7 ms·

When I first heard of Welfare Cliff I was shocked, coming from Brazilian public schools I realized how much propaganda is spread there. They teach how the US i

When I first heard of Welfare Cliff I was shocked, coming from Brazilian public schools I realized how much propaganda is spread there. They teach how the US is imperialist and how they only care about money and some other soviet stories. To give out some money is one thing, we have that in Brazil, but to give out so much money it is better not to work is shocking.

danharaj 8y ago
> but to give out so much money it is better not to work is shocking That's not how it works.
- tfolbrecht 8y ago
  I invite you to the American South. I'll hold your hand and walk you through it.
  - danharaj 8y ago
    Welfare cliffs are caused by flaws in how they are calculated with respect to income, not their magnitude. Now, what does your comment have to do with that? Care to elaborate?
    - freehunter 8y ago
      I would invite you to elaborate. The parent apparently has a misunderstanding, and all you've offered as a counterpoint is "that's not how it works". When someone tried to engage in a discussion, your response should be to explain your understanding, not to ask them to clarify their misunderstanding.
      - danharaj 8y ago
        > PDF link to a 2014 study of the welfare cliff, the circumstances in which families on welfare become trapped in staying poor because the cost of replacing the benefits outpaces their ability to gain the same in income. It's the first sentence of the link guys, come on.
    - st26 8y ago
      Speaking purely hypothetically, if the benefit value was small enough, it would never make sense to not work, no matter the flaws in the program. We take it for granted that one can live off welfare, even if not well- that assumption/precondition itself could be what pedro_hab is marveling at.
    - tfolbrecht 8y ago
      First, I'd like to apologize for being rude and negating your statement. There's nuance to the problem; we shouldn't just tit-for-tat dismiss each other. The U.S. welfare is multifaceted. Try to shift to a stack oriented model. The real picture should include both indirect subsidization and multiple direct benefits/subsidization. Income, rent, food, medicine, childcare, transportation, utilities. There are what someone in poverty would consider sweet spots under certain conditions. Now, Not all welfare programs stack. Local cost of living changes the stickiness point. But, imo, the most overlooked problem is poor people get good at being poor. There are ways to exchange benefits and untaxed labor for value, even if it's not explicit or monetary. I've lived it. I know people who are scared to lose benefit X if they earn over Y. The bigger problem is that the government can't manufacture meaning and purpose no matter how much cash they pour out. No marketable skills develop, no local capital accumulation, no gaining experience and moving up. There are no good jobs to escape to. The cliff is doing what you know. What you consider unlivable is life for a lot of people. Also, I can give some sweet spot scenarios if you want hard numbers.
  - black6 8y ago
    I grew up in the Mississippi Delta and still live in the South. The government incentives are to have more kids and no job. Drop your kid on the head or smack ‘em around a bit while they’re young and you get more money on account of mental disability. This is completely anecdotal, but olbrecht isn’t wrong. A lot of the problems with the system have only anectodal evidence, but that’s because of generations of practice playing the game.
    - dang 8y ago
      > Drop your kid on the head or smack ‘em around a bit while they’re young and you get more money on account of mental disability Whoa whoa whoa. It's fine to make a general point based on personal experience but gussying it up like this just for effect is not only abusive, it's vicious. Please don't degrade HN like that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - maym86 8y ago
    Are there a lot of good jobs in the American South that pay enough to live on? What's the minimum wage?
mancerayder 8y ago
To give out some money is one thing, we have that in Brazil, but to give out so much money it is better not to work is shocking. That's not what's shocking, what's shocking is that the living wage isn't high enough given costs (health care in particular). Welfare exists not out of kindness, but because people need a minimum before they naturally are going to do anything needed to survive. Welfare keeps people alive and cuts down on crime. If we don't like welfare systems, then we need to make sure that private businesses pay wages that are sufficient to afford the basics: health, housing and education.
- patrickaljord 8y ago
  > what's shocking is that the living wage isn't high enough given costs Could you define what a living wage is? I see that a lot but I'm not sure what it means exactly. On this reddit link I see people with several special needs kids. Should the minimum wage be set to sustain a single adult? Or should it be an adult with a kid? Two kids? What if I have 5 kids some of them with special needs? That sets the minimum wage as a "living wage" super high. How could any small business or even big business compete with 6 or $10k minimum wages to sustains these families?
  - maym86 8y ago
    How about enough to sustain an individual with accommodation, healthcare, transportation to and from work and enough to feed themselves on a 40ish hour work week. Some jobs don't offer that. Let's start there before talking about how much trouble it would be for businesses to support your edge cases.
    - patrickaljord 8y ago
