<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>fdr</author><text>You are looking for the term &amp;quot;effective marginal tax rate.&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Effective_marginal_tax_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Effective_marginal_tax_rate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;To give a sense how much benefits code and tax code have in common, see this worksheet for SNAP eligibility, which resembles a second tax return: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fns.usda.gov&amp;#x2F;snap&amp;#x2F;recipient&amp;#x2F;eligibility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fns.usda.gov&amp;#x2F;snap&amp;#x2F;recipient&amp;#x2F;eligibility&lt;/a&gt;. You get to do something similar, again(!), for Medicaid.&lt;p&gt;The American benefits code is a patchwork of conflicting sensibilities of the electorate: the smallest possible tax, paternalism and suspicion against the poor, plus a few policy analysis trying to obtain the maximum poverty reduction within those constraints. The result is a thicket of means tested programs with extremely steep phase-outs and a lot of paperwork. The all-in EMTR for an American with income between 0-40K a year is chaotic beyond reason as a result as they roll up the income spectrum.&lt;p&gt;This person who gave the presentation is indeed in one of the worst cases for the code: a single parent with multiple children.</text><parent_chain><item><author>jimt1234</author><text>Back in my college speech class, a woman gave a presentation basically supporting the &amp;quot;welfare today is a disincentive to work&amp;quot; myth, with emphasis on &amp;quot;today&amp;quot; (or current), while totally destroying the notion that welfare recipients don&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;want&amp;quot; to work. She was a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids, her husband commit suicide after serving in Iraq and then being pushed out of the military (this was the 90s when the US military was actively drawing down). She basically said that the current welfare system (in the 90s, in California) didn&amp;#x27;t allow a way to slowly move off welfare. She said she had many offers for part-time work, and work that didn&amp;#x27;t earn a lot of money, but both had potential for her to eventually be promoted to full-time or to make more money than welfare paid her. But she said there was no way to do this: welfare was either all or nothing. But most of all, she dispelled the myth that she was some sort of leech that didn&amp;#x27;t want to work. She wanted to work, but the welfare system didn&amp;#x27;t allow it.&lt;p&gt;Your comment didn&amp;#x27;t necessarily imply it, but a lot of the discourse these days tries to imply (or directly claims) that recipients are the problem, they&amp;#x27;re a bunch of lazy bums that don&amp;#x27;t want to contribute. That&amp;#x27;s just not true.</text></item><item><author>bko</author><text>Why is the goal to get people to quit their jobs and get a nice apartment?&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t it supposed to be a minimum base level of support? Why do we keep moving the goal posts?&lt;p&gt;And if everyone quits their job and lives in a nice apartment, where is this money going to come from? The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work. Start working, you lose your transfer payments. A lot of people are stuck in this trap and don&amp;#x27;t want to start working, forsaking valuable on the job training and socialization that will hurt them in the long run. That&amp;#x27;s where universal part comes in</text></item><item><author>ilaksh</author><text>$1000 is not enough to quit their jobs or get a nice apartment. They could move slightly closer to work if they have to commute.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not enough for a real tuition or to support them to study instead of work.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think we&amp;#x27;ve ever had a universal basic income test. We have always missed the universal and basic part. It&amp;#x27;s below basic and not at all universal.&lt;p&gt;I suspect that you need to get international cooperation and a more sophisticated form of money and resource tracking for a real UBI to be feasible.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available</title><url>https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/study</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>ixwt</author><text>There was a podcast or video about this exact same issue in... Sweden? Some anecdata from people receiving welfare, but couldn&amp;#x27;t start a job or a business because if they received any money, they get nothing from welfare and wouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to support themselves.&lt;p&gt;This resulted in people that were trying to start a business &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; get paid for their work (I believe one of the anecdata was a photographer) because doing so would mean they couldn&amp;#x27;t support themselves.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I&amp;#x27;m a big fan of the &amp;quot;for every $2 you make, you get $1 less from UBI&amp;#x2F;Welfare&amp;quot; concept. This seems a very easy way to wean people off of welfare. That money is already tracked by the IRS (unless you&amp;#x27;re getting paid under the table).</text><parent_chain><item><author>jimt1234</author><text>Back in my college speech class, a woman gave a presentation basically supporting the &amp;quot;welfare today is a disincentive to work&amp;quot; myth, with emphasis on &amp;quot;today&amp;quot; (or current), while totally destroying the notion that welfare recipients don&amp;#x27;t &amp;quot;want&amp;quot; to work. She was a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids, her husband commit suicide after serving in Iraq and then being pushed out of the military (this was the 90s when the US military was actively drawing down). She basically said that the current welfare system (in the 90s, in California) didn&amp;#x27;t allow a way to slowly move off welfare. She said she had many offers for part-time work, and work that didn&amp;#x27;t earn a lot of money, but both had potential for her to eventually be promoted to full-time or to make more money than welfare paid her. But she said there was no way to do this: welfare was either all or nothing. But most of all, she dispelled the myth that she was some sort of leech that didn&amp;#x27;t want to work. She wanted to work, but the welfare system didn&amp;#x27;t allow it.&lt;p&gt;Your comment didn&amp;#x27;t necessarily imply it, but a lot of the discourse these days tries to imply (or directly claims) that recipients are the problem, they&amp;#x27;re a bunch of lazy bums that don&amp;#x27;t want to contribute. That&amp;#x27;s just not true.</text></item><item><author>bko</author><text>Why is the goal to get people to quit their jobs and get a nice apartment?&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t it supposed to be a minimum base level of support? Why do we keep moving the goal posts?&lt;p&gt;And if everyone quits their job and lives in a nice apartment, where is this money going to come from? The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work. Start working, you lose your transfer payments. A lot of people are stuck in this trap and don&amp;#x27;t want to start working, forsaking valuable on the job training and socialization that will hurt them in the long run. That&amp;#x27;s where universal part comes in</text></item><item><author>ilaksh</author><text>$1000 is not enough to quit their jobs or get a nice apartment. They could move slightly closer to work if they have to commute.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not enough for a real tuition or to support them to study instead of work.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think we&amp;#x27;ve ever had a universal basic income test. We have always missed the universal and basic part. It&amp;#x27;s below basic and not at all universal.&lt;p&gt;I suspect that you need to get international cooperation and a more sophisticated form of money and resource tracking for a real UBI to be feasible.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available</title><url>https://www.openresearchlab.org/studies/unconditional-cash-study/study</url></story>