21 ms·

Policy punishes disabled people who save more than $2k

398 points by jarrenae 4y ago

daenz 4y ago
Would this eventually happen with UBI?
- maweki 4y ago
  Do you mean whether UBI would have such a cut-off? Then it's by definition not universal.
  - daenz 4y ago
    If UBI could logically evolve into non-universal basic income, that should be a concern, because if people are dependent on that money, they can't really oppose the change.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      You meant to ask if a government that does UBI can ever stop doing it and offering some other kind of assistance?
      - daenz 4y ago
        Not quite. I'm concerned that they would offer UBI, and then add conditions later. It's pedantic to think that officials would care that this is "not technically UBI anymore." It would be called UBI, but you would be required to comply with different standards to receive it.
        marcosdumay 4y ago
        A government can always take assistance down, add rules, expand, shrink, do whatever with it. It can also use whatever name it wants.
        daenz 4y ago
        Then it seems like a very bad idea to put the security of your home, food, and livelihood entirely on the whims of the government to such a degree.
        marcosdumay 4y ago
        Hum... If you are saying that people shouldn't willingly depend on social assistance, I don't think you will find anybody to disagree with. If you are saying that people should be free from government's whims, congratulations, you've just discovered Democracy. Anyway, if your government has whims, the security of your home, food and livelihood is entirely dependent on them. It doesn't matter if you depend on social assistance.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    UBI is always going to have a de facto cutoff where some people pay more in tax than they receive in UBI (unless your government is funding it solely by money printing or having massive amounts of oil per head of population). The only question is what that level is at and how steeply the relevant taxes reduce turn its net benefit to a net cost, and that's something governments determine just like the tapering on any other form of benefit.
    - gpm 4y ago
      A smooth transition out is more or less by definition not a cutoff (a cutoff being a sudden thing). This is an important distinction, because it means it's never harmful to earn another dollar. Since we don't have a wealth tax, there isn't even a smooth transition out along the dimension that the article discusses.
      - notahacker 4y ago
        The article also discusses and criticises a 50% effective marginal tax on working which is absolutely how an UBI smoothly transitions if funded by an income tax, and in theory the taper could be steeper still. Not harmful to earn another dollar, but not especially lucrative either. Nothing about a UBI prevents it from being coupled with a wealth tax (possibly even a regressive one which kicks in at low levels so recipients are disincentivised to save) if the government wishes to fund it that way... and they'll need to find additional funds from somewhere. The only difference with UBI is the subsidy itself is a lot less targeted than "financial aid for registered disabled people", so the government has to find a lot more ways to claw it back from some sections of the population. That can be sneaky and regressive, just like a non-universal income only disabled people are entitled to can be completely without income and wealth qualifications if a government wants.
    - orangecat 4y ago
      UBI is always going to have a de facto cutoff where some people pay more in tax than they receive in UBI That's not a cutoff; it's a continuous function that crosses zero at some point. With a UBI funded by an income tax you're never worse off earning more.
- oconnor663 4y ago
  If you're referring to the issue with inflation over time making old policy numbers no longer make sense, it could definitely happen, though I think most UBI proponents prefer a design that automatically adjusts for inflation for exactly this reason. But if you're referring to the part where onerous means testing and other eligibility rules make life harder for the very people we want to help, then no, I think one of the fundamental benefits of a UBI is that it avoids all of that.
  - daenz 4y ago
    >I think one of the greatest features of UBI is that it gets rid of all of that by design. But you can't guarantee that "by design", only "by name." As we know with politics, the name of a program is not tightly coupled to its effect.
    - mgfist 4y ago
      UBI is a concept not a policy. Sure the government could create a policy called "UBI" and literally anything could be in it.
      - daenz 4y ago
        I'm not asking about the extreme mischaracterization of my position of "literally anything." I'm asking what safeguards are in place to keep UBI, as we know the term, from evolving into UBI-asterisk, with conditions on the recipients. So far the strongest counter argument I have seen is "well then it wouldn't technically be UBI", which doesn't fix anything.
        paulmd 4y ago
        Without a constitutional amendment there’s no guarantee of anything, future congress being bound by past congress is a fundamentally terrible idea. Imagine what the slaveholders in the early 1800s would have tried to do if they could have passed a “slaves forever and nobody can ever change this law” bill (which indeed was what the confederacy tried to do with its constitution). Even then you are subject to future amendments and future courts that interpret that what you really meant by “universal” was only that the government had to pay at least $0.01 to everyone so actually policy X is still universal. There are no “forever guarantees” and indeed that would be awful, the living should never be irrevocably bound by the hand of the dead.
tux1968 4y ago
Did those numbers ever make sense? Assuming they did, then pinning them to inflation would have kept them sane without needing additional legislation.
- lupire 4y ago
  They never made sense. This is a general problem with benefits programs and taxes that have cliffs instead of phaseouts/brackets.
  - paulmd 4y ago
    As the article states, there are phaseouts in many of the programs involved. SSI does have an income-based phaseout, not a complete threshold - the $2k threshold is a wealth cap, there is a phaseout-based income cap as well. > But SSI does this in an egregiously inefficient way. The loss of SSI is a fairly hefty penalty, and the loss of Medicaid is potentially much larger. Both can be triggered, all at once, by going a dollar above the $2,000 limit. This is an inefficient design , what welfare scholars call a “cliff.” > SSI also has an income-based phaseout. Effectively, for every dollar you earn above a threshold, you lose 50 cents in benefits. > But shockingly, that threshold is just $85 per month. So it’s like a 50 percent “tax” rate with a $85 per month standard deduction. The problem is that congress thinks $85/mo is a good place to begin a steep phaseout of benefits. You can have a phaseout and still have the program be completely useless because of the phaseout threshold and steepness. This isn't about phaseouts or not, it's about political unwillingness to do social spending (for anyone who’s not a senior citizen). The numbers were last adjusted in 1935, everyone knows they’re astoundingly low, but Americans don’t like social spending and actually mostly would prefer to reduce (or even eliminate) these programs.
- klyrs 4y ago
  > And the threshold for it (SSA calls it “income disregards”) is so astonishingly low that I asked Ne’eman about it. He believes the number is a holdover from at least 1972, when SSI was created. SSI borrowed some of its numbers from a previous aid program for the blind, and didn’t index them for inflation. Fifty years later, they remain the same, despite a sevenfold increase in the consumer price index. I haven't found concrete history here, but as far as I can tell, the income limit may have made sense in 1935. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/public-welfare/aid-for-the-blind-2/ https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/public-welfare/aid-for... Though, that legislation lists $30/mo, not the $85 listed in the article. Still, that's less than $700/mo today according to this sketchy-looking inflation calculator[1], not enough for rent in many places. Another sketchy data point[2]; average rent in 1933 was $18/mo (which kinda makes sense, as housing has been skyrocketing vs CPI). [1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1935?amount=30 https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1935?amount=30 [2] https://findanyanswer.com/what-did-a-house-cost-in-1935 https://findanyanswer.com/what-did-a-house-cost-in-1935
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
encryptluks2 4y ago
[flagged]
endisneigh 4y ago
It’s sad to say but if you’re depending on the governments assistance don’t expect to be treated particularly well unconditionally. I believe the fact these amounts are not pinned to inflation is generally intentional. The whole thing needs to be overhauled.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
brink 4y ago
My sister is disabled and has this problem. She has a pile of cash at home as a result of it rather than safe in the bank or in investments. Like, you'd think someone who's paralyzed has a life that's hard enough, but yet we've created infinite hoops for her to jump through still.
- s5300 4y ago
  - scarface74 4y ago
    - ghostly_s 4y ago
      - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
        Bulk of democrat politicians, yes. Bulk of democrat voters, no.
        turtledove 4y ago
        Yeah. Most Dem politicians aren't leftists. Many leftists vote Democrat out of, "what other choice do we even have. Not voting at all?"
        Spivak 4y ago
        Hell I bet there's even a sizable number of people who would be Republican's if it weren't for the fact their demographic has been personally victimized by them. Being gay, black, Hispanic, Muslim, but otherwise conservative puts you in such a weird spot.
xyzzy4747 4y ago
The government cares mostly about maintaining its own power, not helping disabled people who happen to live in its territory.
- IAmEveryone 4y ago
