[HN Gopher] Policy punishes disabled people who save more than $2k
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Policy punishes disabled people who save more than $2k
Author : jarrenae
Score : 242 points
Date : 2022-05-20 20:17 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fullstackeconomics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fullstackeconomics.com)
| endisneigh wrote:
| It's sad to say but if you're depending on the governments
| assistance don't expect to be treated particularly well
| unconditionally.
|
| I believe the fact these amounts are not pinned to inflation is
| generally intentional. The whole thing needs to be overhauled.
| [deleted]
| contravariant wrote:
| Policy would be a lot easier to control if income was only taxed
| once.
| im3w1l wrote:
| I can see a cash-only undeclared job or even like theft or drug
| dealing being being big temptations.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You can go read reports from the OG sociologists and they're
| talking about how people in the projects have all sorts of cash
| income so they don't lose their bennies and the gangs tax the
| cash. That was 60yr ago.
| Spoom wrote:
| Can confirm based on my experiences with lower income folks.
| It's incredibly difficult to do things the "right way".
| jokoon wrote:
| I live in france, and a few "counties" (departements) implemented
| such thing, at a higher amount (about 20k), but for welfare
| recipients. The amount is about 500 euros per month.
|
| Some sued and got the decision canceled.
|
| I guess it's an in-progress situation as the new government will
| try to pay all welfare potential recipients, not only just the
| ones who ask for it (about 1/3 of people who are eligible don't
| file for welfare). It's a bit of a problem because "counties"
| have more recipients than others, so it should be the whole state
| of france to take care of it.
| dfdz wrote:
| This is a horrible policy, but it seems there is a possible
| solution (for people with good enough credit, which means the
| most vulnerable people cannot do this):
|
| Get a mortgage on house that will take a while to pay off.
|
| In order to "save" you pay extra towards the mortgage
|
| In order to "withdraw" money (if needed) you take out a small
| loan against the house
|
| Some bank should make a mobile app which does this, in
| combination with Zelle.
|
| SuperHomeSaverApp
|
| With free instant transfer between your bank accounts and home
| paulmd wrote:
| It's not easy for someone with disabilities and no demonstrable
| employment to get a zero-down-payment mortgage.
| anon209832423 wrote:
| My brother is on disability, and has an ABLE account so that my
| family can give him some money above the disability funds.
|
| His handicap is not physical, and he is not capable of doing the
| reporting himself, and he is often unpleasant. So I spend several
| hours a month dealing with his wadded up receipts to document
| every ABLE expense. It's invasive and humiliating for him, and a
| huge burden for me.
| [deleted]
| westcort wrote:
| My key takeaways:
|
| * SSI is run by the Social Security Administration (SSA), and it
| is a basic income of sorts given to some people who have little
| or no other income
|
| * While SSI and its asset cap are obviously not taxes --the
| government is paying out money, not taking it in --there's a
| similar property to many tax systems: as you make more money and
| become more self-sufficient, you lose some of those gains to
| government policy
|
| * You really do have to play "hot potato" with your money, never
| saving more than three months of income (assuming you get the
| usual benefit) at a time, unless you can divert your money into a
| category that's excluded from the SSA's definition of resources
|
| * So to manage life as a disabled SSI recipient, you might need
| to carefully separate out your different types of spending
| between your ABLE account and your ordinary checking account
| --which still can't get above $2,000
|
| * "It's making all disabled people into accountants, because you
| have to be one to follow these rules."
|
| * That $2,000 limit is not indexed for inflation and has not been
| updated since 1989
| floxy wrote:
| My key takeaways:
|
| * There is a bi-partisan bill that has been introduced into the
| Senate to fix this.
|
| * The new savings limits would be $10,000 per person / $20,000
| per couple, and would be indexed to inflation.
|
| * This is senate bill S.4102
| (https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-
| bill/410...)
|
| * So I suppose we should call or write our senators to help
| push this along.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Why have any limit at all. What the hell does a limit even
| accomplish?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| To prevent a multimillionaire who becomes disabled from
| collecting disability because they don't need it.
|
| They're punishing hundreds of thousands of people in order
| to prevent the abuse of a few dozen.
| paulmd wrote:
| Dead on arrival.
|
| If it's bipartisan, who are the republican co-sponsors? Doubt
| there are any. And a significant number of democrats will
| block it. Manchin and Sinema aren't going to "expand
| welfare".
| floxy wrote:
| >If it's bipartisan, who are the republican co-sponsors?
|
| Rob Portman:
|
| https://www.portman.senate.gov/newsroom/press-
| releases/portm...
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >as you make more money and become more self-sufficient, you
| lose some of those gains to government policy
|
| Not quite. With a progressive income bracket and a simple tax
| scenario (1040EZ kind of thing), there is never a time where an
| increase in salary implies a net decrease in take-home pay.
| Going "into the next bracket" means your marginal dollars (the
| new ones you are making) get taxed at a higher rate, not your
| entire income.
|
| This SSI situation does punish people, however, and it is
| clearly not the only assistance system with an all-or-nothing
| cutoff. The solution should either be to have a more
| intelligent system for measuring income, allowing people to put
| "excess" income into a focused-use bank account, or to scrap
| asset restrictions altogether. This sounds like the kind of
| requirement put in by politicians who have to pander to people
| who don't want to give money to "freeloaders".
| Reichhardt wrote:
| Its highly inefficient for millions of individuals welfare
| recipients to being independently purchasing accommodation,
| entertainment, utilities, food.
|
| A superior solution would be for Governments to setup large
| establishments where all of these services could be provided
| centrally and directly. Individuals could contribute their
| labor to maintain the establishment.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| That's called institutionalization and nobody wants that for
| themselves or the people they care about.
| vmception wrote:
| Both income and asset tests need to be in phases, not cutoffs
|
| And those phases need to be market linked in some way
| educaysean wrote:
| Here I was feeling bad that a feature I designed and released had
| some edge cases around a small browser feature I hadn't fully
| considered.
|
| This article is truly inspiring - I guess shouldn't be so hard on
| myself if the very government that runs this country is
| constantly [m]ucking things up time after time. But hey, the
| people affected are only the poor and the disabled who make up
| the bottom rung of our society, so who cares right? If anything
| 33 years was a blazing fast turnaround time.
| substation13 wrote:
| Finally an application of Bitcoin?
| eli wrote:
| Hiding money from the government? It's honestly only mediocre
| at that.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Seen this kind of thing several times.
|
| "Assistance" programs meant to prop people up with so many
| reporting requirements and perverse incentives that punish you
| for improving your situation to the extent that the best path is
| to not even try to improve your situation and be entirely
| dependent on the program because when you do start earning income
| or saving anything, they take so much away from you that there is
| a significant cost to any amount of improvement until well after
| you'd be self-sufficient. i.e. it is more expensive to earn any
| income than it is to earn none, and the constant threat of losing
| support of the program (explicit threats) is much more anxiety
| inducing for the most vulnerable populations often than the
| situation they were trying to exit.
|
| Being homeless, getting into a program to help the homeless, and
| then constantly being threatened with a return to homelessness if
| somebody doesn't do the paperwork exactly right is just crazy,
| but I've seen it first hand.
| [deleted]
| daenz wrote:
| It's amazing how many people see this happening, acknowledge it
| is wrong and severely dysfunctional, and then turn around and
| claim that everything will be better when the government runs
| everything in the economy.
| guelo wrote:
| It's the politicians with your antigovernment attitude that
| make these programs so awful. Then they turn around and point
| at the mess they helped create as the reason they're
| antigovernment.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's easy to pass blame; harder to realize that we are the
| people who are supposed to fix it.
| amelius wrote:
| Do economists and politologist not acknowledge the problem?
| mordae wrote:
| It's happening mostly because the politicians advocating for
| these dysfunctional policies are ignorants corrupted by their
| business friends who really don't want people to feel safe
| enough to ask for more money.
|
| At least here in Europe. Speaking from experience.
|
| We have several people directly profiting from several
| ineffective policies targeting disadvantaged in the local
| Parliament.
| bitwize wrote:
| xmprt wrote:
| How would you solve this without the government? I can't see
| why private companies would be incentivized to do this. And
| the reason this is dysfunctional is because the government
| doesn't go far enough in extending benefits. If there was
| more budget allocated to these benefits then we wouldn't have
| this problem.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Welfare policies don't have to be stupid, now do they?
