> I count benefits as part of income. While there's a case to be made for that, it's not what most people do -- and it's not what you do for computing benefit

> I count benefits as part of income. While there's a case to be made for that, it's not what most people do -- and it's not what you do for computing benefit eligibility for food stamps, ACA, and other government programs, AFAIK. So I'm not sure you should count benefits as income for this purpose. In principle you're right re: getting cash income instead, but in practice, I'm not sure it's that clearcut. Re: taxes vs. credits, it would be really interesting to actually work that out. I'm not convinced your take is right, but I'm not convinced my take is right, either. :) I didn't intentionally pick the perfect example; the $24K a year came from typing "2000" into the spreadsheet I downloaded from the CalFresh web site because "3000" was too high to qualify. I didn't actually try any numbers other than 2000 and 2500. But my suspicion remains that most people would be better off actually working than taking assistance programs, both in purely pragmatic terms and in less quantifiable terms -- I've known a fair number of people who make assistance-qualifying incomes but I haven't known a single one who wants to be in that position. (Which is of course anecdotal, but it's still interesting to me.) (Also, I don't think you can really count every possible credit -- most people can't qualify for disability income, for instance. And the observation I made about not wanting to be in that position is extremely relevant here; I've known a couple people who get permanent disability income and they absolutely do not consider it a good thing. They're making less than they were when they could actually get employment, and that's not getting into unquantifiable but real things like damage to their self-esteem.)