  I say this is the most deranged take on this possible, but then again, humanity tends to surprise me. Who is "the government" in this case? What power do they have over this person? The power to stop them from saving money? How is that power useful or desirable to anybody?
  - daenz 4y ago
    "Now you must vote for anyone who doesn't threaten to cut your benefits, regardless of their other positions" seems pretty powerful to me.
    - paulmd 4y ago
      No no, you need to package that into a convenient slogan. How about “vote blue no matter who”?
      - encryptluks2 4y ago
        Vote red till your dead. Lol
colechristensen 4y ago
Seen this kind of thing several times. "Assistance" programs meant to prop people up with so many reporting requirements and perverse incentives that punish you for improving your situation to the extent that the best path is to not even try to improve your situation and be entirely dependent on the program because when you do start earning income or saving anything, they take so much away from you that there is a significant cost to any amount of improvement until well after you'd be self-sufficient. i.e. it is more expensive to earn any income than it is to earn none, and the constant threat of losing support of the program (explicit threats) is much more anxiety inducing for the most vulnerable populations often than the situation they were trying to exit. Being homeless, getting into a program to help the homeless, and then constantly being threatened with a return to homelessness if somebody doesn't do the paperwork exactly right is just crazy, but I've seen it first hand.
- jakub_g 4y ago
  When I was a student and wanted to get a small job to get some pocket money, I couldn't, because after reporting it, my mom would lose some family benefits and we'd be worse off at the end of the day. This was a recurring theme until I graduated and went on my own.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- daenz 4y ago
  It's amazing how many people see this happening, acknowledge it is wrong and severely dysfunctional, and then turn around and claim that everything will be better when the government runs everything in the economy.
  - mordae 4y ago
    It's happening mostly because the politicians advocating for these dysfunctional policies are ignorants corrupted by their business friends who really don't want people to feel safe enough to ask for more money. At least here in Europe. Speaking from experience. We have several people directly profiting from several ineffective policies targeting disadvantaged in the local Parliament.
s5300 4y ago
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  Your comment seems to me somewhat unsubstantiated declaraction of stereotypical evil. That is, it isn't really saying anything we haven't already heard a lot, nor providing any additional context nor basis for it. Complaing about downvotes is among the surest ways to accumulate more downvotes, on HN. It's explicitly discouraged by the guidelines [0]: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - s5300 4y ago
    Can I make the presumption that you’re not somebody with a significant disability & also don’t regularly find themselves talking at length with quite an amount of others in the disabled/disability support community? My deepest apologies if I’m incorrect about that, but it’s hard for me to imagine that coming out of one who is/does. & yes, typically I’m not one to go “muh downvotes” but there is something quite unironically hilarious about speaking up about the disabled from a position of decade+ experience & then being downvoted to invisibility without a singular reply on a hyper-capitalist forum. Btw. If you feel it’s unsubstantiated, please perhaps try reading the title of the article we’re commenting about…
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      > If you feel it’s unsubstantiated, please perhaps try reading the title of the article we’re commenting about… If a comment's substance can be acquired by reading the title of the article, then by definition it adds nothing of substance. Look, if the article's title is "1+1", it's just pointless to comment "that's 2 btw". Notice how I'm ignoring all the ad hominems and just answering the core?
  - paulmd 4y ago
    "you're just saying people are evil!" is a rather banal dodge of the entire thesis of the article, that the system is indeed ineffective and cruel. It's using rules-lawyerism to suppress a point that you find too uncomfortable to address with an actual argument. Frankly this is sort of a recurring theme on HN, where people tend to lapse into meta-argument or tone argument as a substitute for substantive discussion. It's a matter of degree but at some point these tactics do become a logical fallacy, it's a very enticing way to shut down an argument that you can't directly counter.
DavidAdams 4y ago
It's unbelievable how much time, money, and wasted potential productivity the USA spends trying (and failing) to make sure that "undeserving" people don't have access to government welfare benefits of various kinds.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  This is the correct framing: we are willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year as a country, so long as the framing of that money contains the lie of deservedness. Contrast our funding of SSI with our funding of the defense industry, an industry that would be virtually indistinguishable from a middle class jobs program were it not for its tendency to start wars in the Middle East.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    It’s even worse than you think. The military is constantly trying to close bases and get rid of weapons that aren’t needed to save money. But Congress blocks them at every turn. That’s the whole “government doesn’t create jobs. But don’t take away our make work military jobs.” The military leaders have also been saying for years that our increase debt is an existential threat.
    - JohnWhigham 4y ago
      It's been shocking the amount of "emergency" funding for Ukraine that has been passed in the past 2 months. If it were for anything else other than the military, Republicans would have a gargantuan hissy fit over it and probably filibuster it to death.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        And none of it helps any of “our great military men and women” that they claim to love. It only helps the military industrial complex. Again this is not criticizing the military. It’s more of a critique of the defense industry and their lobbyist.
Maursault 4y ago
idunno246 4y ago
this is really tough for people with disabilities, since a lot more stuff then depends on medicaid. An easy example, if you qualify for medicaid then you qualified for the emergency broadband benefit, which was good for 50/month off internet. Or more complex, you get a budget to spend on home health care workers, transportation, respite care, therapeutic activities, etc., go over and you lose thousands of dollars of services necessary to live. thats even ignoring the actual medical benefits of medicaid able accounts that are listed have pretty big caveats. and are themselves confusing [like 529, you can buy them in any state, all with various fee structures]. the best course of action is to set up a special needs trust and able account and move money between them cause they each have different restrictions. but setting up a trust itself costs a couple thousand for the lawyers, which you arent allowed to save. my sisters disabled, but luckily NJ has a program called workability that raises these limits if you have a job. otherwise its impossible to save.
GaylordTuring 4y ago
This is how it works in Sweden as well for försörjningsstöd, which is something you can get if you have no income and you actively look for work. However, if you’re disabled, I’m pretty sure other rules apply.
mynameishere 4y ago
So much entitlement. You want the free money, there are rules. The 2000 dollar limit is perhaps too low--so that's something that can be adjusted--but the whole point of SSI is for low income disabled people. That's the point. SSDI is a different but similar program without that 2000 dollar limit.
- Retric 4y ago
  The issue is these limits aren’t tied to inflation. 2k in 1920 was a significant chunk of change 2k in 2022 is close to the benefit being handed out. As such simply raising the limit doesn’t solve the problem, indexing the original limit to inflation would.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
  Lot's of disabled people have medical bills in the 10s of thousands. If you have a cutoff below that amount, it makes it so that they can't afford to not be poor which is a shit deal for everyone.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    Not just medical bills -- even routine expenses (like paying rent, getting a car repaired, or replacing a household appliance) can easily run over the $2000 limit. People with disabilities shouldn't have to go out of their way to avoid having money.
- softcactus 4y ago
  The entitlement? Humans should be entitled to a life free of material suffering. Otherwise what is the point of creating governments and corporations if not to improve our quality of life. If you think the most vulnerable in society wanting help is entitlement then I suggest you stop using roads or visiting hospitals.
  - djbebs 4y ago
    No, they should not.
contravariant 4y ago
im3w1l 4y ago
I can see a cash-only undeclared job or even like theft or drug dealing being being big temptations.
- Spoom 4y ago
  Can confirm based on my experiences with lower income folks. It's incredibly difficult to do things the "right way".
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  You can go read reports from the OG sociologists and they're talking about how people in the projects have all sorts of cash income so they don't lose their bennies and the gangs tax the cash. That was 60yr ago.
westcort 4y ago