| tragictrash wrote:
| I don't think people are arguing for no government
| assistance program, they're observing that it's
| incentivizing staying in the program rather than the
| assumed intended use, helping someone get on their feet
| again
| mordae wrote:
| Sometimes it's not even about budget.
|
| I've seen clerks actively discourage people from asking for
| the benefits even before the official evaluation.
| daenz wrote:
| >And the reason this is dysfunctional is because the
| government doesn't go far enough in extending benefits. If
| there was more budget allocated to these benefits then we
| wouldn't have this problem.
|
| This pov is exactly what I was describing. It's always
| "more money will fix it." More control, more money, and
| then things will be better. I promise. Compulsive gamblers
| have a term for this: "chasing losses"
|
| >How would you solve this without the government?
|
| The problem of people with disabilities needing help? Do
| you believe people never received help before the
| government came along? They were helped at a local level by
| charitable people who cared about each other and knew that
| taking care of each other was part of a healthy society.
| Neither business nor government replaces that.
| taurath wrote:
| > Do you believe people never received help before the
| government came along?
|
| I do. Especially when people who need the help are from
| poor communities who can't spare much - much less provide
| things like in home care, transportation, etc.
|
| If you say gov doesn't need to be involved then please
| show me who is gonna help. The only ones I know of are
| the same that throw queer kids or male domestic abuse
| victims out on the street. People are more charitable
| when they're rich (or more accurately, on rising
| incomes), but they only help out people close to them.
| Poor people are dehumanized. That's why we need the gov.
|
| Or did you not like see the lines of cars 20 miles long
| during covid for food assistance?
| daenz wrote:
| Charitable programs in places of worship existed long
| before government programs. These are communities of
| people giving their time, money, and resources, and are
| actually invested in the people they are helping. If you
| don't believe they ever helped anyone, then we
| fundamentally disagree on historical facts.
| notriddle wrote:
| Exactly what time period in what part of the world are
| you thinking of? If you go back too far, you'll hit a
| time when places of worship _were the government_ , or at
| least so entangled in it as to make no difference. If you
| don't go back far enough, you'll hit a time when work
| houses and sanitariums were commonplace, which might be
| inhumane by modern standards, but definitely count as
| "government programs to help the poor."
| taurath wrote:
| > If you don't believe they ever helped anyone
|
| I can see from your very uncharitable reading of my
| comment how you could see that I was saying that. I was
| saying that many people have not and currently don't have
| receive help from those charitable institutions, and also
| its not enough.
|
| Look around you to see whether charitable programs are
| enough to solve these problems. If they were, they'd be
| solved. They are /helping/, but they're not enough, and
| often they come with strings attached like hide that
| you're LGBT, which some people literally can't do.
|
| People need actual security - if charitable programs gave
| it to people then there'd be no problem, but they can't
| or won't.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Literally nobody is disputing that charities in places of
| worship "ever helped anyone". What's in dispute is
| whether they would have sufficient resources and the will
| to help _everyone_.
|
| There are plenty of stories about religious programs
| refusing to help those outside of their religion which
| presents a pretty big problem if we're supposed to rely
| on them for universal charity.
|
| One recent story:
| https://www.propublica.org/article/utahs-social-safety-
| net-i...
| daenz wrote:
| taurath wrote:
| Please assume I'm a reasonable person enough to not say
| that nobody has ever received help, and see the context
| as to what I meant - that many people do not receive
| enough help.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| _Do you believe people never received help before the
| government came along?_
|
| Depends on the time period, and honest we simply didn't
| have modern medicine either. Your disabled child might
| have been left on the streets, left in the woods to die,
| or sold to someone else (other children might have been
| sold too). An infant? Infanticide was a thing at
| different times. Sometimes you'd be sent away to a home,
| where you'd be abused.
|
| You were often an outcast and a beggar and your life was
| a lot worse. And even worse, folks might have treated you
| like you deserved it because it was a sign of god's
| wrath.
|
| In short, folks with disabilities have it better than
| they did in the past because we started banding together
| as a society and taking care of folks (government). And
| we still fail folks.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Also being locked away in overcrowded sanitariums.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > This pov is exactly what I was describing. It's always
| "more money will fix it." More control, more money, and
| then things will be better. I promise. Compulsive
| gamblers have a term for this: "chasing losses"
|
| "more control" ?
|
| "Expanding welfare programs = more control" is some
| tinfoil hat thinking.
|
| I want you to pause for a moment and think critically for
| a moment and consider the context of the conversation.
|
| Right now, if you're disabled, you're given a paltry
| $841/month, and you're told that if you ever have more
| than $2,000 in cash, that $841 will be taken away. The
| government is forcing you to live in poverty. You can't
| save money. Imagine you found a way to start a business
| despite your disabilities, and single $2000 month of
| income takes all your benefits away. Any attempt at
| improving your situation becomes an all-in endevour, so
| you better not fuck it up, or else the government kicks
| you into homelessness after the $841/month gets taken
| away.
|
| How is improving this program by lifting the $2K limit
| expanding control? Seems like it would _reduce_ control
| if you ask me by giving you the freedom to make the
| attempt at improving your life without worry of failure.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Do you believe people never received help before the
| government came along?
|
| Yes. These people simply died. Charity helps a few of
| them but is woefully incapable of helping all of them.
|
| > They were helped at a local level by charitable people
| who cared about each other and knew that taking care of
| each other was part of a healthy society.
|
| My aunt has a brain injury. She needs trained help as
| well as expensive doctors. Charity has done fuck all to
| help her - except the countless hours my parents have
| spent helping her. Where are these magical charities she
| can go to?
| daenz wrote:
| >except the countless hours my parents have spent helping
| her.
|
| Wouldn't you be happy if more people were like your
| parents? If there were "expensive doctors" who felt in
| their hearts the need to help your aunt, free of charge?
| It's not an imaginary world, it just takes work to build.
| But the further we replace the spirit of charity with an
| impersonal, dysfunctional system of coercion, the harder
| it is to realize that world.
| jnovek wrote:
| So I take it that you host a disabled person in your
| home, then?
|
| What's even better is, this system _already exists_ and
| is being utilized beyond its breaking point.
|
| How do I know? Well, it takes 1 to 2 YEARS to be approved
| for SSI or SSDI and, if you can't work, someone has to
| pay for your basic cost of living. Or you become
| homeless.
|
| Anyone who is applying for SSDI and isn't homeless is
| being supported by _someone_.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > the further we replace the spirit of charity with an
| impersonal, dysfunctional system of coercion
|
| This is a pretty dishonest strawman on many levels.
| First, taxation-based disability support is "spirit of
| charity" at scale.
|
| Second, local charity is not mutually exclusive with
| disability support and talking about "replace" makes a
| strawman.
|
| Third, local charity is in no way guaranteed. Something
| happens and suddenly charities run out of funds and
| disabled people can die of hunger.
| daenz wrote:
| >First, taxation-based disability support is "spirit of
| charity" at scale.
|
| I invite you to not pay your taxes and watch what
| happens.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > If there were "expensive doctors" who felt in their
| hearts the need to help your aunt, free of charge?
|
| Hard to do when malpractice lawsuits are a thing.
| daenz wrote:
| Good thing healthcare professionals have malpractice
| insurance?
| ska wrote:
| > Do you believe people never received help before the
| government came along?
|
| Prior to such programs, level of help was far more
| variable and often dependent mostly on family.
| alistairSH wrote:
| No, they weren't. You're dreaming about a time that never
| existed, or where it did exist was completely incapable
| of scaling and weathering economic downturns. It's a
| common conservative narrative, but it simply isn't based
| on reality.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/the-
| con...
|
| https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/great-
| depression/...
| daenz wrote:
| >You're dreaming about a time that never existed, or
| where it did exist was completely incapable of scaling
| and weathering economic downturns.
|
| You can leave off "it never existed" if you immediately
| acknowledge that it did exist, but with constraints.
|
| If the constraints/scaling are what you care about, then
| make the case that everyone is better off with an
| inefficient system of coercion and perverse incentives,
| versus a system where people are giving their time and
| money willingly out of the goodness inside them.
| jnovek wrote:
| I am disabled and applying for SSDI right now.
|
| Can you please point me to these charities that help the
| disabled afford to live that I keep hearing so much
| about?
|
| The process of applying for SSDI is horrible and
| demeaning and I'd really love to go with one of those
| organizations instead!
| philistine wrote:
| We want to help people who don't make a lot of money.
| Governments are imperfect institutions yes, but what
| alternative is there to send money to people who need it ?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| This is the one-two punch that Republicans use to kill social
| programs.
|
| 1. Drag their feet until Democrats reluctantly agree to
| include something guaranteed to cause dysfunction (uneconomic
| means testing, perverse incentive cliffs, adverse selection,
| etc).
|
| 2. Point at the dysfunction they created as a reason to kill
| the program.
|
| I'd be a lot more sympathetic to #2 if I didn't see so much
| #1.
