaw in our legal system since the inception of our country. We do not have a right to equal representation. The right to have representation at all is barely even a thing. There has even been some mumbling about ending the right to an attorney...

We do not have a right to equal representation.

I'm not sure that's the case here. It's a matter of knowledge transfer.

Lawyers know things. People with money can afford to get knowledge from lawyers. People without money cannot afford to get knowledge from lawyers.

It's not a problem with the "system" that mathematicians know more about math than the general public, and that people who have the money can hire a mathematician to do math for them.

It's a knowledge transfer problem. How do you solve that? You can't give every person a massive book of every law when they're born. It's impractical to store, and they'd be outdated the next day. All of the laws are online for anyone to read, but who has the time?

A huge problem with the system is that the laws are not understandable without significant study. Law school is ridiculously expensive. The average cost of a law degree right now is about $200,000. This makes legal representation insanely expensive.

A step towards equal representation would start by heavily subsidizing law school making them accessible to everyone. Also, we would need to fund the creation of more law schools. In addition we should fund public defenders an order of magnitude more than we currently do.

https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-law-school#:~:text....

As someone who became a 'jailhouse lawyer' I disagree. Once you understand the basics it's pretty understandable, and it's self documenting with our use of case law. Now, the fact that to read the cases, which are the texts of 'the law' since we use case law and you have to pay a fortune to Lexus Nexus should be illegal. If the text of the cases ARE the law of the land (which the whole case law thing demonstrates is the case) then the laws of the land should not be allowed to be locked up behind a paywall. Free access to Lexus Nexus in prison shows it is REQUIRED for fair access to the legal system (they don't give you anything they aren't constitutionally required to in prison), yet prison is the only place you get 'free' access (I mean, I paid for it via the loss of freedom, opportunity, days of my life, etc).

However, if say you wanted to offer your help to someone else, you would in fact be breaking the law. You cannot represent other people or offer legal advice without first spending 200 grand on a degree. I agree that the US should offer an equivalent alternative to Lexus Nexus. The law should never be behind a paywall.

The prisons and terms of my supervised release were required to allow me to continue helping inmates I had been helping previously (making an acception to the condition that I not associate with felons and requiring the prison to allow such correspondence). I wonder if that small crack that gives court recognized and enforced legal protection to me continuing to practice law without a degree could be used to break this gatekeeping?

You weren't representing yourself as a lawyer, with them or in court. I'm assuming that's both the potential problem and the work around.

I wrote their motions to the court, helped them file them, etc. I got a dozen people released during COVID, and those with lawyers adopted some of my work for their other cases. Sure seemed like 'lawyering' :)

... do inmates get free access to LexisNexis?

Maybe? They have an offering for prisons: https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/corrections/default.page

In the Feds yes.

This is not what I think the comment was about. Of course, with the increasing complexity of society the complexity of its rules can increase as well. The idea that equal representation through equal knowledge/access to knowledge is the solution is not realistic. But society should give everyone a fair chance by providing him with access to a lawyer, especially in those challenging situations. Also, in the end, those rules are not a law of nature. They can change, or should change if the resulting system is not accessible by all. If the complexity can only be handles by specialised, expensive lawyers then it will always lead to gross inequality.

People have struggled with "online for anyone to read" for the law.

Cornell's Legal Information Institute, for instance,

https://www.law.cornell.edu/

hasn't had the easiest time getting funding although it is produced on a shoestring and clearly delivers a huge amount of value for what goes into it.

State legislators and vendors have long tried to make people pay for access to the law, it seems in the long term courts have come to realize that there is no excuse, access to the law is not for high paid lawyers, but can and should be free because it is not expensive to provide in the electronic age and since you have to follow the law they don't need to give you the excuse that you can't afford to read it.

I think there's an analogue in dealing with customer service as well. Folks who are better communicators and all that often get their interests best protected when dealing with rogue employees at companies that did some unsavory shenanigans that need to be undone by the customer. I've been delegated these customer service call tasks from my family members because they don't have the ability to ask the right questions and drill in and get answers and actions from others as fluently as I.