My key takeaways: * SSI is run by the Social Security Administration (SSA), and it is a basic income of sorts given to some people who have little or no other income * While SSI and its asset cap are obviously not taxes —the government is paying out money, not taking it in —there’s a similar property to many tax systems: as you make more money and become more self-sufficient, you lose some of those gains to government policy * You really do have to play “hot potato” with your money, never saving more than three months of income (assuming you get the usual benefit) at a time, unless you can divert your money into a category that’s excluded from the SSA’s definition of resources * So to manage life as a disabled SSI recipient, you might need to carefully separate out your different types of spending between your ABLE account and your ordinary checking account —which still can’t get above $2,000 * “It's making all disabled people into accountants, because you have to be one to follow these rules." * That $2,000 limit is not indexed for inflation and has not been updated since 1989
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > it is a basic income of sorts given to some people who have little or no other income Can people please stop calling means tested benefit programs “basic income“ to try to capitalize on the mindshare of an idea explicitly defined in reaction against means-tested benefit programs?
- Reichhardt 4y ago
  Its highly inefficient for millions of individuals welfare recipients to being independently purchasing accommodation, entertainment, utilities, food. A superior solution would be for Governments to setup large establishments where all of these services could be provided centrally and directly. Individuals could contribute their labor to maintain the establishment.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
    That's called institutionalization and nobody wants that for themselves or the people they care about.
educaysean 4y ago
Here I was feeling bad that a feature I designed and released had some edge cases around a small browser feature I hadn't fully considered. This article is truly inspiring - I guess shouldn't be so hard on myself if the very government that runs this country is constantly [m]ucking things up time after time. But hey, the people affected are only the poor and the disabled who make up the bottom rung of our society, so who cares right? If anything 33 years was a blazing fast turnaround time.
ars 4y ago
The same thing happens with university: For the FAFSA students are expected to contribute 95% of their savings before benefits kick in. So this punishes students who save their money, and rewards students who waste it on frivolous things. Then there is the "spend down" for Medicaid. Same story - you need to waste your money before benefits kick in.
wardedVibe 4y ago
this whole discussion reminds me of the [Speerhamland system in England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system), which was supposed to guarantee everyone enough to eat, but because it made up the difference between the employer's pay and the speerhamland rate with government funds, it effectively created a maximum wage in the countryside.
eli 4y ago
If you didn't know any better you'd think some of the people designing these plans wanted them to fail.
anon209832423 4y ago
My brother is on disability, and has an ABLE account so that my family can give him some money above the disability funds. His handicap is not physical, and he is not capable of doing the reporting himself, and he is often unpleasant. So I spend several hours a month dealing with his wadded up receipts to document every ABLE expense. It's invasive and humiliating for him, and a huge burden for me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dfdz 4y ago
This is a horrible policy, but it seems there is a possible solution (for people with good enough credit, which means the most vulnerable people cannot do this): Get a mortgage on house that will take a while to pay off. In order to “save” you pay extra towards the mortgage In order to “withdraw” money (if needed) you take out a small loan against the house Some bank should make a mobile app which does this, in combination with Zelle. SuperHomeSaverApp With free instant transfer between your bank accounts and home
- paulmd 4y ago
  It’s not easy for someone with disabilities and no demonstrable employment to get a zero-down-payment mortgage.
- lucidmote 4y ago
  I've never been able to get a mortgage while on SSDI. It's theoretically possible. I do have credit cards and a car payment though, so access to credit isn't entirely non-existant. I'd love to get qualified for USDA loan. Seems like a pipedream though.
vmception 4y ago
Both income and asset tests need to be in phases, not cutoffs And those phases need to be market linked in some way
substation13 4y ago
Finally an application of Bitcoin?
- eli 4y ago
  Hiding money from the government? It's honestly only mediocre at that.
coconutoctopus 4y ago
I learned this first hand when my family member started receiving SSI, and they said the government check your bank account to see if you have too much money. As a result, you see a line of elderly line up at local banks when it's payday, to withdraw the money out as cash and to keep the bank account balance as low as possible.
lvl102 4y ago
Disability benefits in the US is so absurd. I would characterize it as all or nothing. They often completely ignore people with “marginal” disabilities but if you are rich enough to afford a good lawyer, you guessed it, you can qualify for all these programs. Once you see it you can’t unsee how inefficient these programs are. There’s an entire industry designed to exploit government resources.
donatj 4y ago
I genuinely feel like the way a lot of government programs are designed, they actively discourage being responsible. My sister received government assistance when she was under 18 because my father is disabled and retired. At the end of it she received a letter that she "surely had saved up some of it by now" and that anything she had saved would have to be returned. She would have been better off just spending it and going hog wild.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  This shit has been going on since the first serious attempts at welfare in the 60s. It's not a new problem. It's the result of perverse incentives in the system from top to bottom.
jokoon 4y ago
I live in france, and a few "counties" (départements) implemented such thing, at a higher amount (about 20k), but for welfare recipients. The amount is about 500 euros per month. Some sued and got the decision canceled. I guess it's an in-progress situation as the new government will try to pay all welfare potential recipients, not only just the ones who ask for it (about 1/3 of people who are eligible don't file for welfare). It's a bit of a problem because "counties" have more recipients than others, so it should be the whole state of france to take care of it.
seventytwo 4y ago
Can confirm from second-hand experience that this is a very real problem. There’s a “cliff” that makes it so many people get stuck. There needs to be a gradual decline in assistance as income goes up, and it should never ever get cut off for got because of a fortunate month or year.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
The sooner you realize how many of these systems only exist to keep you poor and dependent the better.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  What’s the alternative you’re proposing?
4oo4 4y ago
"Homeless and poor people are so lazy and irresponsible with their money, they can't save it and invest it like smart and noble rich people. But also they save too much money and are cheating the system when they need assistance despite basic necessities being made as difficult and expensive to obtain as possible!" /s This reminds me that I actually had a conversation with my soon to be former boss arguing that we shouldn't have a minimum wage because of its relation to the poverty level. His thinking was that upping the minimum wage means the government has to spend more on benefits, so we shouldn't have one and let the magical free market figure it out. I asked him point blank whether these things should be tied to inflation and the cost of consumer goods, but unfortunately I can't remember what his exact response was since I was a few beers in. I do remember though that it was a weaselly cop-out of wilfull ignorance and wishful thinking. I really wanted to pick apart how stupid that was, but it wasn't worh it. I'm still shocked that an otherwise intelligent person could think that's a sound policy, but I think that same thinking underpins terrible laws like this. No one actually wants to look at the numbers of what things actually cost (food, housing, healthcare, etc.), wages, inflation, or how expensive it is to be poor, compared with wages and public assistance. Nope, instead we'd rather just use arbitrary numbers and emotionally abuse people by telling them it's their personal failure when the system exploits them as designed. The current system of applying for public benefits in the US is what Kafka would've dreamed of, had he been a sadist.
turtledove 4y ago
Means testing (making sure benefits only go to poor folks) is such a colossal waste of time and money. And it creates perverse incentives where becoming slightly less poor can lead to a huge drop in benefits. If we gave everyone food stamps, and we raised marginal tax rates a tiny little bit, then we would not need to spend any effort on validating who was and wasn't allowed to receive them. It would remove the stigma of having them. It would enable people to just get them without having to apply or understand paperwork. The willingness to disguise cruelty as "just following the rules" in America is astounding.
- rdedev 4y ago
  I never understood why these thresholds are hard thresholds in the first place. It should make sense for the reduction in benifits to reduce gradually but it's pretty rare to see a policy like that
Farfignoggen 4y ago
