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Comment by thebradbain | Hacker News Reader

You can’t game something when the maximum award is still designed to be Not Enough On Its Own. That describes quite literally every US government aid program— from food stamps and school lunch debt at the very bottom of the financial ladder, to grants+loans for those who have demonstrated the academic merit to get into college, to healthcare and social security for literally every citizen in this entire country.

There is not a single program in the US, by careful design, that can give “too much”. Yet we still spend so much money on the bureaucracy trying to disqualify anyone from their own programs.

Imagine how much we’d save, socially (less homelessness! no death for lack of healthcare! a more educated and informed country!) but also maybe financially, if we actually _gave our people what they need_.

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People don't want to see people on their perceived level getting something they are not. People will accept people they perceive as at a lower level getting something but it can't be more than them . Because many people working are at the poverty level or lower these programs have to be set lower than that which is lower then the minimum needed.

The money spent on fighting individuals could be offered as a top-up to the working poor which would other programs to raise levels.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." -- Karl Marx

We don't need to imagine how that would work out. There are plenty of examples.

yes, there are the millions dead in various "cultural" and agri-"cultural revolutions, the millions dead in gulags because they opposed the horrors of communism. i grew up in it, and it makes me vomit when someone mentions that murderous ideology.

There are plenty of Marxist communes with no dead, but they never worked, either. The US has had something like 20,000 of them.

It's probably the most tried and failed system in history. There are even examples that predate Marx - the Jamestown and Plymouth settlements.

It's perfectly legal in the US to set up a commune. The people who want it are free to give it a go.

true, like there are many cults that last for a while before they become murderous or just peter out. when it scales up to country level (USSR, China, Cambodia, Cuba...) communism is always murderous. Just give me an example that contradicts that.

There’s a whole lot of spectrum between what GP’s parent is suggesting and communism. In fact, no one even brought up communism until the parent’s fairly vapid Marx quote. Is that the one that made you vomit?

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