>It's not a problem with the "system" that mathematicians know more about math than the general public

One of the historical high watermarks in legal history is the existence of the twelve tables, a highly condensed, shortened version of roman law which was prominently displayed in public market places and other easily accessible fora - specifically to allow non-patricians to understand and have access to the law.

Other moments in legal history have ruling classes enacting legislation in languages which the common-folk don't even speak.

We exist along a spectrum between 'everyone knows and understands' to 'nearly no one knows and understands', but don't take the difficulty of fixing the issue with the idea that it isn't a problem in the first place. It is a problem, and it's a large one.

There are a lot of aid groups that advise on this stuff. In fact I’d never heard of special needs trust and kagi’ed for it and a lot of the results were aid groups offering help in setting them up and understanding them. It doesn’t require you to lawyer up. But it requires you to seek help. A problem with mental illness is you often are unable to seek help on your own, and if your support network is ignorant of the fact help exists you’re falling through the cracks.

How would you suggest it be ordered differently? I don’t know how we reliably help everyone who needs help if they’re unable or unwilling to seek help. “Moar social workers” isn’t a thing - even with funding, the people don’t exist to scale to the size of the need.

UBI etc seem like basic solutions but doesn’t really help them get help, just helps them not need help to some baseline.

Benefits shouldn't have this cliff where you lose them if you start doing too well.

It's an poverty/low income trap. If you're on disability/welfare you should still be incentived and rewarded for making money outside of your government payment.

It could be a constant thing like UBI or a gradual reduction like income tax brackets where more money earned is always more money in your pocket.

Agreed

Negative income tax is the term for what I believe you're referring to.

knowledge is power

You are 100% right. In my close family we had a person that developed really oppositional schizoid type behavior (can't see the medical diagnosis due to HIPAA) and it took all of our resources to get her disability set up - luckily we had a nurse and a lawyer in the family who we could draw on to fight the paperwork and bureaucratic hurdles.

I just don't see how a person without family resources (i.e. most mentally ill patients) could ever qualify and I'm sure that's by design.

If they acquired this disability before the age of 26 (soon to be 46?) they're also eligible to create an able account, which would have a much lower cost than a special needs trust.

Can you elaborate on this?

Yeah, an able account is basically a 529 for people with disabilities.

https://www.ablenrc.org/what-is-able/what-are-able-acounts/

As of right now it's only for people who acquired their disability before 26. I was born with cerebral palsy so that's how I qualified.

Len Tillem in old days on KGO 810 used to give such advices. Follow this method.

> I'm not sure what the rules are, but perhaps you could set up a corporation that takes on the freelancing jobs and then pays you a salary of $1,200 a month?

No, that'll lose you the benefits.

https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/cfr20/404/404-1575.htm

"We will evaluate your work activity based on the value of your services to the business regardless of whether you receive an immediate income for your services."

SSI is deliberately set up to fuck people over. (Not in this particular loophole-closer, but in general. You get $900/month to cover food, housing, etc.; a pittance. A savings account balance (or any other countable assets) over $2,000 will lose your benefits.)

That (among other thigns) is what business do though. I haven't directly contributed to the bottom line for $WORK for over a month, but as soon as I finish my current project it'll have a significant positive impact. They paid me a steady salary regardless. So long as OP keeps their average contribution under $1,200/mo won't they be fine?

> So long as OP keeps their average contribution under $1,200/mo won't they be fine?

No. If their business brings in $5k/month, that's what the SSA will consider their income. Doesn't matter if it's just accumulating in the business's bank accounts; it's OP's income. They've seen people try this trick; it's why the provision exists.

But if their business brings in $5k for one contract done one month and then has no work for 4 months to bring the average under $1,200, is that not above board with such a ruling? Test 3 in that legal document references that their income will be evaluated relative to what salary they might receive for such work, and I wouldn't think it would be reasonable for the business to be expected to pay more than the average value of their output.

It doesn't average.

https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/cfr20/416/416-0420.htm

> We generally use the amount of your countable income in the second month prior to the current month to determine how much your benefit amount will be for the current month.