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| And yet, when the Democrats control Congress and the
| presidency (like they do now, like they did in 2010), they
| do absolutely nothing to show us how wonderful their
| programs could be -- if only they had control!
|
| Government programs don't need Republicans to add the
| dysfunction.
| praxulus wrote:
| They don't actually have the ability to pass general
| bills without Republican support though. Outside of
| budget reconciliation, neither party has had the power to
| pass legislation without at least some bipartisan support
| since Ted Kennedy was replaced in 2010.
| leereeves wrote:
| They do have the ability to pass general bills without
| Republican support, actually. They can pass a separate
| bill to suspend the filibuster on another bill, and
| suspending the filibuster only requires the 50 Democrat
| Senators and the VP.
|
| They tried to do so in January but Manchin and Sinema
| voted against it.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I mean, I get it that the Republicans like to destroy this
| shit.
|
| But according to TFA, this $2000 policy limit has been in
| place since 1989. What have the Democrats done? Have they
| not been in any position of power in the last 30 years?
|
| Probably they have just also sat around and blamed the
| other party too. Sick of this passing the buck bullshit
| that literally gets nothing done.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The answer is actually quite simple.
|
| The democrats in office simply do not represent their
| constituents. The democrat-voting population is farther
| left than the democrat politicians. However, outside of
| the more radical democrats like Sanders and AOC, most
| democrats have been bought by the wealthy just like the
| republicans.
| kbenson wrote:
| > The democrat-voting population is farther left than the
| democrat politicians.
|
| That is your opinion, and based on your experience in
| your cohort, and additionally does not really address
| what "more left" actually means. There are many different
| types of people that vote Democrat at many different
| stages of life, in many different industries and in
| different states/areas where certain things have more
| support than others. And that's before we even start
| breaking things out to being "left" socially or fiscally.
|
| I don't think the answer is "quite simple" at all, at
| least not in the way you explained it.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Even amongst the left, the narrative of the welfare queen
| is strong. Eliminating means testing is so easily
| attacked that it is a challenging policy to propose.
|
| This isn't to let the Democrats off the hook, only to
| explain that Democratic voters are not uniformly behind
| improving these policies.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yeah, the Democrats are right wing. You're confounding
| left and Democrats.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The overton window has shifted so far right that some
| people think Biden is a socialist.
| krapp wrote:
| The Overton window as already there when people were
| calling _Obama,_ of all people, a Marxist.
| danielheath wrote:
| By the standards of the rest of the world, the US
| Democrats are centre-right and American politics have no
| left. It's really astonishing how different the Overton
| window is (and concerning how much my home country is
| importing US politics.
| guerrilla wrote:
| By a European standard they're not even center-right.
| linuxftw wrote:
| There's nothing stopping the single party wealthy states
| like CA and NY implementing whatever they want. Just raise
| taxes on the rich and do whatever you want with their
| money, right?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| These kind of labyrinthine policies happen because they're
| attempts to appease people who don't want these programs to
| exist at all.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Yup. People complain about freeloaders taking advantage of
| these systems so they demand policies like this.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Yep. Shut down the whole system because there are some
| people who might cheat on it.
|
| It's like if we shut down Home Depot because there's
| people stealing merchandise.
|
| Welp, buncha fuckin freeloaders stealing tools again!
| Better get rid of all the Home Depots so nobody can
| steal.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| And even if people aren't cheating it, just make up
| stories about people doing to so to justify shutting it
| down! The "welfare queen" archetype is so strong in the
| minds of people in this country that it prevents all
| sorts of useful policy.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Well, it is the government that's providing the help in the
| first place.
|
| They just need to fix the qualifications at the margin, but
| that is often met with hostility from other voters for the
| misguided reason that people are just leeching off these
| programs, when the reality is exactly what is described, that
| the paperwork and punishment for extra earning is exactly
| what makes that happen, to the extents that it does.
|
| For the record I absolutely don't want the government
| handling everything, I'm just tired of hearing that
| everything the government does is disfunctional and
| everything private enterprise does is great and noble, cause
| it's not true.
| dwallin wrote:
| It's amazing how people could see this happening, acknowledge
| it is wrong and severely dysfunctional, then go around
| insisting we add more means testing to benefits because it
| would be horrible if people got help who "didn't deserve it".
|
| Just a hint, the people causing this dysfunctional state of
| affairs are probably not the ones who are trying to expand
| government benefits to cover as many people as possible.
| [deleted]
| mcavoybn wrote:
| Very snarky response. I think the poster you replied to was
| trying to point out that the reason this happens is because
| the government prints money and if they don't take the
| money out of circulation via taxes then inflation becomes
| an issue.
| tshaddox wrote:
| "For decades most airplane crashes have been caused by
| trained pilots and yet we continue to put trained pilots in
| the cockpit." This form of argument almost looks compelling
| until you realize that it is predicated on some unspoken
| belief that there is a clear better alternative.
| excitom wrote:
| It's not the fault of government per se, but puritanical
| conservatives in government who think any assistance to
| disadvantaged people is coddling lazy slackers.
|
| See for example, drug testing of assistance recipients. It
| turns out, as the testing has proven, that most of the people
| who get a little bit of cash are most likely to use it on
| food and essentials. Oh, and the people who run the for-
| profit drug testing happen to be cronies of the politicians
| who advocated for the testing - such a surprise.
|
| Another example: Don't let people withdraw all their money at
| once or they will waste it. Instead give them debit cards
| with a small withdrawal limit. Oh, and there's a withdrawal
| fee that eats into the meager cash ... and cronies of the
| politicians who advocated for the policy own the ATMs in the
| stores which collect those fees.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The alternative is worse. My aunt is on disability. Yes,
| systems suck and if she could hold a temp job she'd be
| discouraged from doing so.
|
| She'd be dead in the ground if conservative policies ran
| everything.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Sounds like you are pro-immortality!
| jnovek wrote:
| I am in the process of applying for SSDI right now. AMAA, I
| suppose.
|
| One of the first pieces of advice that I received in this
| process -- and boy is it a process! -- was, "don't ever say
| anything that implies that you might want to or be able to go
| back to work someday."
|
| I mean, of course I want to go back to work someday! I don't
| want to spend the rest of my life sick and below the poverty
| line, not to mention being sick is _incredibly_ boring. I
| really want to be well and working and I feel like the vast
| majority of people in SSDI must be in the same boat.
|
| Criteria for SSDI (paraphrasing) are that you must be disabled
| such that you can no longer do your job, are unable to do
| another job with your skills and level of ability and you'll be
| in this situation for at least a year.
|
| Even so, expressing even the desire to return to work someday
| _beyond_ a year from now is apparently a sign that you can work
| right now to some examiners.
|
| The entire process is wrapped in layers of fraud paranoia, even
| though the fraud rate is absolutely minuscule.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _The entire process is wrapped in layers of fraud paranoia,
| even though the fraud rate is absolutely minuscule._
|
| ... or possibly "due to the layers of fraud paranoia, the
| fraud rate is absolutely minuscule". Difficult to know, I
| would think?
| jessaustin wrote:
| It would be possible to change policies slightly and
| observe the results. The slope toward vastly less punitive
| benefits regimes might be slippery...
| jnovek wrote:
| Of course; I'm sure that, if it were easy enough, people
| would commit social security fraud.
|
| I know this is a subjective statement, but as I go through
| this process it just feels way, way, way over the top.
|
| We could probably do with a lot less. We could probably
| make the process kinder. The experience is so humiliating
| and we do it to people who are already suffering.
|
| Edit: Imagine, hypothetically, that the process were twice
| as kind but bumped the fraud rate to 1.5%. I would be
| totally OK with that. Maybe it's worth spending a little
| extra public money to treat people with dignity.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| If we want to help people, I think the first step is to assign
| each person/family an advocate. Someone who looks out for the
| person in need and reaches out to them. That person could help
| navigate the bureaucracy, explain to people their options, etc.
|
| Sadly, most people have to advocate for themselves. They have
| to research what they need to do to get benefits, try to figure
| out how to navigate the poorly designed system, make calls,
| fill out paperwork, submit documents, etc. Poor people may not
| have the mental/emotional energy to go through all this.
|
| I know, I know. Sometimes this is the system behaving as
| designed. The government makes it hard for people to get
| benefits so it doesn't have to pay as much. Such design is
| despicable.
| cryptonector wrote:
| That's quite the employment program you're proposing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If we want to help people, I think the first step is to
| assign each person/family an advocate.
|
| The first and last step is to just give them cash. Give
| everyone cash indiscriminately. If we want to help people.
|
| To ensure the the wealth is not being transferred from poor
| to wealthy, you have marginal income/wealth or marginal sales
| tax rates.
| jnovek wrote:
| Interestingly, UBI is usually regressive for disabled
| people.
|
| It's just straight-up more expensive to be disabled than
| non-disabled.
|
| This was a big discussion in the disabilities community
| around Yang's UBI in 2020.
|
| I find UBI intriguing, but it wouldn't necessarily free us
| from complexities like this.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Yes, there may be situations where certain people need
| more assistance than others. And it would require a
| bureaucracy to qualify and whatnot, but that is the same
| as the situation now. At least with a minimum amount of
| straight cash to everyone, a significant portion of the
| population no longer has to jump through hurdles.