I just got Kicked off of SSDI(I also revived SSI because my SSDI income was below 75% of the poverty level) but I plan to appeal but that $2000 dollar asset limit last set in 1987-1989 and never indexed to inflation is just too draconian and needs to be recalculated for 2022 dollars and actually Indexed to the inflation rate. So now I have to choose between early retirement and only getting about $320 per month or appealing my SSDI/SSI Case or just reapplying for Disability as someone over 62 years old. But low income retirees can not qualify for SSI until they reach 65 years old if they are not Disabled but the SSA has been bumbling Disability Reviews ever since congress/president allowed those Continuing Eligibility Reviews to begin again from the Pandemic forbearance period that's expired. And that's not been Fair for some elderly recipients because the SS offices are barely reopened and Congress just had hearings on the lack of SSA's ability to service SSA client requests. I was unable to get my appeal forms sent to me because the local SSA office was unable to be reached by Phone, so terrible is the SSA customer service system. The SSA is so very much dysfunctional that congress needs to review each and every Elderly/Disabled person's Eligibility review for the past 6 months since that Eligibility review process was restarted. And that Asset limit forced me so save outside of the banking system in order to pay for some needed Crown replacements and other dental work because Medicaid/Medicare has limited Dental coverage. And that $2000 dollars will not even pay for a single Crown replacement at the going rate in the NE US for uninsured dental work(About $2800 for a single Crown and buildup for that crown). Really all this SSI/SSDI and all the SSA administrative review costs to do all that for folks over 62 should be replaced by some Reformed Social Security income floor that sets the minimum SS benefit at 75% of the poverty level for anyone 62 years or older and then there would be no need for any retirees to be on SSI to begin with. SSI was created because of the SSA's inability to properly calculate the true costs of any projected future costs of living for low wage earners so the SSA/FICA/Retirement Taxes have been insufficient for many lifetime low wage earners.
paultopia 4y ago
Yes, this has been a problem for many years. I used to be a legal aid lawyer, and one often heard about people having to get rid of assets to qualify for life-sustaining benefits.
throwaway4re 4y ago
Made a throwaway for this. Despite being highly educated and qualified, my spouse and I have to turn down work and stay within proximity to the poverty line to ensure access to healthcare for my spouse that has a chronic health condition. There’s literally no reason to get a good job unless it pays $200k+ right off the bat, because up to that point healthcare costs would be in excess of 100% of our combined income. This is intentional. The United States maintains a population of poor people by design. Any politician that says otherwise is literally lying!
throwawayblindy 4y ago
Blind person here; I'm not on SSDI myself, but I have friends who are. All this policy seems to encourage is financial crimes, bordering on money laundering. It seems like everybody is doing it, or at least everybody who I've talked to. I've seen everything, from very careful financial planning, including buying things and paying bills a lot earlier than needed in anticipation of large influxes of money, to withdrawing money in cash, which is easy to hide and easy to justify to a government official, to putting money in weird accounts which the IRS is unlikely to audit. I'm sure people who actually live in the US have seen a lot more examples of this than I have.
lucidmote 4y ago
People have no idea. I've done Darpa internships in IT and full stack developer internships in DC, and could have a lucrative career someday, but I'm stuck in this strange pocket of SSDI where I can't afford to return to work for less than $70k and I'm not yet worth that much. I'm literally better off doing unpaid or minimum wage internships for the indefinite future until I can hit that benchmark. My programs pay for everything. My food, my power bill, the interest on my student debt. And if I save one cent over $7200, I lose my medical subsidy so I'm constantly having to find inventive ways to spend money. It's a weird problem to have.
jxramos 4y ago
I actually faced this while researching how to aid a family member under the representative payee program and began to wonder how to spend their funds in ways that would benefit them and avoid accumulation of assets and all that stuff to remain below 2k. https://www.ssa.gov/payee/faqrep.htm https://www.ssa.gov/payee/faqrep.htm
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Know a number of folks on SSI. Yup. This is real. One person I know keeps cash, when their account gets too high. That’s not so safe, as folks on SSI are often living in less-than-wonderful environments. Also, people who take Social Security early, are prohibited from earning over a certain amount, but I think that’s different.
FunnyBadger 4y ago
perryizgr8 4y ago
Repeat after me: welfare is not a job for governments
Madmallard 4y ago
csense 4y ago
I've seen this in my own extended family. $OldFamilyMember died and left some money to $DisabledFamilyMember who would lose benefits if he took it. $DisabledFamilyMember and $OtherHeirs agreed the money would instead go to $UpperMiddleClassFamilyMember who is most responsible and least in need of money. This would be a short path to an infuriating outcome in many families, but in this case, fortunately, the adults involved all acted like adults instead of children. Although legally it was now $UMCFM's money, $UMCFM kept the money in a separate account and would send checks whenever $DisabledFamilyMember reported they were struggling with unexpected expenses (e.g. replacing a dead refrigerator). Years later, the account ran out of money, but AFAIK $UMCFM never informed $DisabledFamilyMember of this fact, and $UMCFM continues to support $DFM's unexpected expenses to this day from $UMCFM's own pocket. Some details changed to protect the privacy of all involved, and other details may not be accurate as I got some of this second- or third-hand, I was still rather young when this situation started, and it's been many years since I've heard anything about this. I can only imagine how infuriating and demoralizing it would be if $UMCFM wasn't there to help out, $DisabledFamilyMember was on their own, and either (a) took the money and lost their benefits, or (b) didn't take the money and then had serious consequences due to lack of money (i.e. having to live without a refrigerator when it broke). There should be some judicial principle or constitutional amendment that says a law can be thrown out if (1) it doesn't make logical sense, and/or (2) it actively defeats its stated objectives. Anyone want to try to write a compiler that can check a legal code for consistency and automatically resolve conflicts by removing laws in a defined order until it's -- I don't quite know if this is the right terminology -- logically satisfiable by a non-empty set of models?
watersb 4y ago
SSI != SSDI SSI: Supplemental Security Income SSDI: Social Security Disability Insurance SSI is a government subsidy, or payout, for those living in poverty. There are income and asset caps that define the poverty level. SSDI is a "single payer" insurance program. Everyone who earns income is required to pay premiums into this program. When someone becomes permanently disabled, no longer able to earn income, they receive payouts from this insurance program. These programs are not the same thing. And the requirements for each are not the same. The cruel reality of healthcare expenses blurs these two things together, for the expense of suffering a medical catastrophe, and ongoing medical support, will indeed drive almost anyone into poverty. And yes: if you become disabled, it will take you almost two years to qualify for SSDI. That's not a strict requirement of the program, but it's a consequence of how the program works. Most families, unable to earn income for that long, won't have much in the way of cash by the time their SSDI review has come through. But it's possible to become permanently disabled while having more than $2000. https://www.disabilitysecrets.com/page7-5.html https://www.disabilitysecrets.com/page7-5.html
midislack 4y ago
This was intended for the destitute to cover month to month expenses. It’s not designed for people with even modest means as an extra nest egg. And the host of ways to gather disability money really blows the mind. SSA’s next biggest job after doling out cash is to watch for waste, fraud, and abuse.
navjack27 4y ago
I went to a special high school for kids with autistic spectrum disorder and we were basically all educated and given assistance for during transition to graduation getting SSI immediately. So I've had SSI my whole life essentially. I've had to live with these restrictions since I was basically 20. I moved out from living with my dad only a handful of years ago. I'm 33 now and I get 870 something dollars a month plus an extra from the state itself and I get supplemental nutrition food stamps and I also get my rent lowered and mostly taken care of and I just have to pay $103 a month for rent. Doing literally anything that would be considered taking in income would just be stupid for me to do because of any of the penalization that comes with it. Saving money would just be not a good idea even though it would be a great idea to have some sort of a safety net... But my stepmother and actual father have things just in case for that for me so I'm lucky in that regard... I have extreme anxiety when it comes to managing any of this or managing a lot of things especially over the phone and my dad has had to manage most of that for me directly and I've had to sign a lot of paperwork to make sure that he can talk for me. I basically consider if I didn't have him that I would be homeless or dead right now. I had a single job during my adult life and I was only a couple years ago. It was through a job placement program for people with disabilities and I was working for some local racing engine shop that needed someone to help with computer things. I helped build them a website with e-commerce stuff all over it and made sure everything was following all the right rules to do all of that I help them build a Facebook presence... A whole lot of stuff in just a couple weeks. I was a brand new person working there out of only like five people that work there and I was the only one who had a brand new computer that I had to build myself out of parts they bought for me that I asked for... But none of that really matters because I realize that the woman at the job placement who managed my case was dating the owner of the engine shops son. As soon as I found this out that just gave me extreme anxiety every day and I felt like I was being just used and I quit. I'm not going to get exploited like that being somebody's computer monkey boy with no proper management.

