<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>pc86</author><text>This is exactly what Mitt Romney was referring to during the 2012 election when he said he wasn&amp;#x27;t worried about the very rich, and he wasn&amp;#x27;t worried about the very poor. The truth is if you are making $20k&amp;#x2F;yr in income you&amp;#x27;re likely in a better position day-to-day than someone making $40k&amp;#x2F;yr, especially if you&amp;#x27;re raising a family and especially if you live in a city with functioning social services. He was excoriated in the press for saying he didn&amp;#x27;t care about poor people, which isn&amp;#x27;t exactly what he said and isn&amp;#x27;t at all what he meant.</text><parent_chain><item><author>no_wizard</author><text>&amp;gt;The government subsidizes corporate low wage work&lt;p&gt;But importantly only the lowest of the low wages&lt;p&gt;There is a huge swath of workers that can&amp;#x27;t get benefits like food stamps or medicaid because they don&amp;#x27;t qualify via the means testing formula &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; they can&amp;#x27;t really afford to live where they live, afford medical insurance etc.&lt;p&gt;Its those folks that have it the worst, IMO. Cost of living keeps you from building any wealth, even in the form of cash savings, but the government has arbitrarily decided &lt;i&gt;you make too much&lt;/i&gt; or some other form of disqualification[0].&lt;p&gt;To add insult to injury, means testing[2] often costs more than the cost of fraud in social benefit programs! Not to mention, the biggest fraudsters with Medicaid are &lt;i&gt;providers&lt;/i&gt; not &lt;i&gt;recipients&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To those whom have questions on the fact that means test cost more than the fraud of social benefit programs, &lt;i&gt;Last Week Tonight&lt;/i&gt; did a break down on Medicaid[3] (linked to below) that explains all this better than I can.&lt;p&gt;[0]: often by declaring some aspect of the filing paperwork invalid or the beneficiary unresponsive, more often than not due to errors by the agency rather than the individual(s)[1]&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tampabay.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;health&amp;#x2F;2024&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;vulnerable-florida-patients-scramble-after-abrupt-medicaid-termination&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tampabay.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;health&amp;#x2F;2024&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;vulnerable-f...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: How an applicant&amp;#x2F;recipient is screened and continually screened for eligibility&lt;p&gt;[3]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=bVIsnOfNfCo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=bVIsnOfNfCo&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>mountainb</author><text>This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would otherwise need to be replaced at higher rates.&lt;p&gt;Should the companies shoulder more of the burden? It would be fairer and more just, but words about justice are cheap and power is expensive.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid</title><url>https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1791299631558823954</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ilya_m</author><text>&amp;gt; To add insult to injury, means testing[2] often costs more than the cost of fraud in social benefit programs!&lt;p&gt;This is not informative. The correct comparison would be of the marginal cost of eligibility testing (both in terms of false positives and false negatives) vs the marginal cost of fraud. In other words, whether the current cost of means&amp;#x2F;asset testing is more than the current total fraud is irrelevant to the economic case for reducing or increasing funding for eligibility screening.</text><parent_chain><item><author>no_wizard</author><text>&amp;gt;The government subsidizes corporate low wage work&lt;p&gt;But importantly only the lowest of the low wages&lt;p&gt;There is a huge swath of workers that can&amp;#x27;t get benefits like food stamps or medicaid because they don&amp;#x27;t qualify via the means testing formula &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; they can&amp;#x27;t really afford to live where they live, afford medical insurance etc.&lt;p&gt;Its those folks that have it the worst, IMO. Cost of living keeps you from building any wealth, even in the form of cash savings, but the government has arbitrarily decided &lt;i&gt;you make too much&lt;/i&gt; or some other form of disqualification[0].&lt;p&gt;To add insult to injury, means testing[2] often costs more than the cost of fraud in social benefit programs! Not to mention, the biggest fraudsters with Medicaid are &lt;i&gt;providers&lt;/i&gt; not &lt;i&gt;recipients&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To those whom have questions on the fact that means test cost more than the fraud of social benefit programs, &lt;i&gt;Last Week Tonight&lt;/i&gt; did a break down on Medicaid[3] (linked to below) that explains all this better than I can.&lt;p&gt;[0]: often by declaring some aspect of the filing paperwork invalid or the beneficiary unresponsive, more often than not due to errors by the agency rather than the individual(s)[1]&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tampabay.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;health&amp;#x2F;2024&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;vulnerable-florida-patients-scramble-after-abrupt-medicaid-termination&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.tampabay.com&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;health&amp;#x2F;2024&amp;#x2F;04&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;vulnerable-f...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: How an applicant&amp;#x2F;recipient is screened and continually screened for eligibility&lt;p&gt;[3]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=bVIsnOfNfCo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=bVIsnOfNfCo&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>mountainb</author><text>This is how our system works. The government subsidizes corporate low wage work, and everyone pats themselves on the back for being so enormously virtuous, truly the most wonderful people ever to have graced the earth. The circuitous redistribution is a feature and not a bug of the system. It prevents competition, which makes shareholders happy. It also provides a minimum standard of care for workers, who would otherwise need to be replaced at higher rates.&lt;p&gt;Should the companies shoulder more of the burden? It would be fairer and more just, but words about justice are cheap and power is expensive.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>One-third of Amazon warehouse workers are on food stamps or Medicaid</title><url>https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1791299631558823954</url></story>