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Comment by Flozzin | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it should be open source. It is using our tax dollars after all. But I think this failure isn't a failure of the software. But a failure of using software. And of have complex laws/criteria of who can be helped. We should craft laws and programs that are uncomplex. 400 million dollars on admin software to ultimately deny people care they want. That just shouldn't be a thing. We should have spent that money on helping people, and using it to 'eat' the cost of accepting too many people.

Our justice system acknowledges that it's flawed and it's flawed with the idea of letting guilty people go, in order to make sure we aren't charging innocent people.(granted we are failing at that). But we should be crafting care with the intention of accidentally helping people who may have no qualified so that all qualified people would get care.

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I'll do you one better:

We should just have a publicly-funded health insurance plan that applies to every American at a basic level. Then you don't have to have a massive bureaucracy to figure out who's eligible, who's not, how long they are eligible, etc.

We've successfully spent more money trying to deny people public benefits than we probably would have just providing a basic level of public benefits to everyone.

I cannot fathom that it's nothing more than a strange coincidence that we have spent more money making sure as few people access any benefits as possible than it would cost to simply provide things, and that those circumstances directly benefit some of the largest corporate donors in the USA. Like, every business that has employees on welfare is receiving a subsidy. The fact that Walmart and other large employers (I think maybe Amazon got caught out doing this?) pass out literature on how to apply for welfare tells you everything you need to know. If those people received a basic income, public insurance, etc. etc. that would provide a baseline, okay existence, with the option to then get a job to buy luxuries and such, not a fucking soul would work for Walmart. Because why the fuck would you have a job that doesn't pay you enough to have a good life unless the alternative is starvation?

Think of every single employer in this country that employs people who, despite working full time, still qualify for welfare. All of those companies have a direct financial incentive to pour shit tons of cash into ensuring our social safety net is as shitty as possible.

>every business that has employees on welfare is receiving a subsidy.

Apparently, that subsidy can happen whether or not you are even offered a job. This was found on a recent job application:

"We are asking you for the following information to determine if we, your potential employer, could be entitled to tax credit benefits. These tax credits were created to help people that have historically faced barriers to employment. We may be able to obtain valuable tax credits based on your answers to the upcoming questions."

I would think the wording is just not very well chosen, and the tax credits will only be unlocked when the potential employee becomes an actual employee.

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