398 points by jarrenae 4y ago

daenz 4y ago

Would this eventually happen with UBI?

maweki 4y ago
Do you mean whether UBI would have such a cut-off? Then it's by definition not universal.
- daenz 4y ago
  If UBI could logically evolve into non-universal basic income, that should be a concern, because if people are dependent on that money, they can't really oppose the change.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    You meant to ask if a government that does UBI can ever stop doing it and offering some other kind of assistance?
    - daenz 4y ago
      Not quite. I'm concerned that they would offer UBI, and then add conditions later. It's pedantic to think that officials would care that this is "not technically UBI anymore." It would be called UBI, but you would be required to comply with different standards to receive it.
      - marcosdumay 4y ago
        A government can always take assistance down, add rules, expand, shrink, do whatever with it. It can also use whatever name it wants.
        daenz 4y ago
        Then it seems like a very bad idea to put the security of your home, food, and livelihood entirely on the whims of the government to such a degree.
        marcosdumay 4y ago
        Hum... If you are saying that people shouldn't willingly depend on social assistance, I don't think you will find anybody to disagree with. If you are saying that people should be free from government's whims, congratulations, you've just discovered Democracy. Anyway, if your government has whims, the security of your home, food and livelihood is entirely dependent on them. It doesn't matter if you depend on social assistance.
- notahacker 4y ago
  UBI is always going to have a de facto cutoff where some people pay more in tax than they receive in UBI (unless your government is funding it solely by money printing or having massive amounts of oil per head of population). The only question is what that level is at and how steeply the relevant taxes reduce turn its net benefit to a net cost, and that's something governments determine just like the tapering on any other form of benefit.
  - gpm 4y ago
    A smooth transition out is more or less by definition not a cutoff (a cutoff being a sudden thing). This is an important distinction, because it means it's never harmful to earn another dollar. Since we don't have a wealth tax, there isn't even a smooth transition out along the dimension that the article discusses.
    - notahacker 4y ago
      The article also discusses and criticises a 50% effective marginal tax on working which is absolutely how an UBI smoothly transitions if funded by an income tax, and in theory the taper could be steeper still. Not harmful to earn another dollar, but not especially lucrative either. Nothing about a UBI prevents it from being coupled with a wealth tax (possibly even a regressive one which kicks in at low levels so recipients are disincentivised to save) if the government wishes to fund it that way... and they'll need to find additional funds from somewhere. The only difference with UBI is the subsidy itself is a lot less targeted than "financial aid for registered disabled people", so the government has to find a lot more ways to claw it back from some sections of the population. That can be sneaky and regressive, just like a non-universal income only disabled people are entitled to can be completely without income and wealth qualifications if a government wants.
  - orangecat 4y ago
    UBI is always going to have a de facto cutoff where some people pay more in tax than they receive in UBI That's not a cutoff; it's a continuous function that crosses zero at some point. With a UBI funded by an income tax you're never worse off earning more.
oconnor663 4y ago
If you're referring to the issue with inflation over time making old policy numbers no longer make sense, it could definitely happen, though I think most UBI proponents prefer a design that automatically adjusts for inflation for exactly this reason. But if you're referring to the part where onerous means testing and other eligibility rules make life harder for the very people we want to help, then no, I think one of the fundamental benefits of a UBI is that it avoids all of that.
- daenz 4y ago
  >I think one of the greatest features of UBI is that it gets rid of all of that by design. But you can't guarantee that "by design", only "by name." As we know with politics, the name of a program is not tightly coupled to its effect.
  - mgfist 4y ago
    UBI is a concept not a policy. Sure the government could create a policy called "UBI" and literally anything could be in it.
    - daenz 4y ago
      I'm not asking about the extreme mischaracterization of my position of "literally anything." I'm asking what safeguards are in place to keep UBI, as we know the term, from evolving into UBI-asterisk, with conditions on the recipients. So far the strongest counter argument I have seen is "well then it wouldn't technically be UBI", which doesn't fix anything.
      - paulmd 4y ago
        Without a constitutional amendment there’s no guarantee of anything, future congress being bound by past congress is a fundamentally terrible idea. Imagine what the slaveholders in the early 1800s would have tried to do if they could have passed a “slaves forever and nobody can ever change this law” bill (which indeed was what the confederacy tried to do with its constitution). Even then you are subject to future amendments and future courts that interpret that what you really meant by “universal” was only that the government had to pay at least $0.01 to everyone so actually policy X is still universal. There are no “forever guarantees” and indeed that would be awful, the living should never be irrevocably bound by the hand of the dead.

tux1968 4y ago

Did those numbers ever make sense? Assuming they did, then pinning them to inflation would have kept them sane without needing additional legislation.

lupire 4y ago
They never made sense. This is a general problem with benefits programs and taxes that have cliffs instead of phaseouts/brackets.
- paulmd 4y ago
  As the article states, there are phaseouts in many of the programs involved. SSI does have an income-based phaseout, not a complete threshold - the $2k threshold is a wealth cap, there is a phaseout-based income cap as well. > But SSI does this in an egregiously inefficient way. The loss of SSI is a fairly hefty penalty, and the loss of Medicaid is potentially much larger. Both can be triggered, all at once, by going a dollar above the $2,000 limit. This is an inefficient design , what welfare scholars call a “cliff.” > SSI also has an income-based phaseout. Effectively, for every dollar you earn above a threshold, you lose 50 cents in benefits. > But shockingly, that threshold is just $85 per month. So it’s like a 50 percent “tax” rate with a $85 per month standard deduction. The problem is that congress thinks $85/mo is a good place to begin a steep phaseout of benefits. You can have a phaseout and still have the program be completely useless because of the phaseout threshold and steepness. This isn't about phaseouts or not, it's about political unwillingness to do social spending (for anyone who’s not a senior citizen). The numbers were last adjusted in 1935, everyone knows they’re astoundingly low, but Americans don’t like social spending and actually mostly would prefer to reduce (or even eliminate) these programs.
klyrs 4y ago
> And the threshold for it (SSA calls it “income disregards”) is so astonishingly low that I asked Ne’eman about it. He believes the number is a holdover from at least 1972, when SSI was created. SSI borrowed some of its numbers from a previous aid program for the blind, and didn’t index them for inflation. Fifty years later, they remain the same, despite a sevenfold increase in the consumer price index. I haven't found concrete history here, but as far as I can tell, the income limit may have made sense in 1935. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/public-welfare/aid-for-the-blind-2/ https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/public-welfare/aid-for... Though, that legislation lists $30/mo, not the $85 listed in the article. Still, that's less than $700/mo today according to this sketchy-looking inflation calculator[1], not enough for rent in many places. Another sketchy data point[2]; average rent in 1933 was $18/mo (which kinda makes sense, as housing has been skyrocketing vs CPI). [1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1935?amount=30 https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1935?amount=30 [2] https://findanyanswer.com/what-did-a-house-cost-in-1935 https://findanyanswer.com/what-did-a-house-cost-in-1935

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encryptluks2 4y ago

[flagged]

endisneigh 4y ago

It’s sad to say but if you’re depending on the governments assistance don’t expect to be treated particularly well unconditionally. I believe the fact these amounts are not pinned to inflation is generally intentional. The whole thing needs to be overhauled.

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brink 4y ago

My sister is disabled and has this problem. She has a pile of cash at home as a result of it rather than safe in the bank or in investments. Like, you'd think someone who's paralyzed has a life that's hard enough, but yet we've created infinite hoops for her to jump through still.

s5300 4y ago
- scarface74 4y ago
  - ghostly_s 4y ago
    - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
      Bulk of democrat politicians, yes. Bulk of democrat voters, no.
      - turtledove 4y ago
        Yeah. Most Dem politicians aren't leftists. Many leftists vote Democrat out of, "what other choice do we even have. Not voting at all?"
        Spivak 4y ago
        Hell I bet there's even a sizable number of people who would be Republican's if it weren't for the fact their demographic has been personally victimized by them. Being gay, black, Hispanic, Muslim, but otherwise conservative puts you in such a weird spot.

xyzzy4747 4y ago

The government cares mostly about maintaining its own power, not helping disabled people who happen to live in its territory.