Earning $5k in a particular month would mean zero benefit in a subsequent month, and keeping that $5k sitting in their account to tide themselves over would put them over the $2k limit on assets, making them ineligible for SSI.

Well that's a moldy bollocks sandwich of a law isn't it :/ Thanks for the clarification.

I wonder if a 3rd party intermediary entity could be setup to collect the funds from the customer and pay out just the right amount spread over time.

This is correct.

If the 5k is better than the "normal" month with benefit, it is still better to earn the 5k that month, assuming the benefit is immediately restored on the subsequent months with low income.

> It takes up to a month to approve your request for reinstatement. However, this does not mean that your benefits have been completely restored. While you are receiving temporary benefits, the Social Security office is determining your eligibility to completely reinstate your benefits after the six months of temporary benefits. The Social Security office analyzes your medical condition and updates your medical information. If they decide that you are eligible to continue receiving SSI benefits, your temporary benefits become regular SSI benefits. If you are not eligible to receive benefits, your temporary benefits end.

> The Social Security office may approve your request for reinstatement. If your request is approved, your temporary benefits start the month following the month in which you made your request. Temporary benefits can last up to six months.

So: it’s not instant. It’s not immediate. And it risks losing the benefits altogether if they mistake a one-time contract for something he could sustain indefinitely.

Yeah, sorry I didn't read that more carefully. Kind of hard to look at something so broken and not be completely discouraged. Sounds like yet another good argument for basic income policies.

Totally agree, it seems like a messed up system that would be solved by something like that.

Tax law is written by the rich for the rich. Benefits laws is written by the rich for the poor.

Sometimes benefits law is also written by the rich for the rich. Vanishingly few non-rich can come anywhere near maxing out tax-advantaged retirement accounts, even if they have the spare cash to do it (too much of the limit has to come from your employer), meanwhile the rich can easily structure their income to max it out (and max out their spouse's, and their kids', et c.). The most-effective use of health savings accounts is also as a stealth tax-advantaged retirement account for the rich (the trick is you put money in, pay any actual medical expenses with ordinary taxed money outside the account, then at retirement the HSA money that would have gone to those bills, but didn't, and has been invested and growing all this time, can come out tax-free as long as you—or your accountant—kept the receipts)

>SSI is deliberately set up to fuck people over.

It's a chicken and egg problem because it's guaranteed income. There has to be something where they can do partial work and still be on disability. This example of rising rent means for his area that amount is not enough or he will simply have to move which sucks

Ah. Well nevermind that idea, then.

I suppose the OP will just have to stick to smaller jobs.

Could a group of SSI freelancers set up a co-op to handle that month-to-month averaging?

I'm not sure on this one; I suspect one of the risks would be the SSA deeming the co-op itself to have a valuation and thus a participant's ownership in it count as an asset with enough value to break the $2k limit.

If you mean averaging the money over time, that doesn't seem like it would work since it doesn't affect "the value of your services". I assume it's an abstract value, along the lines of

However, another thing a co-op could do is allocate work among members who do the same kind of work while respecting limits on how much work each member is capable of doing. I assume the rule's purpose is roughly, "Your benefit is predicated on you being incapable of working enough to support yourself, so if you prove otherwise, we can't give you the benefit." Limiting how much each person works seems compatible with that.

But I'd guess the work would need to be allocated based on members' actual capability, not the monthly dollar limit. If someone's work adds up to just barely under the dollar limit consistently month after month, it strongly suggests they're capable of more. Even more so if lots of co-op members have that pattern.

Such a co-op could serve a legitimate purpose because people who can only do limited part-time work may not have much opportunity. Many employers want someone who is full time. Also, some disabilities may make it where someone can only work sporadically. So the co-op could enable someone who is capable of (say) 10 hours/week to do that instead of 0 hours/week.

Brilliant idea. Not only could they distribute the work, but they could also lobby for any needed legal changes.

Hard thresholds on benefits just suck. They should always, always be progressively tapered, in a way that incentivises work. Otherwise you're just creating a permanent class of people without any incentive to contribute to the society that keeps them alive.