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah, but it won't ever happen because it lays bare the
| function of taxation as (mostly -- sin taxes and virtue
| credits being the exception) the vehicle for a wealth
| transfer from rich to poor. And if we actually admit that
| then we have to deal with the awkwardness that is why even
| bother taxing people below the breakeven point?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| While I think UBI is an interesting idea, it most certainly
| is _not_ the only thing to be done; it is not a silver
| bullet that will solve all problems related to money.
| dsr_ wrote:
| You mean progressive rather than marginal, but yes.
|
| You can give people cash. You also have to kill a lot of
| restrictive zoning laws, because new housing can't be built
| until they go away. You need to require new housing to pay
| for new infrastructure to support itself, and then you need
| to require old housing to pay for maintaining their
| infrastructure, too. You need to kill off local funding of
| education in favor of universal funding of education,
| because otherwise the poor kids get substandard schools and
| teachers.
|
| You need to fund public transit, and it needs to be aimed
| at getting people not just from their homes to work and
| back, but also to schools and stores and entertainment.
|
| Everything has to be automatically indexed to inflation, or
| else you get the same problem ten to twenty years later.
| namibj wrote:
| If you consider the (conditional) basic income in Germany
| ("Grundsicherung") as given, and it's partial reduction in the
| face of more than 100EUR/month income as income tax, one
| reaches the asymptotic effective (average, not marginal) tax
| rate of the super-rich at about 180~200EUR/month. It's
| progressive until around 1500EUR/month of income (if it was
| salary), after which it's regressive.
|
| UBI would fix those perverse incentives (80% marginal "tax
| rate" for the next few hundred after the first 100 (per month),
| then an about 300~500EUR/month wide band with 90% marginal tax
| rate, followed by iirc another couple hundred at 0% marginal,
| and then hitting around 20% marginal (going up in piecewise-
| linear progression)).
| savanaly wrote:
| It doesn't even have to be the case that, as you say, "it is
| more expensive to earn any income than it is to earn none".
| That describes an implicit tax rate of >100% which would
| certainly discourage work, but even if it were, say, 75%, I
| don't think you have to be a hard-core republican to believe
| that that might disincentivize work and be on the far side of
| the Laffer curve.
| ipaddr wrote:
| This is what many low income buildings become. They take 30% of
| your gross income so any small raise get's immediately reduced
| by half and sucked into the machine. Unless you can get a huge
| salary increase above the average wage you can never save
| enough to move into a property outside of the system even after
| your rent reaches parity with average rent prices. The only
| thing one can do is to quit working legally which reduces the
| rent and frees you up to find cash work.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| That's way less of a problem. It's not _great_ when half a
| raise goes to rent and half goes into your pocket, but it
| doesn 't hold a candle to policies where the entire raise
| disappears or you actually end up with less money.
|
| And a situation like that definitely won't stop you from
| saving money. It doesn't trap you. If a wage increase takes
| your payment from significantly below market rent up to
| market rent, you'll be able to save up a security deposit and
| moving expenses pretty quickly.
|
| Lower the percentage some or make it a third of net income
| and it sounds like a pretty great system.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| this is way worse. medical expenses for disabled people are
| high enough that this takes over 100% for a lot of jobs
| michaelmrose wrote:
| As a resident this is absolutely the least of the
| difficulties in such buildings.
| jakub_g wrote:
| When I was a student and wanted to get a small job to get some
| pocket money, I couldn't, because after reporting it, my mom
| would lose some family benefits and we'd be worse off at the
| end of the day. This was a recurring theme until I graduated
| and went on my own.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I filed for unemployment for a few months during the pandemic
| (film industry. Literally no work available). The most insane
| revelation, as this was my first time filing, was that I had to
| file every single week. All for a paltry $247/wk (without the
| federal addition during Covid). The process to get started was
| so opaque that the local 600 (camera union, I'm not even a
| member but they didn't care) held a live zoom session where
| they screen shared with us and had us all follow their exact
| instructions on what boxes to check, what to fill out, etc. and
| folks still had trouble.
|
| Again, it was quite the revelation.
| WalterBright wrote:
| We also have a crazy system where a graduate is a fool to pay
| back the education loans.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| You mean pay them at all or pay more than minimum payments? I
| believe the latter but I don't understand the former (maybe
| you're talking about the covid deferments?).
| tehwebguy wrote:
| What do you mean? People who don't pay their student loans
| face all kinds of negative consequences from being unable to
| buy a home / car due to credit dings, tax refund garnishment
| & wage garnishment on top of fees & interest
| WalterBright wrote:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2022/05/19/if-
| biden-...
| shakes_mcjunkie wrote:
| Why would someone be a fool to pay? Biden was previously
| advocating for only $10k which doesn't cover the median
| federal student loan amount. $50k may not even happen.
| Right now you can pay down some of the principle at 0%
| interest in case your loans aren't forgiven.
|
| https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/student-
| loans/you-c...
|
| It's much more complicated than calling people "fools"
| for paying.
|
| TBH the program is a disaster and it's really, really
| disappointing that the loans won't just simply be
| forgiven. I personally know many people held back from
| economic participation because of federal student loans.
| Even if you want to be all bs moralistic about the
| responsibility of paying debts back, from an economic
| perspective the loans should be forgiven.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If you pay back your loans responsibly, and another
| doesn't and gets their balance forgiven, who's the fool?
|
| > all bs moralistic about the responsibility of paying
| debts back
|
| It's dishonorable to not pay back money you borrowed. I'm
| sure if you loaned someone money, and they said "bs" when
| you expected repayment, you'd be very put out.
|
| P.S. I've had people who've stolen money from me contact
| me years later wanting to do business together. I don't
| understand modern morality, or how they'd imagine I'd
| ever work with them again.
| joe5150 wrote:
| I don't understand your point. if you're saying it would
| be wise to take advantage of current 0% interest and/or
| deferment policies to pay as little as possible until
| it's clearer whether or not any kind of loan forgiveness
| will happen, then sure. not paying at all is really not
| an option over the long term.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| I am not optimistic that Biden will attempt to use
| executive powers to make any broad student loan
| cancelations.
|
| From a legislative standpoint, Biden is not likely to
| sign any more bills into law other than military & police
| power / budget expansion and some occasional filler.
| gwright wrote:
| I most recently saw that with some criticisms of Section 8
| housing.
|
| I'm paraphrasing but basically to be eligible for Section 8
| housing you can't have too many assets. Good financial planning
| would say to scrimp and save so that you can get make a
| downpayment to get a mortgage but you'll be kicked out of the
| section 8 housing long before you've saved enough to get out
| yourself.
|
| Catch-22
| alistairSH wrote:
| Eh. Why should the jump from Section 8 (subsidized rent) be
| straight to home ownership (and not renting with your own
| income)?
|
| Section 8 might have some inefficient cliffs. But not
| allowing savings for a mortgage doesn't strike me as one of
| them.
| diob wrote:
| This is such a strange take.
| bsedlm wrote:
| why should you be forced to rent for a place to sleep?
| praxulus wrote:
| I agree that not allowing savings for a mortgage probably
| isn't a huge issue in practice, but discouraging saving in
| general is completely bonkers policy.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Oh, I agree. Savings of some form should be encouraged.
| Various cliffs are bad policy.
