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Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

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Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#161

Post by gottorf »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134
autoexec wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones I've known with kids all seem to have it far worse. If they were getting a $16k tax credit or whatever it must not have been making up for the other costs involved with raising children.

> The ones I've known with kids all seem to have it far worse. If they were getting a $16k tax credit or whatever it must not have been making up for the other costs involved with raising children. Worse than someone who doesn't have to pay raise a kid isn't the same thing as worse than someone else with kids who makes $8000 more and therefore loses the $16,000 credit. And the cliffs are only half the problem. Did yo…

> The entire welfare system should be vaporized and replaced with a tax credit for the poor (i.e. a UBI).

Yep, call it a negative income tax if it goes down better than UBI, but many other things would be better than the system we have now.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#162

Post by AgentOrange1234 »

thfuran wrote: post #136
nerdponx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's often said that the cruelty is the point.

If it were, why would they offer welfare programs at all? Surely an "indolence tax" assessed on anyone with income below a certain threshold would be more cruel.

It's frankly amazing that we still have welfare, social security, etc., at all. The pro-cruelty folks have been diligently working to discredit them since FDR enacted them during the great depression.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#163

Post by GolfPopper »

danaris wrote: post #100
autoexec wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones I've known with kids all seem to have it far worse. If they were getting a $16k tax credit or whatever it must not have been making up for the other costs involved with raising children.

That graph is also showing an ideal situation—that is, you fully qualify for and fully receive all of the benefits listed. That means you have to also know that you qualify for them, apply for them, prove that you qualify, oh, nope, whoops, you missed one piece of proof there—that means you have to start all over. You have to apply for each one, prove that you qualify, jump through all the hoops, you start receiving…

So, are you going to go for that 14th job interview, or are you going to go spend four hours making sure you have childcare next month? Do you finish the online test, or do you fill out the form on the benefits website for the fifth time this month?

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#164

Post by GolfPopper »

lannisterstark wrote: post #155
orangecat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and this is one of the reasons why I support a UBI that replaces most existing welfare programs. Amazingly some people criticize UBI on the grounds that it removes the incentive to work, when it's almost exactly the opposite.

Funnily, I'm okay with people not working if they didn't want to. Most people would end up getting bored doing nothing after a few months and work with what they like to do anyway.

But, "what they like to do" isn't necessarily anything that will make billionaires more money.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#165

Post by bachmeier »

During the pandemic, as was the case for many organizations, my employer implemented pay cuts. In the name of fairness, they did it by income so that those with the highest incomes would pay a larger percentage. That sounds good, but they did it with discontinuities.

What upset me was couples with combined salaries far greater than mine but individually a little less so they were just below the cutoff. Their combined cut on considerably more income was less than mine. We were living on one income, and the cuts would have been tough to absorb if not for the stimulus checks.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#166

Post by Izkata »

Macha wrote: post #55
jeffbee wrote: post #10

Similar to car prices, we see the same mental rounding effect in rents. People will rent a home for $2100 or $2200, sometimes even $2150 for those truly dedicated to price finding, but hardly anyone rents an apartment for $2137. Source: my data for the city of Berkeley https://observablehq.com/@jwb/berkeley-rent-board-data#cell-...

The car pricing seems to be that some amount of people round 79,999 down to 70,000 when determining mileage and so cars with 79,999km on the odometer are penalised much less than cars with 80,000km. I think the rent one is much more driven by "some landlords like round numbers for posting ads/doing their finances".

This is the same reason grocery store prices are $x.99, people anchor on the first digit and $5.99 feels like a lot less than $6.00

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#167

Post by ryandrake »

thfuran wrote: post #136
nerdponx wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's often said that the cruelty is the point.

If it were, why would they offer welfare programs at all? Surely an "indolence tax" assessed on anyone with income below a certain threshold would be more cruel.

Don’t give them any ideas. Roughly half of US politicians would probably support that. Without constitutional safeguards, a shocking number of them would support turning their opponents into Soylent Green.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#168

Post by gottorf »

lannisterstark wrote: post #155
orangecat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and this is one of the reasons why I support a UBI that replaces most existing welfare programs. Amazingly some people criticize UBI on the grounds that it removes the incentive to work, when it's almost exactly the opposite.

Funnily, I'm okay with people not working if they didn't want to. Most people would end up getting bored doing nothing after a few months and work with what they like to do anyway.

Devil's advocate: the longer you stay away from gainful employment, the more marketable skills you lose. (This is one of the arguments against a minimum wage; that it keeps low-skill and therefore low-pay labor from establishing a foothold in the labor marketplace that would enable them to up-skill over time.) So UBI would incentivize the creation of a permanently unemployable underclass.

I'm OK with people not working if they don't want to, too, as long as those people are OK with subsistence-level living standards. I don't see why able-bodied people who are capable of working but just don't want to should live a comfortable life at the expense of the working taxpayer.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#169

Post by gottorf »

dragonwriter wrote: post #65
bluedino wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One similar thing is getting a 1099-MISC for 'side work' in the USA For example, I'll do some hands-on work for a former employer. Rack some network equipment, go investigate something, install some hardware...They take it from there, I can bill a couple hours and it's a nice dinner for my wife and I. However, if I hit a certain threshold ($600?), they will send me a tax form and I'll then have to pay income tax on t…

> However, if I hit a certain threshold ($600?), they will send me a tax form and I’ll then have to pay income tax on that money. No, the threshold at which you have to include the income in your taxable income ($400/yr) is lower than the threshold for the person paying you to provide a 1099-MISC ($600/yr from that payer.)

The threshold at which you have to include the income in your taxable income is $0.01.

Re: Suspicious discontinuities (2020)

#170

Post by skybrian »

lannisterstark wrote: post #155
orangecat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and this is one of the reasons why I support a UBI that replaces most existing welfare programs. Amazingly some people criticize UBI on the grounds that it removes the incentive to work, when it's almost exactly the opposite.

Funnily, I'm okay with people not working if they didn't want to. Most people would end up getting bored doing nothing after a few months and work with what they like to do anyway.

I'm early-retired and all I can say is that it didn't work that way for me. I do have more time, but I'm not so bored that I want to tie up my schedule. I'll come up with a project I can do at my own pace.

It's sort of like telling yourself that you'll go back to school. Some people do, but most don't.

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