      I'm not talking about edge case, I'm talking about the main example in the posted article in case you did not read it which is also a very common case among people on welfare cliff. What I'm saying is that it's a more complicated problem than just "let's just give everyone a living wage", in fact most people who single with no kids or spouse to support are not on the welfare cliff as it's pretty easy to find a job that will pay for the basics even at a fast food joint these days. Just saying.
maym86 8y ago
> To give out some money is one thing, we have that in Brazil, but to give out so much money it is better not to work is shocking. You miss the point. It's not that welfare is so much, it's that the jobs you get that knock you off welfare don't pay enough to be able to live. America has a lot of very low paying jobs where people need to work 70 hour weeks for multiple employers to get enough to live. In a modern country it is shocking that basic employment standards are not guaranteed and that when you have a job it doesn't cover the minimum needed to live.
- sjg007 8y ago
  This is sort of a function of nondocumented immigrantion. Those are the folks working these low wage jobs. If those people leave then the jobs would either have to raise wages generating inflation, improve productivity or go out of business. I think this is why we see a big push for kiosks/tablets in causal restaurants now.
  - maym86 8y ago
    It's a function of big industry lobbying to keep wages low and block laws that protect workers plus the systematic weakening of unions. There is plenty of money in large corporations to pay workers more but it goes to the executives and shareholders rather than making employees lives more bearable. Inequity is increasing and migration is a useful scapegoat. Large companies are making absurd profits while paying their employees a pittance. Migration isn't causing this but it useful for rich people with vested interests to make it seem like it is.
    - sjg007 8y ago
      Sure unionization, laws and lobbies are part of it too.
    - nv-vn 8y ago
      Maybe to a degree, but a lot of those jobs only exist because of how low the wages are. Very few large corporations can afford to just give everyone a raise. That's a terribly short-sighted view of the economy and business administration. >Large companies are making absurd profits while paying their employees a pittance Take a look at profit margins on some big companies. You will definitely be surprised. E.g. Over the last 5 years Walmart averaged <3% profits [1], Amazon averaged <1% [2]. Some tech companies are a lot higher (Apple, NVidia, etc.) but these are not the companies you hear about when people discuss low wages. Imagine Amazon trying to give all of their workers a 10% raise. With ~566,000 employees [3] making a median salary (sorry, could not find any mean or total amount so I'll pretend like it's the mean) of $28,446 [4], a 10% raise would amount to 566,000 * $28,446/10 = $1,610,043,600. This would more than slash their net income in half [5] and would only increase the median income by a modest $2800. Obviously these numbers aren't perfect because we don't have means or an accurate list of who earns what, but I think you can see my point here: if every Amazon employee earned a true "living wage", the company would probably go out of business pretty quickly. And that's a big deal when half a million people's lives rely on it (not to mention the millions of shareholders, many of whom likely own the stock as part of their pension plans). And that's not really in anybody's control. It's not like Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest person alive because he's making some massive salary and taking cash out of the company. His personal compensation was $1.68 million last year, most of which was the cost of his personal security team [4]. What makes him wealthy is all of his shares in Amazon, which is pretty worthless if he goes ahead and dumps all of it. Not to mention that his wealth often fluctuates by 10s of billions in a matter of days because of that. >Migration isn't causing this but it useful for rich people with vested interests to make it seem like it is. I can agree with you that blaming things on migration is often incorrect and used as a red herring, but the previous commenter is somewhat correct. Immigrants (both legal and illegal) often settle for much lower paying jobs or much harder labor because of how much it pays relative to what they would earn in their home country. This doesn't really cause most people to earn less money, because for the most part few "natural-born" Americans are willing to do those jobs, but it does increase the proportion of jobs that pay these tiny wages. There are certainly many American-born workers who are getting minuscule wages, but an even bigger percentage of these people are immigrants. Of course, it doesn't change the fact that people are getting paid those jobs in general, but for a vast majority of them something as simple as raising the minimum wage is just going to make their jobs go away. [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin [2] https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin [3] https://www.geekwire.com/2018/amazon-now-employs-566000-people-worldwide-66-percent-jump-year-ago/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/amazon-now-employs-566000-peop... [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-19/amazon-is-defined-by-billions-median-salary-is-28-446 https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-19/amazon-... [5] https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/financials?query=income-statement https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/financials?query=income-s...
jadedhacker 8y ago
Well, the US _is_ imperialist and also doesn't care about implementing quality social programs. So both are true.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN.
  - jadedhacker 8y ago
    I apologize, and will desist. I would point out that it's actually anti-nationalist rhetoric though. I'm from the US and am unrelated to anyone in South or Central America.

