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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

I'm not going to opine on the program itself or who it serves, but they are -way- too loose with the money IMO.

I make plenty, and still had my child's school, my ISP, cell phone carrier, and others browbeating me into applying. I even told them I didn't know much about it, but think I probably don't qualify, and they kinda imply 'oh theres other ways.' I did qualify, because my daughter's school is a CEP school. Out of curiosity I did as they were instructing, and sure enough it was approved without issue. Why? What's in it for my ISP and cell provider to give me a discount? Were they receiving more back in kickbacks?

I didn't renew because ultimately I felt guilty, but have to wonder how many people who didn't need it took advantage.

On the plus side, it did allow me to keep Comcast's "secret" $30/mo plan, that they let me keep after it expired.

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> What's in it for my ISP and cell provider to give me a discount? Were they receiving more back in kickbacks?

the person you're talking to probably earned a commission or bonus based on how many they can convince to sign up.

This is what happens to gov't incentive programs - the cash and value generation is distorted.

Look at how homelessness problems in california is not solved, despite paying more than some $200k per homeless person in subsidies and grants. This is more than most (or any) job would've paid to that person. And yet, it fails to achieve anything of note, because the value generation (taxation) is _not_ aligned with the value recipient (which is not the homeless person, but the various orgs that spring up to eat the value while attempting to prolong the gov't subsidy/grant).

Have a watch of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNxQ8JWxWMA

Actually helping people who have become homeless is like two steps away from what it should be, of course. One step in the right directly would be more homelessness prevention (there's some, but not nearly enough). Two steps would be systemic changes so housing was more easily affordable.

That said, I had dinner tonight with a formerly unhoused person here in SF, who is now living her life successfully because of that help, has an apartment, is paying bills, etc.

So while you think it fails to achieve anything of note, I think the problem would be a heck of a lot worse without it.

I also think people be overly concerned with the “moochers”. that said we should still dedicate resources to make sure programs are applied fairly and not taken advantage of.

I love basic income for this. It prevents needing to solve any kind of missuse since everyone is supposed to get it.

A noble dream solution, but even in this case there will be folks who try to collect the UBI of others in addition to their own.

Not all, but many of these concerns are drummed up by people that want to add every conceivable resistance to wealth redistribution possible, and the rubes that believe their fabricated justification. Drug testing for food and housing assistance is a great example. A fraction of the amount of money spent gets “saved” and the rare addict thrown off will probably cost the system more money as a homeless addict. Ultimately, it comes down to contempt for people who have less, and wanting to see them humiliated.

Yes, wealth redistribution is genteel theft and should be thwarted at every turn.

Please stop hitting that straw man. My hay fever's starting to play up.

An effective test for determining if reading an opinion is a waste of your time is: watch for language that assigns an explanation to the behavior of others.

Basically: they don’t describe what happened. They describe how other people are less good.

“These concerns are drummed up by people who what to add every conceivable resistance to wealth redistribution possible”

Not the language of an open hearted soul. I’m going to default to “unconvincing argument” as the infinitely more plausible explanation.

> watch for language that assigns an explanation to the behavior of others.

> Not the language of an open hearted soul.

Found some.

Amazing the number of people on HN who dislike any measure of helping those less fortunate.

Amazing the number of people on HN take any criticism of some program as dislike for helping those less fortunate.

If what you consider evil is standing in the way of Marxist utopia, well bud, I think you have your moral heuristic exactly, murderously wrong.

We shoulda leave words like Marxist utopia out of conversations, even communism and capitalism. It shortcut people's thinking.

That said, welfare programs are probably more efficient if they applied more broadly to society as opposed to adding paperwork barriers to people applying for aids.

Evil is a useless term unless you’re discussing fictional super villains or religion. If you think basic assistance is a Marxist utopia, well bud, I think you need to look utopia up in the dictionary and learn what Marxism is from a different source than Newsmax.

Not everything slightly to the left of Genghis Khan is Marxist you buffoon

actually the moochers wear business clothing.. the actual homeless are often damaged and addicted people who are stuck in hell loops

The majority of homeless people are at work or in school during the daytime. The people you see on the street are the tip of an enormous iceberg.

Yeah there's some silly shit that I'm sick of states paying for.

Mandatory drug testing almost always costs more then it saves.

California's failures are part of throwing money at something with no feedback loop to kill off unsuccessful strategies (like a lot of government programs). California is too lax on enforcement side. If you don't have the ability to take drug addicts and mentally ill off the street and put them in therapeutic programs nothing will ever happen because those are 80-90% of the chronically homeless, the systems will absorb whatever money you throw at it and there will never be any positive results.

> despite paying more than some $200k per homeless

And yet we're told universal basic income is too expensive.

Give People Money [2018] https://www.amazon.com/Give-People-Money-Universal-Revolutio...

Am policy noob, so I don't know how to articulate this properly:

I support whatever social safety net wrap around services people may need.

But I don't support our top-down welfare bureaucracy. When a mere fraction of our spending benefits the actual people in need, wtf are we doing.

How I usually phrase it:

Help people help themselves. Then help those who can't.

(Rant over, thanks for listening.)

>When a mere fraction of our spending benefits the actual people in need, wtf are we doing.

Giving jobs to the people "worthy" of a non-profit position (unemployable anywhere else). Which isn't to say that non-profits are particularly useless, just that a large swath of jobs in the US are just there so that someone's friend or family member or neighbor won't become destitute. If you're not in the network? Tough luck.

I don't know about ACP, but its sister program Lifeline pays for signups. That's why here in Chicago's South Side there is someone giving away phones and tablets on every street corner. Really.

