Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

nyti.ms

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 369 posts

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#201

Post by pas »

cameldrv wrote: post #178
nathancahill wrote: post #3

Spent a long time reading about how vast bureaucratic inefficiencies are created by people worrying that "the wrong person" will benefit from government programs or that someone "undeserving" might get theirs before I do. This falls squarely in that bucket. Tragic.

This is the flip side of it though: https://abc7news.com/california-edd-unemployment-fraud-ca-sc... $30 billion in unemployment fraud in just a year, in just one state.

"The EDD says it is working to verify the identities of people who made claims and many remain under investigation"

It's identity fraud. (Entirely because of the tragic state of US [and global] privacy and state-citizen communication culture.)

It's not people taking advantage of welfare and deciding to not look for work. It's career criminals.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#202

Post by clairity »

mumblemumble wrote: post #175
clairity wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're mistakenly associating assistance programs with rent-seeking, and moreover focusing on an entirely irrelevant corner of it. rent-seeking will occur anywhere there is wealth to be extracted, which is basically everywhere else in the economy, so that association is unwarranted. you should be looking at where capital is concentrated and deployed if you're truly concerned about rent-seeking over "big government".

It's not that assistance programs are rent seeking. It's that the assistance programs, as they're structured, are a honey pot for rent seeking. A program that micro-manages what people can put on their table at home invites lobbying to influence those rules for one's own financial gain. It's an example of how pearl-clutching attitudes - in this case, fears, based on deeply entrenched moralistic notions about less-wea…

yes, i understand your point, but again, that's literally a rounding error compared to other, much larger rent-seeking behaviors.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#203

Post by BowBun »

ascagnel_ wrote: post #92
colechristensen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was once involved with a young woman in a homeless program which was entirely defeated by this exact "wrong person" attitude. Get a homeless person an apartment? Great. But it didn't end there, there was a constant stream of documentation requirements, your employer had to, monthly, sign paperwork about how much you earned (advertise to employers that you are/were homeless). The program punished you for making mone…

A lot of this comes from the Reagan-era idea of "welfare queens" -- that because the idea of "government handouts" are so enticing, people will cheat the system to get them. There are two issues with this: - "government handouts" and a reliance on welfare are typically a symptom, not a root cause, of an ailing society -- there are bigger issues at play around wealth and ownership if a large segment of the population…

I'm generally for social welfare programs, however the idea of "welfare queens (and kings)" is NOT fiction. I come from Belgium which has this problem quite notoriously. It is quite common for people to be abusing the social programs to stay unemployed and make more income than blue-collar workers.

Like you allude to, I think we need to look more deeply to address this issue - why are people satisfied doing nothing and simply using handouts to survive? If they worked, shouldn't they become more prosperous? Why don't they have goals and aspirations? If someone is depressed, let's get them help. If the education system has failed them, let's fix that. It's easy to conflate the symptoms with the root causes, however the symptoms should not be ignored because they are the most visible feedback to most regular people, and that affects their perception of the system.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#204

Post by mywittyname »

colechristensen wrote: post #120
ascagnel_ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of this comes from the Reagan-era idea of "welfare queens" -- that because the idea of "government handouts" are so enticing, people will cheat the system to get them. There are two issues with this: - "government handouts" and a reliance on welfare are typically a symptom, not a root cause, of an ailing society -- there are bigger issues at play around wealth and ownership if a large segment of the population…

I likewise know someone who intentionally makes as little money as possible in order to take advantage of state support program. Or to be more accurate, makes as much money as possible under the various limits for benefits while living in a comfortable (essentially inherited) situation. This is a person with high education, without any major disability or impediment to working, they just choose not to work because th…

But why?

Sounds like another symptom of a larger problem. Maybe a lack of reasonable opportunities? Or wages are too low to justify working due to child care or commuting costs? Maybe it's the insane cost of healthcare?

These people aren't living a comfortable life on meager government benefits. They subsisting on it because the alternative of working for a poverty wage is worse.

If you want more people to work, push for higher wages. If you want people to be capable of working for less money, ensure that childcare, public transportation, and healthcare are subsidized enough to make those wages livable.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#205

Post by pas »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #142
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DA who brought the case, Kim Ogg, is an elected official. Top Google result for her name is this campaign page: https://www.kim-ogg.com/ . Further down the list is a news article about threatening employees with performance reviews to appear at a food drive for her political benefit. Had the judge not thrown out this case, she'd have another feather in her cap, another headline for the website: "Kim Ogg puts nepo…

I am a Houstonian and absolutely hate Ogg. She bills herself as the "most progressive DA" and therefore prosecutes/does not prosecute certain things based on their political appearance. That is not what a DA should be doing, and she is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the "progressive" left these days.

