It serves to have an underclass that politicians can dump on, it seems.
How often do pay increases perfectly keep someone in the gap? Presumably some of them will be large enough, through changes of jobs for example, that the family would completely jump that gap.
> because income requirements that cause people to fall of medicaid or SNAP completely are sharp
Why would it? This is perhaps intentional as well. Only allow the program to benefit half the country. I'm sure you can predict how that political split occurs and insulates politicians from the ballot box.
> It serves to have an underclass that politicians can dump on, it seems.
It helps keeps wages suppressed. Politicians want money. They don't care about "dumping" on you, they'll make any excuse they need to keep the money coming in.
UBI and/or UBS (universal basic services) would be so much better but there was a sustained propaganda campaign to tell people that free things are communism and therefore bad. Now Western countries are becoming ungovernable due to regulatory capture, tax evasion and industrial-scale manipulation of opinion by the elites, so fixing these problems within the current democratic system is an extremely uphill battle. At least Mamdani's election gives us some hope in the US, but there's only so much one city or even one country can do on its own without worldwide changes.