The biggest thing is the ISP is making money the customer isn't hurting for. So their total profits are higher, and they might even be able to raise your rates with some nonsense junk fees, but because the government is footing part of the bill, you don't care as much/tolerate it.

The ACP has the same problem our healthcare often does: Rather than forcing corporations not to fleece people, the government foots the bill and gets fleeced itself instead.

The US government seems unwilling or unable to just put their foot down and say "you're charging too much, and we're putting a stop to that".

The largest gov run health care programs tell providers exactly what they will pay. What are you on about?

They're arguing that the USA doesn't do that, but should.

"The prices that Medicare FFS pays providers are set administratively through laws and regulations, and providers can either take them or leave them."

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2022-01/57422-medical-price...

Then why is Medicare being able to negotiate drug prices instead of being required to pay the list price such a big deal?

I forgot about that. But I don't think it's that big a deal, because for other things, they already set the price:

"The prices that Medicare FFS pays providers are set administratively through laws and regulations, and providers can either take them or leave them."

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2022-01/57422-medical-price...

And in 2016 only about 10% of health costs in the US were prescription drugs.

https://www.actuary.org/content/prescription-drug-spending-u...

The ISPs themselves only recieve the amount from the FCC of your discount. The advantage to the ISP of enrolling everyone they can in the program is stability. They get that money every month, wether you lose your job and can't pay or you just forget to pay. Maybe thats not a rsik for you, but the ISP has enough customers for whom that is a risk, that marketing it to everyone is well worth it.

I don't know why the school would push ot so jard, except making sure that everyone who needs it gets on it so they jave internet at home. Schools do push everyone to apply for the Free and Reduced lunch program, wether they need it or not, because there are many other funding programs tied to it. I don't know of any programs tied to the ACP directly, though.

People forget that ISPs took billions in government money a few decades ago to fund a broadband rollout (and the attendant drop in prices) that never happened. Overall costs aside, as an individual, any discount like this is just someone putting back money in your pocket that should never have been taken out in the first place.

>I didn't renew because ultimately I felt guilty, but have to wonder how many people who didn't need it took advantage.

Honest people finish dead last in the race that is life. The winners are people who know where to draw the line between honesty and God Damn Lies(tm).

I say that as another fellow honest person (or at least I like to think I am...).

There's a race?

You nailed it in three words. Bravo.

Kind of four words, though… lol

Oh, you're absolutely right about that. With the rise of slumlords, crypto bros, etc. in the last few years it's been a test. At times I think about the ways I could have 'made it' less than ethically.

At the end of the day we all end up in a pine box. And if I'd taken advantage of people for money, it'd probably keep me up at night feeling guilty. Heck I felt guilty accepting money back from people I'd loaned it to that needed it.

I like to think there's enough of 'us suckers' to keep society as a whole running functionally, and don't want to know if not :).

One of the benefits of having religious beliefs is the piece of mind that comes with knowing that someone is keeping note of those sacrifices I make, and the life is especially not a race, and finishing dead last in the money race does not mean losing.

So yeah, we aren't suckers, and without us our civilization will collapse.

That's such a naive take and insulting to those who haven't encountered any believable gods. You're implying those without religious beliefs are holding society together when it's proven that in nature that even birds have a sense of fairness. Even without belief in gods, birds will 'take note' when other birds receive food non-proportionately[0]. That's not even mentioning how religion has been used in the past to tear societies apart as well as individuals. Once again, I get tired of having to defend secularism from this special snowflake-ism, virtue-signalling and self-righteousness that pervades the religious mindset. You do things animals do, be careful in thinking you're much better than we are.

0: https://www.oipa.org/international/animals-sense-of-fairness

>That's such a naive take and insulting to those who haven't encountered any believable gods. You're implying those without religious beliefs are holding society together

He's saying people with religious beliefs lean more towards maintaining an honest society.

Personally, I'm inclined to agree. I'm Japanese and one of our old sayings is that "The Sun is looking down on us.", which is to say the Sun sees everything we do so we shouldn't do anything we would be ashamed of.

>Even without belief in gods, birds will 'take note' when other birds receive food non-proportionately[0].

By what measure are you so decisively saying that birds don't believe in gods? I'm not aware of any means with which we can communicate with birds to such a detailed extent.

>That's not even mentioning how religion has been used in the past to tear societies apart as well as individuals.

Every single religion is fundamentally about uniting peoples together and maintaining the public peace. It is unfortunate that this gets warped and abused when two different religions meet and end up viciously disagreeing, but murdering each other has never been the primary point of religion.

> Honest people finish dead last in the race that is life. The winners are people who know where to draw the line between honesty and God Damn Lies(tm).

It depends on what race you're running. The problem is letting the con artists define the race - for money, for power. If you are running for something else, the cons are the ones that are losing. For some reason, our society defers to the cons, especially these days.

The cons disparage honesty because it doesn't work in their race - how can you be an effective con if you act honestly? - and they don't understand how to operate it; they've accumulated skills and habits in manipulation, not honesty (which takes skill and experience to do effectively in real life situations).

It sets a subsidized price floor preventing true competition that would naturally offer cheap plans. It's ridiculous that you can't buy sub-$50 plans in many markets.

A program that started in 2021 is responsible for the lack of cheap plans?

how would those companies browbeating you know that you "make plenty". The program needs a policy revision not "lets cut poor people off internet". They would expect honest people not to take them up on the offer if they making plenty of money. It's called being part of a society and knowing you're taking money from a program being targeted at the poor.

If you think $30 is low, wait until you find out about Comcast’s fixed rate secret $10/mo plan that you can ask them for.

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