danharaj 8y ago

> but to give out so much money it is better not to work is shocking That's not how it works.

tfolbrecht 8y ago
I invite you to the American South. I'll hold your hand and walk you through it.
- danharaj 8y ago
  Welfare cliffs are caused by flaws in how they are calculated with respect to income, not their magnitude. Now, what does your comment have to do with that? Care to elaborate?
  - freehunter 8y ago
    I would invite you to elaborate. The parent apparently has a misunderstanding, and all you've offered as a counterpoint is "that's not how it works". When someone tried to engage in a discussion, your response should be to explain your understanding, not to ask them to clarify their misunderstanding.
    - danharaj 8y ago
      > PDF link to a 2014 study of the welfare cliff, the circumstances in which families on welfare become trapped in staying poor because the cost of replacing the benefits outpaces their ability to gain the same in income. It's the first sentence of the link guys, come on.
  - st26 8y ago
    Speaking purely hypothetically, if the benefit value was small enough, it would never make sense to not work, no matter the flaws in the program. We take it for granted that one can live off welfare, even if not well- that assumption/precondition itself could be what pedro_hab is marveling at.
  - tfolbrecht 8y ago
    First, I'd like to apologize for being rude and negating your statement. There's nuance to the problem; we shouldn't just tit-for-tat dismiss each other. The U.S. welfare is multifaceted. Try to shift to a stack oriented model. The real picture should include both indirect subsidization and multiple direct benefits/subsidization. Income, rent, food, medicine, childcare, transportation, utilities. There are what someone in poverty would consider sweet spots under certain conditions. Now, Not all welfare programs stack. Local cost of living changes the stickiness point. But, imo, the most overlooked problem is poor people get good at being poor. There are ways to exchange benefits and untaxed labor for value, even if it's not explicit or monetary. I've lived it. I know people who are scared to lose benefit X if they earn over Y. The bigger problem is that the government can't manufacture meaning and purpose no matter how much cash they pour out. No marketable skills develop, no local capital accumulation, no gaining experience and moving up. There are no good jobs to escape to. The cliff is doing what you know. What you consider unlivable is life for a lot of people. Also, I can give some sweet spot scenarios if you want hard numbers.
- black6 8y ago
  I grew up in the Mississippi Delta and still live in the South. The government incentives are to have more kids and no job. Drop your kid on the head or smack ‘em around a bit while they’re young and you get more money on account of mental disability. This is completely anecdotal, but olbrecht isn’t wrong. A lot of the problems with the system have only anectodal evidence, but that’s because of generations of practice playing the game.
  - dang 8y ago
    > Drop your kid on the head or smack ‘em around a bit while they’re young and you get more money on account of mental disability Whoa whoa whoa. It's fine to make a general point based on personal experience but gussying it up like this just for effect is not only abusive, it's vicious. Please don't degrade HN like that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- maym86 8y ago
  Are there a lot of good jobs in the American South that pay enough to live on? What's the minimum wage?

mancerayder 8y ago

To give out some money is one thing, we have that in Brazil, but to give out so much money it is better not to work is shocking. That's not what's shocking, what's shocking is that the living wage isn't high enough given costs (health care in particular). Welfare exists not out of kindness, but because people need a minimum before they naturally are going to do anything needed to survive. Welfare keeps people alive and cuts down on crime. If we don't like welfare systems, then we need to make sure that private businesses pay wages that are sufficient to afford the basics: health, housing and education.

patrickaljord 8y ago
> what's shocking is that the living wage isn't high enough given costs Could you define what a living wage is? I see that a lot but I'm not sure what it means exactly. On this reddit link I see people with several special needs kids. Should the minimum wage be set to sustain a single adult? Or should it be an adult with a kid? Two kids? What if I have 5 kids some of them with special needs? That sets the minimum wage as a "living wage" super high. How could any small business or even big business compete with 6 or $10k minimum wages to sustains these families?
- maym86 8y ago
  How about enough to sustain an individual with accommodation, healthcare, transportation to and from work and enough to feed themselves on a 40ish hour work week. Some jobs don't offer that. Let's start there before talking about how much trouble it would be for businesses to support your edge cases.
  - patrickaljord 8y ago
    I'm not talking about edge case, I'm talking about the main example in the posted article in case you did not read it which is also a very common case among people on welfare cliff. What I'm saying is that it's a more complicated problem than just "let's just give everyone a living wage", in fact most people who single with no kids or spouse to support are not on the welfare cliff as it's pretty easy to find a job that will pay for the basics even at a fast food joint these days. Just saying.