IAmEveryone 4y ago
I say this is the most deranged take on this possible, but then again, humanity tends to surprise me. Who is "the government" in this case? What power do they have over this person? The power to stop them from saving money? How is that power useful or desirable to anybody?
- daenz 4y ago
  "Now you must vote for anyone who doesn't threaten to cut your benefits, regardless of their other positions" seems pretty powerful to me.
  - paulmd 4y ago
    No no, you need to package that into a convenient slogan. How about “vote blue no matter who”?
    - encryptluks2 4y ago
      Vote red till your dead. Lol

colechristensen 4y ago

Seen this kind of thing several times. "Assistance" programs meant to prop people up with so many reporting requirements and perverse incentives that punish you for improving your situation to the extent that the best path is to not even try to improve your situation and be entirely dependent on the program because when you do start earning income or saving anything, they take so much away from you that there is a significant cost to any amount of improvement until well after you'd be self-sufficient. i.e. it is more expensive to earn any income than it is to earn none, and the constant threat of losing support of the program (explicit threats) is much more anxiety inducing for the most vulnerable populations often than the situation they were trying to exit. Being homeless, getting into a program to help the homeless, and then constantly being threatened with a return to homelessness if somebody doesn't do the paperwork exactly right is just crazy, but I've seen it first hand.

jakub_g 4y ago
When I was a student and wanted to get a small job to get some pocket money, I couldn't, because after reporting it, my mom would lose some family benefits and we'd be worse off at the end of the day. This was a recurring theme until I graduated and went on my own.
deleted 4y ago
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daenz 4y ago
It's amazing how many people see this happening, acknowledge it is wrong and severely dysfunctional, and then turn around and claim that everything will be better when the government runs everything in the economy.
- mordae 4y ago
  It's happening mostly because the politicians advocating for these dysfunctional policies are ignorants corrupted by their business friends who really don't want people to feel safe enough to ask for more money. At least here in Europe. Speaking from experience. We have several people directly profiting from several ineffective policies targeting disadvantaged in the local Parliament.

s5300 4y ago

hypertele-Xii 4y ago
Your comment seems to me somewhat unsubstantiated declaraction of stereotypical evil. That is, it isn't really saying anything we haven't already heard a lot, nor providing any additional context nor basis for it. Complaing about downvotes is among the surest ways to accumulate more downvotes, on HN. It's explicitly discouraged by the guidelines [0]: > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- s5300 4y ago
  Can I make the presumption that you’re not somebody with a significant disability & also don’t regularly find themselves talking at length with quite an amount of others in the disabled/disability support community? My deepest apologies if I’m incorrect about that, but it’s hard for me to imagine that coming out of one who is/does. & yes, typically I’m not one to go “muh downvotes” but there is something quite unironically hilarious about speaking up about the disabled from a position of decade+ experience & then being downvoted to invisibility without a singular reply on a hyper-capitalist forum. Btw. If you feel it’s unsubstantiated, please perhaps try reading the title of the article we’re commenting about…
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    > If you feel it’s unsubstantiated, please perhaps try reading the title of the article we’re commenting about… If a comment's substance can be acquired by reading the title of the article, then by definition it adds nothing of substance. Look, if the article's title is "1+1", it's just pointless to comment "that's 2 btw". Notice how I'm ignoring all the ad hominems and just answering the core?
- paulmd 4y ago
  "you're just saying people are evil!" is a rather banal dodge of the entire thesis of the article, that the system is indeed ineffective and cruel. It's using rules-lawyerism to suppress a point that you find too uncomfortable to address with an actual argument. Frankly this is sort of a recurring theme on HN, where people tend to lapse into meta-argument or tone argument as a substitute for substantive discussion. It's a matter of degree but at some point these tactics do become a logical fallacy, it's a very enticing way to shut down an argument that you can't directly counter.

DavidAdams 4y ago

It's unbelievable how much time, money, and wasted potential productivity the USA spends trying (and failing) to make sure that "undeserving" people don't have access to government welfare benefits of various kinds.

woodruffw 4y ago
This is the correct framing: we are willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year as a country, so long as the framing of that money contains the lie of deservedness. Contrast our funding of SSI with our funding of the defense industry, an industry that would be virtually indistinguishable from a middle class jobs program were it not for its tendency to start wars in the Middle East.
- scarface74 4y ago
  It’s even worse than you think. The military is constantly trying to close bases and get rid of weapons that aren’t needed to save money. But Congress blocks them at every turn. That’s the whole “government doesn’t create jobs. But don’t take away our make work military jobs.” The military leaders have also been saying for years that our increase debt is an existential threat.
  - JohnWhigham 4y ago
    It's been shocking the amount of "emergency" funding for Ukraine that has been passed in the past 2 months. If it were for anything else other than the military, Republicans would have a gargantuan hissy fit over it and probably filibuster it to death.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      And none of it helps any of “our great military men and women” that they claim to love. It only helps the military industrial complex. Again this is not criticizing the military. It’s more of a critique of the defense industry and their lobbyist.

Maursault 4y ago

idunno246 4y ago

this is really tough for people with disabilities, since a lot more stuff then depends on medicaid. An easy example, if you qualify for medicaid then you qualified for the emergency broadband benefit, which was good for 50/month off internet. Or more complex, you get a budget to spend on home health care workers, transportation, respite care, therapeutic activities, etc., go over and you lose thousands of dollars of services necessary to live. thats even ignoring the actual medical benefits of medicaid able accounts that are listed have pretty big caveats. and are themselves confusing [like 529, you can buy them in any state, all with various fee structures]. the best course of action is to set up a special needs trust and able account and move money between them cause they each have different restrictions. but setting up a trust itself costs a couple thousand for the lawyers, which you arent allowed to save. my sisters disabled, but luckily NJ has a program called workability that raises these limits if you have a job. otherwise its impossible to save.

GaylordTuring 4y ago

This is how it works in Sweden as well for försörjningsstöd, which is something you can get if you have no income and you actively look for work. However, if you’re disabled, I’m pretty sure other rules apply.

mynameishere 4y ago

So much entitlement. You want the free money, there are rules. The 2000 dollar limit is perhaps too low--so that's something that can be adjusted--but the whole point of SSI is for low income disabled people. That's the point. SSDI is a different but similar program without that 2000 dollar limit.

Retric 4y ago
The issue is these limits aren’t tied to inflation. 2k in 1920 was a significant chunk of change 2k in 2022 is close to the benefit being handed out. As such simply raising the limit doesn’t solve the problem, indexing the original limit to inflation would.
adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
Lot's of disabled people have medical bills in the 10s of thousands. If you have a cutoff below that amount, it makes it so that they can't afford to not be poor which is a shit deal for everyone.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  Not just medical bills -- even routine expenses (like paying rent, getting a car repaired, or replacing a household appliance) can easily run over the $2000 limit. People with disabilities shouldn't have to go out of their way to avoid having money.
softcactus 4y ago
The entitlement? Humans should be entitled to a life free of material suffering. Otherwise what is the point of creating governments and corporations if not to improve our quality of life. If you think the most vulnerable in society wanting help is entitlement then I suggest you stop using roads or visiting hospitals.
- djbebs 4y ago
  No, they should not.

contravariant 4y ago

im3w1l 4y ago

I can see a cash-only undeclared job or even like theft or drug dealing being being big temptations.

