4 ms·

We're venturing a little off-topic here, but I'll walk with you a bit: I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me here. My understanding of the cu

We're venturing a little off-topic here, but I'll walk with you a bit: I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me here. My understanding of the current welfare system is that you get $Y from welfare as long as you make less than $X dollars from a "real" job, but as soon as you make $X dollars at your job, you lose the entire $Y from welfare. That's a bad system. A better system would keep paying welfare once you make more than $X at your job, it would just start reducing the amount of welfare you receive, e.g. for every $1 you make above $X, your welfare payment reduces by $0.50. This ensures that as you make more money at your real job, you aren't actually suddenly reducing your take home pay. Basically a negative income tax for those making less than some threshold.

lelandbatey 10y ago
It's interesting that you mention that particular welfare structure, since that's actually already used in a huge way in the United States, in the form of the "Earned Income Tax Credit"[0], which while I don't hear it talked about publicly very often, is a huge program that sounds like it does a lot of good. To quote Wikipedia: At a cost of $56 billion in 2013, the EITC is the third-largest social welfare program in the United States after Medicaid ($275 billion federal and $127 billion state expenditures) and food stamps ($78 billion). And this is an example, also taken from Wikipedia, of the way the EITC might work in the real world: For example, a married couple with two qualifying children and yearly income of seven thousand dollars will receive EITC of $2,810 (going up the hill). At fifteen thousand dollars, this couple will receive EITC of $5,036 (plateau). And at twenty-five and thirty-five thousand dollars, this same couple with their two children will receive EITC of $4,285 and $2,179, respectively. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#Households.27_average_taxes_and_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#House...
- krakensden 10y ago
  You're right, and most programs try to do some sort of gradation instead of a sharp cutoff. Unfortunately, all the programs are different, with cutoffs at different points, with differing coarseness. A lot of this is related to the problem of making taxes doable by hand, which, several years after the invention of the pocket calculator, could be considered a little outmoded. A lot is also related to the general difficulty of making any changes at all to welfare programs.

lelandbatey 10y ago

It's interesting that you mention that particular welfare structure, since that's actually already used in a huge way in the United States, in the form of the "Earned Income Tax Credit"[0], which while I don't hear it talked about publicly very often, is a huge program that sounds like it does a lot of good. To quote Wikipedia: At a cost of $56 billion in 2013, the EITC is the third-largest social welfare program in the United States after Medicaid ($275 billion federal and $127 billion state expenditures) and food stamps ($78 billion). And this is an example, also taken from Wikipedia, of the way the EITC might work in the real world: For example, a married couple with two qualifying children and yearly income of seven thousand dollars will receive EITC of $2,810 (going up the hill). At fifteen thousand dollars, this couple will receive EITC of $5,036 (plateau). And at twenty-five and thirty-five thousand dollars, this same couple with their two children will receive EITC of $4,285 and $2,179, respectively. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#Households.27_average_taxes_and_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#House...

krakensden 10y ago
You're right, and most programs try to do some sort of gradation instead of a sharp cutoff. Unfortunately, all the programs are different, with cutoffs at different points, with differing coarseness. A lot of this is related to the problem of making taxes doable by hand, which, several years after the invention of the pocket calculator, could be considered a little outmoded. A lot is also related to the general difficulty of making any changes at all to welfare programs.