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

Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

niskanencenter.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 127 posts

Re: Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

#11

Post by abnercoimbre »

paulddraper wrote: post #9
N_Lens wrote: post #2

I remember reading this book called 'The Losers' ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2114133.The_Losers ) about a privileged man who has a car accident, becomes disabled and comes to rely on government support. The book looks at the lives of the working poor and actually poor, who rely on welfare cheques and other subsidies and highlights the social and psychological impacts of these systems of support. It was very…

I used to think the welfare system had a few bad apples. Later, while working for a charity, I realized the truth. Literally no one is immune to the character-destroying nature of entitlement programs.

Destroying the character of those administering the programs?

Re: Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

#13

Post by TimorousBestie »

paulddraper wrote: post #9
N_Lens wrote: post #2

I remember reading this book called 'The Losers' ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2114133.The_Losers ) about a privileged man who has a car accident, becomes disabled and comes to rely on government support. The book looks at the lives of the working poor and actually poor, who rely on welfare cheques and other subsidies and highlights the social and psychological impacts of these systems of support. It was very…

I used to think the welfare system had a few bad apples. Later, while working for a charity, I realized the truth. Literally no one is immune to the character-destroying nature of entitlement programs.

How does an executive such as yourself find empathy and compassion for people who did not simply lift themselves up by their bootstraps?

Re: Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

#14

Post by estearum »

paulddraper wrote: post #9
N_Lens wrote: post #2

I remember reading this book called 'The Losers' ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2114133.The_Losers ) about a privileged man who has a car accident, becomes disabled and comes to rely on government support. The book looks at the lives of the working poor and actually poor, who rely on welfare cheques and other subsidies and highlights the social and psychological impacts of these systems of support. It was very…

I used to think the welfare system had a few bad apples. Later, while working for a charity, I realized the truth. Literally no one is immune to the character-destroying nature of entitlement programs.

Were you somehow exposed to a random sampling of welfare recipients through your work?

If no, how did you account for this sampling bias as you came to form your beliefs?

Re: Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

#15

Post by kannanvijayan »

paulddraper wrote: post #9
N_Lens wrote: post #2

I remember reading this book called 'The Losers' ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2114133.The_Losers ) about a privileged man who has a car accident, becomes disabled and comes to rely on government support. The book looks at the lives of the working poor and actually poor, who rely on welfare cheques and other subsidies and highlights the social and psychological impacts of these systems of support. It was very…

I used to think the welfare system had a few bad apples. Later, while working for a charity, I realized the truth. Literally no one is immune to the character-destroying nature of entitlement programs.

A considerable part of this is the fact that in a society where utilizing these programs is stigmatized to the degree that the USA does, people who see themselves as honest tend to avoid utilizing them.

And even those who are less than honest, but have a sense of propriety, would understand that the correct, culturally approved time to engage in these activities is AFTER one acquires a significant amount of wealth, when entitlements are knighted to become "economic incentives".

Re: Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

#16

Post by didibus »

I always felt simplifying all this, it would probably be possible to consolidate and offer proper health care, and a real welfare, along with a supplemental program for those inapt to work, with it all costing less than the mountain of piled complexity and paper work that we have today.

Re: Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

#17

Post by terminalshort »

> In practice, however, several of the programs that seem to offer the most generous benefits are severely underfunded, so relatively few families are actually able to obtain them. For example, according to congressional testimony from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 68 percent of poor families with children received Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996. By 2015, after the welfare reforms of the Clinton era, benefits from TANF, which replaced AFDC, reached just 23 percent of poor families with children, according to the same source. Similarly, just 8 to 12 percent of eligible families receive child care benefits from the CCDF, and just 24 percent of those eligible receive Section 8 housing vouchers.

This is complete insanity.

Re: Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

#18

Post by paulddraper »

kannanvijayan wrote: post #15
paulddraper wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think the welfare system had a few bad apples. Later, while working for a charity, I realized the truth. Literally no one is immune to the character-destroying nature of entitlement programs.

A considerable part of this is the fact that in a society where utilizing these programs is stigmatized to the degree that the USA does, people who see themselves as honest tend to avoid utilizing them. And even those who are less than honest, but have a sense of propriety, would understand that the correct, culturally approved time to engage in these activities is AFTER one acquires a significant amount of wealth, w…

> entitlements are knighted to become "economic incentives"

I have no patience for corporate welfare and bailouts.

Re: Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

#19

Post by [deleted] »

themafia wrote: post #8
HarryHirsch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decision to implement benefit cliffs is absolutely intentional, because income requirements that cause people to fall of medicaid or SNAP completely are sharp, and maybe 10 % of the population rely on those. Obamacare subsidies are phased out gradually, because half the country relies on Obamacare, and if there were issues around Obamacare, that would have repercussions at the ballot box. It serves to have an und…

> because income requirements that cause people to fall of medicaid or SNAP completely are sharp How often do pay increases perfectly keep someone in the gap? Presumably some of them will be large enough, through changes of jobs for example, that the family would completely jump that gap. > because income requirements that cause people to fall of medicaid or SNAP completely are sharp Why would it? This is perhaps int…

[deleted]

Re: Work disincentives hit the near-poor hardest (2022)

#20

Post by falseprofit »

ternus wrote: post #12

I can't find the original tweet, but someone (half?) jokingly proposed a law that all benefits must be defined as continuously differentiable functions (thus making cliffs impossible). "Yeah, I made $1M last year. Here's my SNAP check for six cents."

I would guess that was not a joke. The benefits could drop all the way to 0 at a reasonable point unless you impose the stronger condition that the function be analytic.
Post reply on HN