[HN Gopher] Policy punishes disabled people who save more than $2k ___________________________________________________________________ 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: ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-20 23:00 UTC)