|
| I'd rather some form of UBI-like assistance. Single
| program, means tested but no cliffs(just a gradual phase
| out of some sort), and no limits on what the assistance
| is spent on.
| _jal wrote:
| What's this business with "should"?
|
| A big reason why we have these perverse rules in the first
| place is that people are absurdly concerned with
| controlling people who accept (certain types of) public
| money.
|
| If someone can find a path to jump from dependency to
| ownership, why "should" aid programs be structured to
| prevent that?
|
| I, for one, would be a fan of imposing similar restrictions
| on other aid recipients, like mortgage-interest deduction-
| takers and enthanol producers. I suspect many folks would
| abruptly notice the absurdities with such rules.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > If someone can find a path to jump from dependency to
| ownership, why "should" aid programs be structured to
| prevent that?
|
| Because the next step from subsidized housing is to
| renting.
|
| If we structured subsidizing housing programs such that
| they enabled people to save up for down payments, this
| creates a perverse incentive for normal renters to get
| into subsidized housing to accelerate their transition to
| home ownership. Any time you introduce a perverse
| incentive like this, you overwhelm the system as people
| who don't need it start crowding out people who actually
| do need it.
|
| Going straight from subsidized rental housing to home
| ownership doesn't make sense. Going from subsidized
| rentals to non-subsidized rentals is the obvious next
| step.
| diob wrote:
| Believe me, folks don't want to live in subsidized
| housing, it generally sucks.
| _jal wrote:
| > Going straight from subsidized rental housing to home
| ownership doesn't make sense
|
| Nice bald assertion. It doesn't make sense to trap people
| in dependency, but I take it you're more comfortable with
| these programs failing in that direction...?
|
| > this creates a perverse incentive
|
| Which we already have, just with the reverse valence.
|
| This is why I said I support means-testing the mortgage-
| interest deduction. People don't really understand things
| until they've been through them, and there's no good
| reason wealthier people shouldn't have to put up with
| similar paternalist nonsense for their handout.
| diob wrote:
| Right? We never means test anything when it comes to
| wealthy incentives / programs.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I agree, however, there needs to be some sort of means
| test and phase-out. It's equally absurd that somebody
| receiving Section 8 benefits should be able to save at a
| higher rate than somebody just outside the benefit range
| (and saving at a rate that buys a house above and beyond
| a reasonable emergency fund likely does that).
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Phase-out is the key that's missing from so many
| assistance programs. It's the same with Medicaid, which
| really discourages you from taking that next step up to a
| slightly better-paying job, especially if you have a
| chronic health condition.
|
| Advancing your career in a way that should gradually
| decrease your dependance on government assistance instead
| cuts it off all at once, turning a raise into a massive
| pay cut, thus ensuring you don't climb the ladder and
| stay dependent on aid indefinitely. It's utterly
| perverse.
| paulmd wrote:
| SSI already has an income phase-out (not a cliff), as
| discussed in the article. The problem is the phase-out
| starts at $85 (!) and benefits steeply decline once you
| are in the phase-out, not that there isn't a phase-out at
| all.
|
| It also has a _wealth_ cap, but that's unrelated to the
| "make a dollar more and you're done" idea that so many
| people hold, which is not how SSI _income_ phaseouts
| work. The wealth cap is "you _accumulate_ more than $2k
| at any one time, you're done", and that is different from
| _making_ money resulting in a sudden loss.
|
| It probably is not a great idea to have a wealth cap at
| any sort of a level that might be relevant to a middle-
| class individual. Someone shouldn't have to destroy their
| safety net in order to qualify for benefits in the event
| they become disabled, and disability holders should not
| be barred from having enough cash to operate and to
| access the financial tools that would allow them to build
| their way out of poverty.
|
| Maybe we could set a cap at $50k wealth or something but
| in the end who cares, if a few people in the top 1% end
| up using it that's probably less costly than
| administrative costs of peering at everyone's bank
| statements monthly.
|
| Nor should there really be a wealth _phase-out_ for
| benefits either imo. What is the benefit of making it
| harder for people who are just about to make the leap off
| welfare to actually take the leap?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Isn't there just an element of basic fairness to this?
| The budget for Section 8 is only so much, and people who
| can afford market rent need to be moving out of the
| program to make way for others.
| idunno246 wrote:
| a quick search on google seems to say that theres no asset
| check for section 8, just income checks(including
| interest/etc from assets)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I'm paraphrasing but basically to be eligible for Section 8
| housing you can't have too many assets. Good financial
| planning would say to scrimp and save so that you can get
| make a downpayment to get a mortgage but you'll be kicked out
| of the section 8 housing long before you've saved enough to
| get out yourself.
|
| The progression would be Section 8 -> Renting -> Home
| Ownership
|
| The purpose of programs like Section 8 isn't to subsidize
| people while they save up to purchase expensive assets and
| leapfrog past non-subsidized renters. It's to backstop people
| who couldn't afford normal rents.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| How long should one rent for in this hypothetical
| situation?
|
| Could a section 8 resident buy a house, and pay for a 1
| month short term rental in the interim and meet your
| criteria? 6 mo? A year?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| The only way is to put savings under your mattress and that
| is extremely likely to get stolen (usually by relatives or
| "friends"). It's an awful catch 22.
| bqmjjx0kac wrote:
| Or NFTs ;)
| 19870213 wrote:
| Or when you need to use that money by the police as part of
| Civil Asset Forfeiture during a random stop/search.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Getting people who are on your program off your program is not
| how the bureaucrats in charge of these things grow their
| budgets, get more reports and advance their careers.
|
| Show me the incentives...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > "Assistance" programs meant to prop people up with so many
| reporting requirements and perverse incentives that punish you
| for improving your situation...
|
| It's a legitimately difficult problem, though. The interests
| and perspectives of the people who depend on these programs and
| the people who pay for them are often badly misaligned. On the
| one hand, you want to make it easy for the people who depend on
| these programs to improve their lot and achieve independence.
| On the other hand, the people who pay may be legitimately
| resentful when their money is going to strangers who don't in
| fact need it. It's a fine line to walk between those things,
| and the likely outcome is something that's biased towards one
| side or the other.
| lostcolony wrote:
| It's actually super easy to do. See, you just...make sure
| that rather than cliffs, you have percentage based reduction
| of benefits. I.e., you lose $1 of benefit for every $2 you
| make, or whatever. And something similar with assets (though
| admittedly the details would be trickier to avoid it being
| gamed).
|
| Neither the group that needs help (and their supporters), nor
| the group that doesn't want to give hands out to people who
| refuse to work but could, have reason to object to something
| like that.
|
| The actual problem is the red meat that welfare/socialism is
| to our political bases in the US, and the incentives of
| politicians, on both sides of the aisle, to ensure it
| persists. If you do the obvious thing to actually address the
| problem, neither side can use it any longer to stir up the
| base. So the incentive is to not actually fix it.
| paulmd wrote:
| As discussed elsewhere in the comments here, and as
| discussed in the article, there is indeed a phaseout for
| income. Every $1 you make above $85 reduces your benefits
| by $0.50, so they are doing exactly what you suggest.
|
| The $2000 number is a cap for _wealth_ , not _income_.
|
| The problem isn't having a phaseout or not anyway - we
| could set a wealth cliff of $50k and that would be
| perfectly fine. It's the numbers that matter, where the
| phaseout or cliff is placed and how steep a phaseout. $85 a
| month is a redonkulous place to put the phaseout even if
| phaseouts are "better" - that is a worse _policy_ than a
| 50k a month cliff!
|
| And you're right, the reasons the number hasn't been
| adjusted since 1935 (in 1989 the number was inherited from
| a prior program, it wasn't adjusted at that time) is
| because of political will. Social spending on anyone other
| than the elderly is extremely unpopular in the US.
| jnovek wrote:
| Not for SSDI. There's a strict cutoff that's adjusted
| every year. This year it's $1350 -- if you make more than
| $1350 any given month, you do not receive benefits for
| that month.
| kbelder wrote:
| One issue if that if you have multiple benefits, and each
| phases out over a similar range, the combined total loss
| can be over 100%.
|
| Suppose that between $25,000 and $35,000 income, you start
| paying taxes, you lose food stamps, you have to start
| paying toward your medical insurance, you lose your daycare
| assistance, free school lunches, etc., etc... each one of
| those could be staggered, but the net result is just
| overwhelming.
|
| I'm not a big fan of social programs; but if we're going to
| do them, they should at least be done sensibly.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| > On the other hand, the people who pay may be legitimately
| resentful when their money is going to strangers who don't in
| fact need it.