Spoom 4y ago
Can confirm based on my experiences with lower income folks. It's incredibly difficult to do things the "right way".
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
You can go read reports from the OG sociologists and they're talking about how people in the projects have all sorts of cash income so they don't lose their bennies and the gangs tax the cash. That was 60yr ago.

westcort 4y ago

My key takeaways: * SSI is run by the Social Security Administration (SSA), and it is a basic income of sorts given to some people who have little or no other income * While SSI and its asset cap are obviously not taxes —the government is paying out money, not taking it in —there’s a similar property to many tax systems: as you make more money and become more self-sufficient, you lose some of those gains to government policy * You really do have to play “hot potato” with your money, never saving more than three months of income (assuming you get the usual benefit) at a time, unless you can divert your money into a category that’s excluded from the SSA’s definition of resources * So to manage life as a disabled SSI recipient, you might need to carefully separate out your different types of spending between your ABLE account and your ordinary checking account —which still can’t get above $2,000 * “It's making all disabled people into accountants, because you have to be one to follow these rules." * That $2,000 limit is not indexed for inflation and has not been updated since 1989

dragonwriter 4y ago
> it is a basic income of sorts given to some people who have little or no other income Can people please stop calling means tested benefit programs “basic income“ to try to capitalize on the mindshare of an idea explicitly defined in reaction against means-tested benefit programs?
Reichhardt 4y ago
Its highly inefficient for millions of individuals welfare recipients to being independently purchasing accommodation, entertainment, utilities, food. A superior solution would be for Governments to setup large establishments where all of these services could be provided centrally and directly. Individuals could contribute their labor to maintain the establishment.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
  That's called institutionalization and nobody wants that for themselves or the people they care about.

educaysean 4y ago

Here I was feeling bad that a feature I designed and released had some edge cases around a small browser feature I hadn't fully considered. This article is truly inspiring - I guess shouldn't be so hard on myself if the very government that runs this country is constantly [m]ucking things up time after time. But hey, the people affected are only the poor and the disabled who make up the bottom rung of our society, so who cares right? If anything 33 years was a blazing fast turnaround time.

ars 4y ago

The same thing happens with university: For the FAFSA students are expected to contribute 95% of their savings before benefits kick in. So this punishes students who save their money, and rewards students who waste it on frivolous things. Then there is the "spend down" for Medicaid. Same story - you need to waste your money before benefits kick in.

wardedVibe 4y ago

this whole discussion reminds me of the [Speerhamland system in England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system), which was supposed to guarantee everyone enough to eat, but because it made up the difference between the employer's pay and the speerhamland rate with government funds, it effectively created a maximum wage in the countryside.

eli 4y ago

If you didn't know any better you'd think some of the people designing these plans wanted them to fail.

anon209832423 4y ago

My brother is on disability, and has an ABLE account so that my family can give him some money above the disability funds. His handicap is not physical, and he is not capable of doing the reporting himself, and he is often unpleasant. So I spend several hours a month dealing with his wadded up receipts to document every ABLE expense. It's invasive and humiliating for him, and a huge burden for me.

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dfdz 4y ago

This is a horrible policy, but it seems there is a possible solution (for people with good enough credit, which means the most vulnerable people cannot do this): Get a mortgage on house that will take a while to pay off. In order to “save” you pay extra towards the mortgage In order to “withdraw” money (if needed) you take out a small loan against the house Some bank should make a mobile app which does this, in combination with Zelle. SuperHomeSaverApp With free instant transfer between your bank accounts and home

paulmd 4y ago
It’s not easy for someone with disabilities and no demonstrable employment to get a zero-down-payment mortgage.
lucidmote 4y ago
I've never been able to get a mortgage while on SSDI. It's theoretically possible. I do have credit cards and a car payment though, so access to credit isn't entirely non-existant. I'd love to get qualified for USDA loan. Seems like a pipedream though.

vmception 4y ago

Both income and asset tests need to be in phases, not cutoffs And those phases need to be market linked in some way

substation13 4y ago

Finally an application of Bitcoin?

eli 4y ago
Hiding money from the government? It's honestly only mediocre at that.

coconutoctopus 4y ago

I learned this first hand when my family member started receiving SSI, and they said the government check your bank account to see if you have too much money. As a result, you see a line of elderly line up at local banks when it's payday, to withdraw the money out as cash and to keep the bank account balance as low as possible.

lvl102 4y ago

Disability benefits in the US is so absurd. I would characterize it as all or nothing. They often completely ignore people with “marginal” disabilities but if you are rich enough to afford a good lawyer, you guessed it, you can qualify for all these programs. Once you see it you can’t unsee how inefficient these programs are. There’s an entire industry designed to exploit government resources.

donatj 4y ago

I genuinely feel like the way a lot of government programs are designed, they actively discourage being responsible. My sister received government assistance when she was under 18 because my father is disabled and retired. At the end of it she received a letter that she "surely had saved up some of it by now" and that anything she had saved would have to be returned. She would have been better off just spending it and going hog wild.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
This shit has been going on since the first serious attempts at welfare in the 60s. It's not a new problem. It's the result of perverse incentives in the system from top to bottom.

jokoon 4y ago

I live in france, and a few "counties" (départements) implemented such thing, at a higher amount (about 20k), but for welfare recipients. The amount is about 500 euros per month. Some sued and got the decision canceled. I guess it's an in-progress situation as the new government will try to pay all welfare potential recipients, not only just the ones who ask for it (about 1/3 of people who are eligible don't file for welfare). It's a bit of a problem because "counties" have more recipients than others, so it should be the whole state of france to take care of it.

seventytwo 4y ago

Can confirm from second-hand experience that this is a very real problem. There’s a “cliff” that makes it so many people get stuck. There needs to be a gradual decline in assistance as income goes up, and it should never ever get cut off for got because of a fortunate month or year.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

The sooner you realize how many of these systems only exist to keep you poor and dependent the better.

ceejayoz 4y ago
What’s the alternative you’re proposing?

4oo4 4y ago

"Homeless and poor people are so lazy and irresponsible with their money, they can't save it and invest it like smart and noble rich people. But also they save too much money and are cheating the system when they need assistance despite basic necessities being made as difficult and expensive to obtain as possible!" /s This reminds me that I actually had a conversation with my soon to be former boss arguing that we shouldn't have a minimum wage because of its relation to the poverty level. His thinking was that upping the minimum wage means the government has to spend more on benefits, so we shouldn't have one and let the magical free market figure it out. I asked him point blank whether these things should be tied to inflation and the cost of consumer goods, but unfortunately I can't remember what his exact response was since I was a few beers in. I do remember though that it was a weaselly cop-out of wilfull ignorance and wishful thinking. I really wanted to pick apart how stupid that was, but it wasn't worh it. I'm still shocked that an otherwise intelligent person could think that's a sound policy, but I think that same thinking underpins terrible laws like this. No one actually wants to look at the numbers of what things actually cost (food, housing, healthcare, etc.), wages, inflation, or how expensive it is to be poor, compared with wages and public assistance. Nope, instead we'd rather just use arbitrary numbers and emotionally abuse people by telling them it's their personal failure when the system exploits them as designed. The current system of applying for public benefits in the US is what Kafka would've dreamed of, had he been a sadist.

turtledove 4y ago

Means testing (making sure benefits only go to poor folks) is such a colossal waste of time and money. And it creates perverse incentives where becoming slightly less poor can lead to a huge drop in benefits. If we gave everyone food stamps, and we raised marginal tax rates a tiny little bit, then we would not need to spend any effort on validating who was and wasn't allowed to receive them. It would remove the stigma of having them. It would enable people to just get them without having to apply or understand paperwork. The willingness to disguise cruelty as "just following the rules" in America is astounding.

rdedev 4y ago
I never understood why these thresholds are hard thresholds in the first place. It should make sense for the reduction in benifits to reduce gradually but it's pretty rare to see a policy like that