Could you explain a bit for those not familiar with US "progressive" stuff? What does she not prosecute and why, and why is that a problem? How left are we talking about?

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#206

Post by clairity »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #183
clairity wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is an ideological argument devoid of meaningful goals to help residents and create a strong economy. who cares, on the face of it, what size the government is? size is not the goal, it's at best a poor proxy metric for (in-)efficiency, which itself is a proxy metric for how much we help people via public goods (and thereby the whole economy). rent-seeking around wic is a rounding error next to property & capital…

>who cares, on the face of it, what size the government is? Until the size stops correlating with the amount of resources that must be taken from people everybody with anything to their name cares.

but again, your concern then is efficiency, so let's look at efficiency metrics directly rather than the poor proxy that size is. that also neatly sidesteps the manipulative use of "big government" as a tool by politicians to deploy power against the common interest.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#207

Post by btilly »

treis wrote: post #32
rjbwork wrote: post #5

This is just Kafkaesque. People in a position of authority with blind adherence to rules intended for optimal scenarios. They're literally saying he should have just thrown them away instead of distributing them as best he was able. This whole thing is a logistical clusterfuck and they're trying to throw this dude under the bus. It's obscene.

>They're literally saying he should have just thrown them away instead of distributing them as best he was able I don't understand why people make arguments like this. Throwing them away and giving them to friends and family aren't the only two options. There's a whole swath of acceptable and achievable options. Giving doses to friends and family is a pretty bright ethical line. I don't think arresting him is the rig…

Giving doses to friends and family is a pretty bright ethical line. I don't think arresting him is the right call. But there shouldn't be much dispute that he acted wrongly here.

Give me a break.

The guy started work before dawn. The countdown started after 6 PM. He had 6 hours to find 10 eligible recipients that met the guidelines. Most that he found were strangers.

He gave the last dose to his wife after he had only found 9, and it was after midnight. It is easy to sit in an armchair and say that he should have found someone else. But how?

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#208

Post by ed25519FUUU »

I’m pro universal, single payer healthcare, but these types of stories highlight my main concern with it.

The people attracted to these bureaucratic positions select for rule following. It’s a reinforcing thing. Those that follow the policy are rewarded and move up. Pragmatic people sometimes bend the rules and sooner or later are pushed out.

These bureaucrats would rather see people die than for there to be a break in sacred government policy. We need to do whatever we can to keep such people from being in positions of power.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#209

Post by colechristensen »

mywittyname wrote: post #204
colechristensen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I likewise know someone who intentionally makes as little money as possible in order to take advantage of state support program. Or to be more accurate, makes as much money as possible under the various limits for benefits while living in a comfortable (essentially inherited) situation. This is a person with high education, without any major disability or impediment to working, they just choose not to work because th…

But why? Sounds like another symptom of a larger problem. Maybe a lack of reasonable opportunities? Or wages are too low to justify working due to child care or commuting costs? Maybe it's the insane cost of healthcare? These people aren't living a comfortable life on meager government benefits. They subsisting on it because the alternative of working for a poverty wage is worse. If you want more people to work, push…

They literally just didn't want to work.

They had ample opportunity to work, were technically skilled in a desirable field, and had a job in that field for some time.

There wasn't a mitigating circumstance outside of not wanting to work very much. If you have your housing set up for you, the state pays your healthcare and gives you food assistance, and you like cooking simple meals for yourself... well you don't actually need money for all that much.

It wasn't a matter of earning a poverty wage or not, it was a matter of earning a middle class wage or not. They chose not because they figured out how to do so and live the life they wanted.

There were social media posts boasting about this.

Re: The Vaccine Had to Be Used. He Used It. He Was Fired

#210

Post by btilly »

ls612 wrote: post #48

This just goes to show how people are. They don’t want others to benefit if they don’t also benefit. They would rather more people get sick and die than someone get a shot before their turn. So much about politics can he explained by looking at people this way.

There is a Russian story about a farmer without a cow who lived next to a farmer with a cow. He fumed about the unfairness of it, but no matter what he did he couldn't scrape up the resources to get a cow of his own.

So he prayed about it, and God offered him a wish. Did he want a cow of his own? "No," he said, "I want you to kill my neighbor's cow!"

Post reply on HN