|
| Fair. But _I 'm_ resentful of the big fraudsters like Rick
| Scott.
| notamy wrote:
| > On the other hand, the people who pay may be legitimately
| resentful when their money is going to strangers who don't in
| fact need it.
|
| I understand that this is probably a stupid question, but I'm
| coming from a place of ignorance: Do people who
| dislike/resent this not also get upset that ex. their
| insurance pays for things people don't "need"? Or would the
| kind of person who makes this complaint also not be likely to
| have insurance?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Insurance in the US is often private. Private insurance
| companies push pretty hard to not pay for things that
| people don't need (to the point of sometimes not paying for
| things that people _do_ need, but that 's a different
| topic).
|
| But to me, the emotions don't match the financials. There's
| always a trade-off between false positives and false
| negatives; the more you prevent people cheating the system,
| the more you deny benefits to people who need them, and
| vice versa. And enforcement has its own cost. But nobody
| feels bad about paying for too much enforcement.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| There is not fine line we are just flat out dumber than
| rocks. Its incredibly simple in fact. Lets talk about subject
| of the article disability income.
|
| Someone with a projected lifespan of 20-30 more years, 2000 a
| month income, and no projected time frame in which they are
| expected to be able to earn an income who is actually
| successfully subsisting on that income of 2000 a month needs
| an input of 24000 per year to go on subsisting indefinably
| adjusting for inflation.
|
| If they had $48,000 in the bank it wouldn't meaningfully
| effect their need. In fact making them spend down everything
| they have before helping them is pretty stupid it renders
| their life very fragile and less likely to be stable long
| term and doesn't even save much money. The equation begins to
| change only when funds on hand are sufficient to meaningfully
| change inflow or pay for capital investment like buying a
| home outright or buying a second property for income.
|
| The turnover figure where someone doesn't NEED to have an
| actual income is actually reasonable measured in YEARS of
| income whereas the actual figure is now a single month of
| income.
|
| For an alternative look at health insurance. It's possible to
| go from free insurance to no insurance based on a 10c an hour
| raise at your part time job. Most reasonable upward economic
| trajectories move through successively better paying
| positions towards healthy finances. However if you can in a
| single small raise go from +2% wages to -50% actual economic
| health moving upwards might be a quick path to homelessness
| before you can actually complete your upward path. This is
| especially true when yourself + spouse costs not 2x the cost
| of insuring yourself but more like 3x.
|
| A non moronic idea might be to allow poor people to keep the
| same insurance that used to be free at an increasing cost
| such that any raise at all was ALWAYS a step up.
|
| > the people who pay may be legitimately resentful when their
| money is going to strangers who don't in fact need it.
|
| Sane solutions are not found by appealing to the emotions of
| ignorant, selfish, hateful people. They are found by doing
| math and projecting the probable results of the effect of
| alternative policies.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > If they had $48,000 in the bank it wouldn't meaningfully
| effect their need. In fact making them spend down
| everything they have before helping them is pretty stupid
| it renders their life very fragile and less likely to be
| stable long term and doesn't even save much money.
|
| It's one thing to give someone benefits to support their
| person, it's another to give them benefits to support their
| person AND their existing savings. It's pretty natural to
| be less generous to someone who already has the money to
| pay for what they're asking you to pay for.
|
| > Sane solutions are not found by appealing to the emotions
| of ignorant, selfish, hateful people.
|
| You're not going to get "sane solutions" with that
| attitude. You're going to get people to feel good about
| ignoring your ideas because you insulted them.
| guerrilla wrote:
| You're talking about the welfare trap. That's not what the
| article is about. The article is about disabled people who are
| unable to work being kept poor. Many people will never work
| because they can't and this punishes all of them.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It's almost like it's done on purpose.
| seventytwo wrote:
| Can confirm from second-hand experience that this is a very real
| problem.
|
| There's a "cliff" that makes it so many people get stuck. There
| needs to be a gradual decline in assistance as income goes up,
| and it should never ever get cut off for got because of a
| fortunate month or year.
| eli wrote:
| If you didn't know any better you'd think some of the people
| designing these plans wanted them to fail.
| ars wrote:
| The same thing happens with university: For the FAFSA students
| are expected to contribute 95% of their savings before benefits
| kick in.
|
| So this punishes students who save their money, and rewards
| students who waste it on frivolous things.
|
| Then there is the "spend down" for Medicaid. Same story - you
| need to waste your money before benefits kick in.
| s5300 wrote:
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Your comment seems to me somewhat unsubstantiated declaraction
| of stereotypical evil. That is, it isn't really saying anything
| we haven't already heard a lot, nor providing any additional
| context nor basis for it.
|
| Complaing about downvotes is among the surest ways to
| accumulate more downvotes, on HN. It's explicitly discouraged
| by the guidelines [0]:
|
| > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never
| does any good, and it makes boring reading.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| theossuary wrote:
| As someone with a close friend who has a childhood
| disability, the parent poster is pretty on the money. It does
| seem to depend which state you're in, because disability is
| administered by the state. Deep red states tend to make it
| miserable to work with them so people will just give up. I've
| heard so many stories of disabled people getting yelled at
| and told they're faking their very real conditions. It's
| disgusting.
| paulmd wrote:
| "you're just saying people are evil!" is a rather banal dodge
| of the entire thesis of the article, that the system is
| indeed ineffective and cruel. It's using rules-lawyerism to
| suppress a point that you find too uncomfortable to address
| with an actual argument.
|
| Frankly this is sort of a recurring theme on HN, where people
| tend to lapse into meta-argument or tone argument as a
| substitute for substantive discussion. It's a matter of
| degree but at some point these tactics do become a logical
| fallacy, it's a very enticing way to shut down an argument
| that you can't directly counter.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > a rather banal dodge of the entire thesis of the article
|
| But I wasn't addressing the article, I was addressing the
| comment.
|
| > people tend to lapse into meta-argument or tone argument
| as a substitute for substantive discussion
|
| Like what we're doing right now?
| s5300 wrote:
| Can I make the presumption that you're not somebody with a
| significant disability & also don't regularly find themselves
| talking at length with quite an amount of others in the
| disabled/disability support community? My deepest apologies
| if I'm incorrect about that, but it's hard for me to imagine
| that coming out of one who is/does.
|
| & yes, typically I'm not one to go "muh downvotes" but there
| is something quite unironically hilarious about speaking up
| about the disabled from a position of decade+ experience &
| then being downvoted to invisibility without a singular reply
| on a hyper-capitalist forum.
|
| Btw. If you feel it's unsubstantiated, please perhaps try
| reading the title of the article we're commenting about...
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > If you feel it's unsubstantiated, please perhaps try
| reading the title of the article we're commenting about...
|
| If a comment's substance can be acquired by reading the
| title of the article, then by definition it adds nothing of
| substance.
|
| Look, if the article's title is "1+1", it's just pointless
| to comment "that's 2 btw".
|
| Notice how I'm ignoring all the ad hominems and just
| answering the core?
| DavidAdams wrote:
| It's unbelievable how much time, money, and wasted potential
| productivity the USA spends trying (and failing) to make sure
| that "undeserving" people don't have access to government welfare
| benefits of various kinds.
| jmugan wrote:
| If you have too much abuse in the system trust breaks down and
| taxpayers won't support it anymore.
| klyrs wrote:
| You can also break trust by loudly and persistently
| exaggerating the prevalence of abuse in the system.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Abuse of all safety net programs is quite low. Lower than tax
| evasion by a considerable amount.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-
| myths...
|
| There's almost no evidence that there's widespread abuse of
| these programs... and claims to the contrary in some cases
| (like women having more kids to claim welfare) are talking
| points that are _over a hundred years old_.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Yet the government will approve trillions in assistance to
| corporations without ever reading the bill
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Worse than that, we spend it on people with no net worth as
| opposed to the ppp loans that sent out millions to companies
| who didnt need it at all. Only accountability for the poor
| colpabar wrote:
| And it seems like it accomplishes the exact opposite. I dated a
| girl who worked in a drug and rehab facility and she'd
| constantly complain about how the people who actually worked
| and tried to improve their situations on their own weren't
| eligible for any help, but there were a set of regulars who
| were deadbeat losers with no desire to get better who would
| essentially use the facility as a hotel. I'm not saying the
| losers shouldn't have access, but having a job should not bar
| you from getting help.