Farfignoggen 4y ago

I just got Kicked off of SSDI(I also revived SSI because my SSDI income was below 75% of the poverty level) but I plan to appeal but that $2000 dollar asset limit last set in 1987-1989 and never indexed to inflation is just too draconian and needs to be recalculated for 2022 dollars and actually Indexed to the inflation rate. So now I have to choose between early retirement and only getting about $320 per month or appealing my SSDI/SSI Case or just reapplying for Disability as someone over 62 years old. But low income retirees can not qualify for SSI until they reach 65 years old if they are not Disabled but the SSA has been bumbling Disability Reviews ever since congress/president allowed those Continuing Eligibility Reviews to begin again from the Pandemic forbearance period that's expired. And that's not been Fair for some elderly recipients because the SS offices are barely reopened and Congress just had hearings on the lack of SSA's ability to service SSA client requests. I was unable to get my appeal forms sent to me because the local SSA office was unable to be reached by Phone, so terrible is the SSA customer service system. The SSA is so very much dysfunctional that congress needs to review each and every Elderly/Disabled person's Eligibility review for the past 6 months since that Eligibility review process was restarted. And that Asset limit forced me so save outside of the banking system in order to pay for some needed Crown replacements and other dental work because Medicaid/Medicare has limited Dental coverage. And that $2000 dollars will not even pay for a single Crown replacement at the going rate in the NE US for uninsured dental work(About $2800 for a single Crown and buildup for that crown). Really all this SSI/SSDI and all the SSA administrative review costs to do all that for folks over 62 should be replaced by some Reformed Social Security income floor that sets the minimum SS benefit at 75% of the poverty level for anyone 62 years or older and then there would be no need for any retirees to be on SSI to begin with. SSI was created because of the SSA's inability to properly calculate the true costs of any projected future costs of living for low wage earners so the SSA/FICA/Retirement Taxes have been insufficient for many lifetime low wage earners.

paultopia 4y ago

Yes, this has been a problem for many years. I used to be a legal aid lawyer, and one often heard about people having to get rid of assets to qualify for life-sustaining benefits.

throwaway4re 4y ago

Made a throwaway for this. Despite being highly educated and qualified, my spouse and I have to turn down work and stay within proximity to the poverty line to ensure access to healthcare for my spouse that has a chronic health condition. There’s literally no reason to get a good job unless it pays $200k+ right off the bat, because up to that point healthcare costs would be in excess of 100% of our combined income. This is intentional. The United States maintains a population of poor people by design. Any politician that says otherwise is literally lying!

throwawayblindy 4y ago

Blind person here; I'm not on SSDI myself, but I have friends who are. All this policy seems to encourage is financial crimes, bordering on money laundering. It seems like everybody is doing it, or at least everybody who I've talked to. I've seen everything, from very careful financial planning, including buying things and paying bills a lot earlier than needed in anticipation of large influxes of money, to withdrawing money in cash, which is easy to hide and easy to justify to a government official, to putting money in weird accounts which the IRS is unlikely to audit. I'm sure people who actually live in the US have seen a lot more examples of this than I have.

lucidmote 4y ago

People have no idea. I've done Darpa internships in IT and full stack developer internships in DC, and could have a lucrative career someday, but I'm stuck in this strange pocket of SSDI where I can't afford to return to work for less than $70k and I'm not yet worth that much. I'm literally better off doing unpaid or minimum wage internships for the indefinite future until I can hit that benchmark. My programs pay for everything. My food, my power bill, the interest on my student debt. And if I save one cent over $7200, I lose my medical subsidy so I'm constantly having to find inventive ways to spend money. It's a weird problem to have.

jxramos 4y ago

I actually faced this while researching how to aid a family member under the representative payee program and began to wonder how to spend their funds in ways that would benefit them and avoid accumulation of assets and all that stuff to remain below 2k. https://www.ssa.gov/payee/faqrep.htm https://www.ssa.gov/payee/faqrep.htm

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

Know a number of folks on SSI. Yup. This is real. One person I know keeps cash, when their account gets too high. That’s not so safe, as folks on SSI are often living in less-than-wonderful environments. Also, people who take Social Security early, are prohibited from earning over a certain amount, but I think that’s different.

FunnyBadger 4y ago

perryizgr8 4y ago

Repeat after me: welfare is not a job for governments

Madmallard 4y ago

csense 4y ago

I've seen this in my own extended family. $OldFamilyMember died and left some money to $DisabledFamilyMember who would lose benefits if he took it. $DisabledFamilyMember and $OtherHeirs agreed the money would instead go to $UpperMiddleClassFamilyMember who is most responsible and least in need of money. This would be a short path to an infuriating outcome in many families, but in this case, fortunately, the adults involved all acted like adults instead of children. Although legally it was now $UMCFM's money, $UMCFM kept the money in a separate account and would send checks whenever $DisabledFamilyMember reported they were struggling with unexpected expenses (e.g. replacing a dead refrigerator). Years later, the account ran out of money, but AFAIK $UMCFM never informed $DisabledFamilyMember of this fact, and $UMCFM continues to support $DFM's unexpected expenses to this day from $UMCFM's own pocket. Some details changed to protect the privacy of all involved, and other details may not be accurate as I got some of this second- or third-hand, I was still rather young when this situation started, and it's been many years since I've heard anything about this. I can only imagine how infuriating and demoralizing it would be if $UMCFM wasn't there to help out, $DisabledFamilyMember was on their own, and either (a) took the money and lost their benefits, or (b) didn't take the money and then had serious consequences due to lack of money (i.e. having to live without a refrigerator when it broke). There should be some judicial principle or constitutional amendment that says a law can be thrown out if (1) it doesn't make logical sense, and/or (2) it actively defeats its stated objectives. Anyone want to try to write a compiler that can check a legal code for consistency and automatically resolve conflicts by removing laws in a defined order until it's -- I don't quite know if this is the right terminology -- logically satisfiable by a non-empty set of models?

watersb 4y ago

SSI != SSDI SSI: Supplemental Security Income SSDI: Social Security Disability Insurance SSI is a government subsidy, or payout, for those living in poverty. There are income and asset caps that define the poverty level. SSDI is a "single payer" insurance program. Everyone who earns income is required to pay premiums into this program. When someone becomes permanently disabled, no longer able to earn income, they receive payouts from this insurance program. These programs are not the same thing. And the requirements for each are not the same. The cruel reality of healthcare expenses blurs these two things together, for the expense of suffering a medical catastrophe, and ongoing medical support, will indeed drive almost anyone into poverty. And yes: if you become disabled, it will take you almost two years to qualify for SSDI. That's not a strict requirement of the program, but it's a consequence of how the program works. Most families, unable to earn income for that long, won't have much in the way of cash by the time their SSDI review has come through. But it's possible to become permanently disabled while having more than $2000. https://www.disabilitysecrets.com/page7-5.html https://www.disabilitysecrets.com/page7-5.html

midislack 4y ago

This was intended for the destitute to cover month to month expenses. It’s not designed for people with even modest means as an extra nest egg. And the host of ways to gather disability money really blows the mind. SSA’s next biggest job after doling out cash is to watch for waste, fraud, and abuse.

navjack27 4y ago

I went to a special high school for kids with autistic spectrum disorder and we were basically all educated and given assistance for during transition to graduation getting SSI immediately. So I've had SSI my whole life essentially. I've had to live with these restrictions since I was basically 20. I moved out from living with my dad only a handful of years ago. I'm 33 now and I get 870 something dollars a month plus an extra from the state itself and I get supplemental nutrition food stamps and I also get my rent lowered and mostly taken care of and I just have to pay $103 a month for rent. Doing literally anything that would be considered taking in income would just be stupid for me to do because of any of the penalization that comes with it. Saving money would just be not a good idea even though it would be a great idea to have some sort of a safety net... But my stepmother and actual father have things just in case for that for me so I'm lucky in that regard... I have extreme anxiety when it comes to managing any of this or managing a lot of things especially over the phone and my dad has had to manage most of that for me directly and I've had to sign a lot of paperwork to make sure that he can talk for me. I basically consider if I didn't have him that I would be homeless or dead right now. I had a single job during my adult life and I was only a couple years ago. It was through a job placement program for people with disabilities and I was working for some local racing engine shop that needed someone to help with computer things. I helped build them a website with e-commerce stuff all over it and made sure everything was following all the right rules to do all of that I help them build a Facebook presence... A whole lot of stuff in just a couple weeks. I was a brand new person working there out of only like five people that work there and I was the only one who had a brand new computer that I had to build myself out of parts they bought for me that I asked for... But none of that really matters because I realize that the woman at the job placement who managed my case was dating the owner of the engine shops son. As soon as I found this out that just gave me extreme anxiety every day and I felt like I was being just used and I quit. I'm not going to get exploited like that being somebody's computer monkey boy with no proper management.