I know someone with similar problems in the UK: they are part-time, but working more hours would mean paying more in childcare and lose benefits, ending up with less money than before. It's just stupid.

I once found German guy on github and wanted to hire him to perform some domain specific programming. He refused with the same argument: will loose the benefits.

Retired rich people. Whenever a system it setup to help poor people, a harsh system of cutoffs is needed to prevent retired people from qualifying for the benefit by moving money around on paper. The problem is that we have far too many systems to allow relatively well-off people to "zero" their on-paper income, even their personal assets, during retirement. Entire industries exist to facilitate such trickery (see every other TV commercial on CNN/MSNBC/FOX).

Starving the poor to prevent feeding the rich seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

This is America. Don't catch you slippin up.

Or rather like cutting off someone else's nose to spite people it won't matter much to.

The efforts US politicians go through to make sure that some of the people who have paid a disproportionately large amount of taxes don't get a fraction of them back when they don't need it have been valiant. Considering that you could simply tax them enough to create a universal benefit, effectively refunding part of their own taxes and redistributing the rest, I'd suggest that starving the poor is a goal rather than a side-effect.

We can't give people free college, what if people who could afford college go?

On the one hand yes. But letting your system be abused by those that have no need for it is never a good use of funds.

That's actually not always true; it depends on the rate of fraud, the amount earned, how widespread it is, and the amount of damage you do to good-faith applicants by making the process harder.

For example, Florida required drug testing to receive welfare; that program cost more than it saved taxpayers in benefits. https://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/florida-didnt-save-mone...

>But letting your system be abused by those that have no need for it is never a good use of funds.

And yet, we have rich people using fraud to get government funds that they have absolutely no need for while the poor get exploited and starve.

The abuse is going on A N Y W A Y; it's just that people get more indignant when one of the "poors" occasionally get that extra soda out of the machine.

If we know what they are so much so that they advertise these services on cable news channels, you'd think the government would be able to make carve outs for these things as they come up no?

I tried for months to find a job in freelance site. I ended up doing someone's home work for symbolic price ($50 or something like that), got 5 stars and that's about it. Any work with reasonable pay (few thousands of dollars for few weeks) was overflooded with offers (like 200+ offers). I wrote my offer, tried to customize it, few times I even made some small demo to show off my interest but to no success. In the end I gave up.

So my opinion: if you desperately need some money, freelancing websites are not a good option. It's more about luck and determination. I guess if I would kept applying, with time I'd find more projects, more reputation and so on, but that's not quick money.

Might be my country (KZ). I would expect people from US or EU having better implicit reputation. Also it was around 10 years ago, may be things changed.

That's a fair point. I am in the US, and I'm sure that was part of what helped me get the jobs that I did get. Most of my clients were from the US, a couple were even from the same city I was in.

It sounds like the OP is also in the US, so they will have that same advantage.

I'd encourage you to still apply for anything that's fresh, regardless of how many applicants are there. I've been in a hiring position from these sites and 99% of the proposals are fake/canned. The thing is you need to have demonstrable track record to get going on these sites. I'd say it takes about 5-10 of those "small and crappy" jobs so people can see you're for real and serious.

Steps I'm seeing:

1. Find a lawyer 2. Consider a corporation 3. Find an external entity (friend, family, form a trust) to run business

Run all plans through lawyer and revive their agreement in writing

> Run all plans through lawyer

I don't think you appreciate how tight the budget of a disabled person on SSI is.

They'll require help (Friends/family/someone). However I'm MUCH more worried about them losing SSI because "someone on the internet said this was OK". Granted I have no idea how much a lawyer costs (and last time I used one it came in <$300).

I would be too, and going forward without legal advice is really fool-hardy. The trick imo would be finding an affordable lawyer who is also familiar with disability law.

Agreed. But, I will say that I have benefited from pro-bono work in the past, more than once actually; some--many--lawyers feel they have an obligation on that end. Once, at least, I was helped out at https://www.freeadvice.com/, I think when I represented myself against a creditor that had seized my student aid.

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