maym86 8y ago

> To give out some money is one thing, we have that in Brazil, but to give out so much money it is better not to work is shocking. You miss the point. It's not that welfare is so much, it's that the jobs you get that knock you off welfare don't pay enough to be able to live. America has a lot of very low paying jobs where people need to work 70 hour weeks for multiple employers to get enough to live. In a modern country it is shocking that basic employment standards are not guaranteed and that when you have a job it doesn't cover the minimum needed to live.

sjg007 8y ago
This is sort of a function of nondocumented immigrantion. Those are the folks working these low wage jobs. If those people leave then the jobs would either have to raise wages generating inflation, improve productivity or go out of business. I think this is why we see a big push for kiosks/tablets in causal restaurants now.
- maym86 8y ago
  It's a function of big industry lobbying to keep wages low and block laws that protect workers plus the systematic weakening of unions. There is plenty of money in large corporations to pay workers more but it goes to the executives and shareholders rather than making employees lives more bearable. Inequity is increasing and migration is a useful scapegoat. Large companies are making absurd profits while paying their employees a pittance. Migration isn't causing this but it useful for rich people with vested interests to make it seem like it is.
  - sjg007 8y ago
    Sure unionization, laws and lobbies are part of it too.
  - nv-vn 8y ago
    Maybe to a degree, but a lot of those jobs only exist because of how low the wages are. Very few large corporations can afford to just give everyone a raise. That's a terribly short-sighted view of the economy and business administration. >Large companies are making absurd profits while paying their employees a pittance Take a look at profit margins on some big companies. You will definitely be surprised. E.g. Over the last 5 years Walmart averaged <3% profits [1], Amazon averaged <1% [2]. Some tech companies are a lot higher (Apple, NVidia, etc.) but these are not the companies you hear about when people discuss low wages. Imagine Amazon trying to give all of their workers a 10% raise. With ~566,000 employees [3] making a median salary (sorry, could not find any mean or total amount so I'll pretend like it's the mean) of $28,446 [4], a 10% raise would amount to 566,000 * $28,446/10 = $1,610,043,600. This would more than slash their net income in half [5] and would only increase the median income by a modest $2800. Obviously these numbers aren't perfect because we don't have means or an accurate list of who earns what, but I think you can see my point here: if every Amazon employee earned a true "living wage", the company would probably go out of business pretty quickly. And that's a big deal when half a million people's lives rely on it (not to mention the millions of shareholders, many of whom likely own the stock as part of their pension plans). And that's not really in anybody's control. It's not like Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest person alive because he's making some massive salary and taking cash out of the company. His personal compensation was $1.68 million last year, most of which was the cost of his personal security team [4]. What makes him wealthy is all of his shares in Amazon, which is pretty worthless if he goes ahead and dumps all of it. Not to mention that his wealth often fluctuates by 10s of billions in a matter of days because of that. >Migration isn't causing this but it useful for rich people with vested interests to make it seem like it is. I can agree with you that blaming things on migration is often incorrect and used as a red herring, but the previous commenter is somewhat correct. Immigrants (both legal and illegal) often settle for much lower paying jobs or much harder labor because of how much it pays relative to what they would earn in their home country. This doesn't really cause most people to earn less money, because for the most part few "natural-born" Americans are willing to do those jobs, but it does increase the proportion of jobs that pay these tiny wages. There are certainly many American-born workers who are getting minuscule wages, but an even bigger percentage of these people are immigrants. Of course, it doesn't change the fact that people are getting paid those jobs in general, but for a vast majority of them something as simple as raising the minimum wage is just going to make their jobs go away. [1] https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin [2] https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin https://ycharts.com/companies/AMZN/profit_margin [3] https://www.geekwire.com/2018/amazon-now-employs-566000-people-worldwide-66-percent-jump-year-ago/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/amazon-now-employs-566000-peop... [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-19/amazon-is-defined-by-billions-median-salary-is-28-446 https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-04-19/amazon-... [5] https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/financials?query=income-statement https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/amzn/financials?query=income-s...

jadedhacker 8y ago

Well, the US _is_ imperialist and also doesn't care about implementing quality social programs. So both are true.

dang 8y ago
Please don't post nationalistic flamebait to HN.
- jadedhacker 8y ago
  I apologize, and will desist. I would point out that it's actually anti-nationalist rhetoric though. I'm from the US and am unrelated to anyone in South or Central America.