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is the correct framing: we _are_ willing to spend hundreds
| of billions of dollars a year as a country, so long as the
| framing of that money contains the lie of deservedness.
|
| Contrast our funding of SSI with our funding of the defense
| industry, an industry that would be virtually indistinguishable
| from a middle class jobs program were it not for its tendency
| to start wars in the Middle East.
| scarface74 wrote:
| It's even worse than you think. The military is constantly
| trying to close bases and get rid of weapons that aren't
| needed to save money. But Congress blocks them at every turn.
| That's the whole "government doesn't create jobs. But don't
| take away our make work military jobs."
|
| The military leaders have also been saying for years that our
| increase debt is an existential threat.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| It's been shocking the amount of "emergency" funding for
| Ukraine that has been passed in the past 2 months. If it
| were for _anything_ else other than the military,
| Republicans would have a gargantuan hissy fit over it and
| probably filibuster it to death.
| scarface74 wrote:
| And none of it helps any of "our great military men and
| women" that they claim to love. It only helps the
| military industrial complex.
|
| Again this is not criticizing the military. It's more of
| a critique of the defense industry and their lobbyist.
| scruple wrote:
| Eisenhower's farewell speech comes to mind here.
| legitster wrote:
| I think the proper framing here is that this is a (failed)
| attempt to limit abuse of the system.
|
| It's still bad, but I would rather work on the assumption that
| this is merely incompetence rather than malice.
| brink wrote:
| My sister is disabled and has this problem. She has a pile of
| cash at home as a result of it rather than safe in the bank or in
| investments. Like, you'd think someone who's paralyzed has a life
| that's hard enough, but yet we've created infinite hoops for her
| to jump through still.
| [deleted]
| s5300 wrote:
| scarface74 wrote:
| ghostly_s wrote:
| The bulk of The Democrats seem perfectly content with this
| status quo as well.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Bulk of democrat politicians, yes.
|
| Bulk of democrat voters, no.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > The people in positions of power want her dead
|
| As a family member of somebody in that position, I can
| understand that it's easy to have that kind of emotional
| perception.
|
| However, as a logical matter, I can see how it is easy to
| make the exact opposite argument to yours. The government
| doesn't want to eliminate people who might be viewed as
| drains of resources. They want votes and voting demographics
| they can pander to. They want social issues they can shovel
| more money at and sneak some extra cash to their chosen
| friends. They want to hire tons of officials to oversee
| implementations for solutions to increase their fiefdoms and
| influence. They want a compliant voting block that is
| depending on them for just enough resources to survive so
| they'll be less likely to ever be non-compliant with any
| decrees.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| The sooner you realize how many of these systems only exist to
| keep you poor and dependent the better.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| The government cares mostly about maintaining its own power, not
| helping disabled people who happen to live in its territory.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| I say this is the most deranged take on this possible, but then
| again, humanity tends to surprise me.
|
| Who is "the government" in this case? What power do they have
| over this person? The power to stop them from saving money? How
| is that power useful or desirable to anybody?
| daenz wrote:
| "Now you must vote for anyone who doesn't threaten to cut
| your benefits, regardless of their other positions" seems
| pretty powerful to me.
| paulmd wrote:
| No no, you need to package that into a convenient slogan.
| How about "vote blue no matter who"?
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Vote red till your dead. Lol
| coconutoctopus wrote:
| I learned this first hand when my family member started receiving
| SSI, and they said the government check your bank account to see
| if you have too much money. As a result, you see a line of
| elderly line up at local banks when it's payday, to withdraw the
| money out as cash and to keep the bank account balance as low as
| possible.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Disability benefits in the US is so absurd. I would characterize
| it as all or nothing. They often completely ignore people with
| "marginal" disabilities but if you are rich enough to afford a
| good lawyer, you guessed it, you can qualify for all these
| programs. Once you see it you can't unsee how inefficient these
| programs are. There's an entire industry designed to exploit
| government resources.
| Maursault wrote:
| idunno246 wrote:
| this is really tough for people with disabilities, since a lot
| more stuff then depends on medicaid. An easy example, if you
| qualify for medicaid then you qualified for the emergency
| broadband benefit, which was good for 50/month off internet. Or
| more complex, you get a budget to spend on home health care
| workers, transportation, respite care, therapeutic activities,
| etc., go over and you lose thousands of dollars of services
| necessary to live. thats even ignoring the actual medical
| benefits of medicaid
|
| able accounts that are listed have pretty big caveats. and are
| themselves confusing [like 529, you can buy them in any state,
| all with various fee structures]. the best course of action is to
| set up a special needs trust and able account and move money
| between them cause they each have different restrictions. but
| setting up a trust itself costs a couple thousand for the
| lawyers, which you arent allowed to save.
|
| my sisters disabled, but luckily NJ has a program called
| workability that raises these limits if you have a job. otherwise
| its impossible to save.
| donatj wrote:
| I genuinely feel like the way a lot of government programs are
| designed, they actively discourage being responsible.
|
| My sister received government assistance when she was under 18
| because my father is disabled and retired. At the end of it she
| received a letter that she "surely had saved up some of it by
| now" and that anything she had saved would have to be returned.
| She would have been better off just spending it and going hog
| wild.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| This shit has been going on since the first serious attempts at
| welfare in the 60s.
|
| It's not a new problem. It's the result of perverse incentives
| in the system from top to bottom.
| tux1968 wrote:
| Did those numbers ever make sense? Assuming they did, then
| pinning them to inflation would have kept them sane without
| needing additional legislation.
| legitster wrote:
| When the bill was written, $1500 (the max benefit at the time)
| was about $8900. Not _too_ shabby. Seems like not linking it to
| inflation was an oversight.
| suture wrote:
| Government programs that benefit poor people generally aren't
| tied to inflation. This is not going to change.
| mordae wrote:
| You can't do that. It's important to redistribute inflation
| every year in the budget so that you explicitly "help" your
| target demography and newspapers can write about that. /cynical
| [deleted]
| klyrs wrote:
| > And the threshold for it (SSA calls it "income disregards")
| is so astonishingly low that I asked Ne'eman about it. He
| believes the number is a holdover from at least 1972, when SSI
| was created. SSI borrowed some of its numbers from a previous
| aid program for the blind, and didn't index them for inflation.
| Fifty years later, they remain the same, despite a sevenfold
| increase in the consumer price index.
|
| I haven't found concrete history here, but as far as I can
| tell, the income limit may have made sense in _1935_.
|
| https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/public-welfare/aid-for...
|
| Though, that legislation lists $30/mo, not the $85 listed in
| the article. Still, that's less than $700/mo today according to
| this sketchy-looking inflation calculator[1], not enough for
| rent in many places. Another sketchy data point[2]; average
| rent in 1933 was $18/mo (which kinda makes sense, as housing
| has been skyrocketing vs CPI).
|
| [1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1935?amount=30
|
| [2] https://findanyanswer.com/what-did-a-house-cost-in-1935
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Did those numbers ever make sense?
|
| Only in a cruel, actuarial sense.
| paulmd wrote:
| They make sense to the voters. People are actually strongly in
| favor of reducing them further, despite the already-obscene
| nature of the system.
|
| Reagan destroyed the American social system as we know it and
| neoliberal consensus politicians like Clinton finished the job.
| But people still demand further cuts and will continue to
| demand further cuts no matter how deep the cuts have gotten.
|
| Yes, we spend a lot of money on social programs, and most of it
| goes to costly and ineffective end-of-care for seniors (i.e.
| people who vote) delivered at extreme cost by an incredibly
| inefficient privatized healthcare system. This continues to
| suck the air out of the room for any social spending for the
| _living_ , because of the prevailing mindset that all future
| social spending must be offset by reductions in other programs.
|
| Americans have become a cruel and callous people who are
| unconditionally opposed to helping others or even helping their
| own. Nobody cares about any problem until it affects them or
| their direct family personally. There's not much more to say,
| every single time reform is proposed it's slapped down with
| "welfare queens" and "muh tax dollars". This is what the voters
| want and this is what they vote for.
| lupire wrote:
| They never made sense.
|
| This is a general problem with benefits programs and taxes that
| have cliffs instead of phaseouts/brackets.
| paulmd wrote:
| As the article states, there are phaseouts in many of the
| programs involved. SSI does have an income-based phaseout,
| not a complete threshold - the $2k threshold is a _wealth_
| cap, there is a phaseout-based _income_ cap as well.
|
| > But SSI does this in an egregiously inefficient way. The
| loss of SSI is a fairly hefty penalty, and the loss of
| Medicaid is potentially much larger. Both can be triggered,
| all at once, by going a dollar above the $2,000 limit. This
| is an inefficient design , what welfare scholars call a
| "cliff."
