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Suspicious Discontinuities

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191–200 of 307 posts

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#191

Post by loudmax »

dTal wrote: post #174
btilly wrote: post #74

The perverse incentives around these discontinuities is one of the worst misfeatures of programs intended to help people. Here is a real example. My niece wound up with 3 kids, divorced, with inconsistent child support payments. So she went on food stamps. She was looking for a better job. She found one, interviewed, and they wanted to hire her. But the salary that they offered was $0.50/hour too much for her to stay…

>the salary that they offered was $0.50/hour too much for her to stay on food stamps, and was less than her current job I don't understand. How was she eligible for food stamps, if she already had a job that paid more ?

A lot of welfare and food stamp recipients are the working poor.

This was a single mom with three children. She needs to arrange for child care while she's working and it's a good idea to set aside money for medical emergencies. I'm going to guess this job probably pays a few dollars above minimum wage.

Someone in this situation is absolutely eligible for food stamps. But if we get another four years of MAGA, then who knows, maybe not.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#192

Post by abstractbarista »

Proziam wrote: post #79
thedance wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the stated goal of the party in power to throw as many kids off food assistance as possible. If the program has quirks that is by design.

Both parties have had multiple turns at the wheel since many of these policies have existed. Whichever party isn't in power blasts the other party for not fixing it. In essence, both parties use social benefits like political bargaining chips for buying votes because they know people will show up for those issues. This issue is eerily similar to the 'border crisis' we've been facing. The issues surrounding the treatm…

Exactly, anyone deriding a single party is in fact a pawn. Zoom out, and you realize you're trapped in a matrix of control by all parties.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#193

Post by zeveb »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #158
crooked-v wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Well, at least there aren't a lot of people literally starving to death" isn't exactly a glowing endorsement of the system.

Especially in the UK, where there literally are people starving to death now. People in the US who live in a comfortable six-figure-middle-class bubble really have no idea how precarious their position is. All it takes is one expensive long-lasting serious illness and they'll be out on the street with the other people who "made poor choices."

> All it takes is one expensive long-lasting serious illness and they'll be out on the street with the other people who "made poor choices."

You declare bankruptcy, your assets are divided up among your creditors and you start over again. That's why bankruptcy exists. Several (most?) states even let one keep one's home. Maybe we need a law to prevent landlords from refusing to let based on prior bankruptcy — would have to think that through. Bankruptcy is not (or at least should not be) the end of the world.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#194

Post by nkrisc »

chillacy wrote: post #137
dragonwriter wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The perverse incentives around these discontinuities is one of the worst misfeatures of programs intended to help people. This is a key motivation for replacing many of those programs with UBI funded by progressive taxes.

A Negative Income Tax which phases out would work too (though I think a UBI would be more popular and thus resilient to budget cuts, as Alaska has shown). The wonderful thing about cash (UBI, NIT, EITC) is that it's easy to divide up and low-cost to distribute.

Looked into NIT a little, and as I understand it, it could basically be a linear function where Y=0 when X (income) is, for the sake of example, $40,000 yearly. Then anyone over that pays increasing income tax while anyone below receives increasing amount of money from the government instead?

Apart from whether linear actually makes sense or not in the real world.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#195

Post by zeveb »

taneq wrote: post #127
toomuchtodo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is depressing to people who expect the dating and sexual marketplace to be some sort of meritocracy, or equality to be exhibited. It's more of a free market than some care to admit. The gritty truth is: people are depreciating assets, and some lose their value (perceived or actual) faster than others. One of the founders of Okcupid (a data scientist) wrote a book, Dataclysm [1], using data from Okcupid's platfor…

> some sort of meritocracy What definition of merit are you using that it's not? > most people don't describe themselves as racist, but a surprisingly high number of people are Calling people racist for preferring to date a particular race is just silly, you might as well call people sexist for preferring to date a particular gender.

> you might as well call people sexist for preferring to date a particular gender.

Just give it a few years. I know that Slate (a mainstream publication) a few years ago published an article which mentioned in an aside that it is bigotry for a heterosexual man to refuse to date a male who identifies as a woman. I will be completely unsurprised if in a decade or two the same argument is applied to gender preference, period.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#196

Post by Gerardo1 »

dTal wrote: post #174
btilly wrote: post #74

The perverse incentives around these discontinuities is one of the worst misfeatures of programs intended to help people. Here is a real example. My niece wound up with 3 kids, divorced, with inconsistent child support payments. So she went on food stamps. She was looking for a better job. She found one, interviewed, and they wanted to hire her. But the salary that they offered was $0.50/hour too much for her to stay…

>the salary that they offered was $0.50/hour too much for her to stay on food stamps, and was less than her current job I don't understand. How was she eligible for food stamps, if she already had a job that paid more ?

Higher hourly pay, but less hours per week, maybe.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#197

Post by bo1024 »

btilly wrote: post #74

The perverse incentives around these discontinuities is one of the worst misfeatures of programs intended to help people. Here is a real example. My niece wound up with 3 kids, divorced, with inconsistent child support payments. So she went on food stamps. She was looking for a better job. She found one, interviewed, and they wanted to hire her. But the salary that they offered was $0.50/hour too much for her to stay…

This is one reason behind universal basic income as a welfare program. There are no hoops, no cutoffs, no distortion of incentives.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#198

Post by dTal »

loudmax wrote: post #191
dTal wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the salary that they offered was $0.50/hour too much for her to stay on food stamps, and was less than her current job I don't understand. How was she eligible for food stamps, if she already had a job that paid more ?

A lot of welfare and food stamp recipients are the working poor. This was a single mom with three children. She needs to arrange for child care while she's working and it's a good idea to set aside money for medical emergencies. I'm going to guess this job probably pays a few dollars above minimum wage. Someone in this situation is absolutely eligible for food stamps. But if we get another four years of MAGA, then wh…

Right, that's not the point. The point is that taking a pay cut, with apparently no other change in circumstance, somehow rendered her ineligible for a social service she was already receiving. I want to know what rule made that possible, as it appears to be critical to this discussion of perverse discontinuities.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#199

Post by greggyb »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #183
btilly wrote: post #74

The perverse incentives around these discontinuities is one of the worst misfeatures of programs intended to help people. Here is a real example. My niece wound up with 3 kids, divorced, with inconsistent child support payments. So she went on food stamps. She was looking for a better job. She found one, interviewed, and they wanted to hire her. But the salary that they offered was $0.50/hour too much for her to stay…

I agree, and I have my own stories to tell (like my foodstamps admin telling me to spend my tax return as quickly as possible or I'd lose foodstamps; which is doubly perverse). A for tax brackets, why do they exist. I think our mathematics is advanced enough that things like tax brackets could be replaced by continuous functions. So its either by design or by lack of imagination that these discontinuities exist. I've…

> A for tax brackets, why do they exist. I think our mathematics is advanced enough that things like tax brackets could be replaced by continuous functions. So its either by design or by lack of imagination that these discontinuities exist.

Progressive tax brackets do not have discontinuities such that your income net of income tax becomes lower as a result of moving up a bracket.

Re: Suspicious Discontinuities

#200

Post by tjr225 »

thrower123 wrote: post #78
tjr225 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either that or a more progressive stance on socialist policies that provide basics to everyone. At least with socialist style policies there isn't the possibility of those spending their UBI on junk food or wine our whatever, but I really would prefer either to the current state of affairs.

Government paternalism is terrifying. People are going to screw up, and make bad choices, but having choices is better than being treated like a child your entire life.

Giving people public access to healthcare, education, and food gives them more choices in life- not less.
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