|
| > SSI also has an income-based phaseout. Effectively, for
| every dollar you earn above a threshold, you lose 50 cents in
| benefits.
|
| > But shockingly, that threshold is just $85 per month. So
| it's like a 50 percent "tax" rate with a $85 per month
| standard deduction.
|
| The problem is that congress thinks $85/mo is a good place to
| begin a steep phaseout of benefits. You can have a phaseout
| and still have the program be completely useless because of
| the phaseout threshold and steepness.
|
| This isn't about phaseouts or not, it's about political
| unwillingness to do social spending (for anyone who's not a
| senior citizen). The numbers were last adjusted in _1935_ ,
| everyone knows they're astoundingly low, but Americans don't
| like social spending and actually mostly would prefer to
| _reduce_ (or even eliminate) these programs.
| daenz wrote:
| Would this eventually happen with UBI?
| maweki wrote:
| Do you mean whether UBI would have such a cut-off? Then it's by
| definition not universal.
| daenz wrote:
| If UBI could logically evolve into non-universal basic
| income, that should be a concern, because if people are
| dependent on that money, they can't really oppose the change.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You meant to ask if a government that does UBI can ever
| stop doing it and offering some other kind of assistance?
| daenz wrote:
| Not quite. I'm concerned that they would offer UBI, and
| then add conditions later. It's pedantic to think that
| officials would care that this is "not technically UBI
| anymore." It would be called UBI, but you would be
| required to comply with different standards to receive
| it.
| notahacker wrote:
| UBI is always going to have a _de facto_ cutoff where some
| people pay more in tax than they receive in UBI (unless your
| government is funding it solely by money printing or having
| massive amounts of oil per head of population).
|
| The only question is what that level is at and how steeply
| the relevant taxes reduce turn its net benefit to a net cost,
| and that's something governments determine just like the
| tapering on any other form of benefit.
| orangecat wrote:
| _UBI is always going to have a de facto cutoff where some
| people pay more in tax than they receive in UBI_
|
| That's not a cutoff; it's a continuous function that
| crosses zero at some point. With a UBI funded by an income
| tax you're never worse off earning more.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > With a UBI funded by an income tax you're never worse
| off earning more.
|
| Provided you can earn more without putting in any more
| effort; otherwise marginal effort eventually exceeds
| marginal net income, and the income tax shifts that
| crossover point toward a lower income where the effort
| remains worthwhile.
| gpm wrote:
| A smooth transition out is more or less by definition not a
| cutoff (a cutoff being a sudden thing). This is an
| important distinction, because it means it's never harmful
| to earn another dollar.
|
| Since we don't have a wealth tax, there isn't even a smooth
| transition out along the dimension that the article
| discusses.
| notahacker wrote:
| The article also discusses and criticises a 50% effective
| marginal tax on working which is absolutely how an UBI
| smoothly transitions if funded by an income tax, and in
| theory the taper could be steeper still. Not harmful to
| earn another dollar, but not especially lucrative either.
|
| Nothing about a UBI prevents it from being coupled with a
| wealth tax (possibly even a regressive one which kicks in
| at low levels so recipients are disincentivised to save)
| if the government wishes to fund it that way... and
| they'll need to find additional funds from somewhere.
|
| The only difference with UBI is the subsidy itself is a
| lot less targeted than "financial aid for registered
| disabled people", so the government has to find a lot
| more ways to claw it back from some sections of the
| population. That can be sneaky and regressive, just like
| a non-universal income only disabled people are entitled
| to can be completely without income and wealth
| qualifications if a government wants.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| If you're referring to the issue with inflation over time
| making old policy numbers no longer make sense, it could
| definitely happen, though I think most UBI proponents prefer a
| design that automatically adjusts for inflation for exactly
| this reason. But if you're referring to the part where onerous
| means testing and other eligibility rules make life harder for
| the very people we want to help, then no, I think one of the
| fundamental benefits of a UBI is that it avoids all of that.
| daenz wrote:
| >I think one of the greatest features of UBI is that it gets
| rid of all of that by design.
|
| But you can't guarantee that "by design", only "by name." As
| we know with politics, the name of a program is not tightly
| coupled to its effect.
| mgfist wrote:
| UBI is a concept not a policy. Sure the government could
| create a policy called "UBI" and literally anything could
| be in it.
| daenz wrote:
| I'm not asking about the extreme mischaracterization of
| my position of "literally anything." I'm asking what
| safeguards are in place to keep UBI, as we know the term,
| from evolving into UBI-asterisk, with conditions on the
| recipients.
|
| So far the strongest counter argument I have seen is
| "well then it wouldn't _technically_ be UBI ", which
| doesn't fix anything.
| paulmd wrote:
| Without a constitutional amendment there's no guarantee
| of anything, future congress being bound by past congress
| is a fundamentally terrible idea. Imagine what the
| slaveholders in the early 1800s would have tried to do if
| they could have passed a "slaves forever and nobody can
| ever change this law" bill (which indeed was what the
| confederacy tried to do with its constitution).
|
| Even then you are subject to future amendments and future
| courts that interpret that what you really meant by
| "universal" was only that the government had to pay at
| least $0.01 to everyone so actually policy X is still
| universal. There are no "forever guarantees" and indeed
| that would be awful, the living should never be
| irrevocably bound by the hand of the dead.
| GaylordTuring wrote:
| This is how it works in Sweden as well for forsorjningsstod,
| which is something you can get if you have no income and you
| actively look for work. However, if you're disabled, I'm pretty
| sure other rules apply.
| [deleted]
| wardedVibe wrote:
| this whole discussion reminds me of the [Speerhamland system in
| England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system),
| which was supposed to guarantee everyone enough to eat, but
| because it made up the difference between the employer's pay and
| the speerhamland rate with government funds, it effectively
| created a maximum wage in the countryside.
| mynameishere wrote:
| So much entitlement. You want the free money, there are rules.
| The 2000 dollar limit is perhaps too low--so that's something
| that can be adjusted--but the whole point of SSI is for _low
| income_ disabled people. That 's the point. SSDI is a different
| but similar program without that 2000 dollar limit.
| Retric wrote:
| The issue is these limits aren't tied to inflation. 2k in 1920
| was a significant chunk of change 2k in 2022 is close to the
| benefit being handed out.
|
| As such simply raising the limit doesn't solve the problem,
| indexing the original limit to inflation would.
| lkbm wrote:
| They're demonstrably bad rules.
|
| You know how when kids first hear about tax brackets and
| misunderstand them to mean that someone earning near the top of
| one bracket could get a raise of $x and end up having their tax
| bill increase by more than $x? We don't do that because it's
| universally agreed to be a bad system: it encourages you to
| stay poor. Instead of diminishing returns for more work, you
| get _negative_ returns for more work.
|
| Luckily, our tax system is (relatively) sane and uses
| _marginal_ tax brackets to avoid this outcome. The SSI policy
| does not--it has this exact failure mode.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Lot's of disabled people have medical bills in the 10s of
| thousands. If you have a cutoff below that amount, it makes it
| so that they can't afford to not be poor which is a shit deal
| for everyone.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Not just medical bills -- even routine expenses (like paying
| rent, getting a car repaired, or replacing a household
| appliance) can easily run over the $2000 limit. People with
| disabilities shouldn't have to go out of their way to avoid
| having money.
| softcactus wrote:
| The entitlement? Humans should be entitled to a life free of
| material suffering. Otherwise what is the point of creating
| governments and corporations if not to improve our quality of
| life. If you think the most vulnerable in society wanting help
| is entitlement then I suggest you stop using roads or visiting
| hospitals.
| djbebs wrote:
| No, they should not.
| lazide wrote:
| Roads and hospitals are paid for by taxes, usually paid by
| the people using them. Which equates to labor done by a great
| many people over time.
|
| How 'free from material suffering' entitlement going to be
| paid for, and what does that even mean? Houses for everyone?
| Gold bars for everyone?
| paulmd wrote:
| Is this the "poor people aren't poor because they have
| refrigerators" 2.0 argument?
|
| Living standards can and will change over time. It's not
| possible to live without a phone and internet access
| anymore, you can't even do a lot of these papers and
| applications for government functions (let alone private
| employment) anymore unless you're online.
|
| Our grandchildren won't be able to live without their
| neurallink even though it was a "luxury" to us.
| jokoon wrote:
| encryptluks2 wrote:
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