this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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Late Stage Capitalism
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I was something like $250 over the annual income threshold to qualify for Medicaid for my first son's birth. My employer was "kind" enough to allow me unpaid time off long enough to get me under the threshold, but having an "all or nothing" threshold just to qualify was a little frustrating.
It is ridiculous that assistance programs are all or nothing. No, it is moronic. It damn near acheives the opposite of its intended purpose, to be a safety net or lift up so people can get back on their feet and prosper. Instead, it incentivizes people to remain poor if they can't manage a big enough jump in income to make up for the loss of assistance. You can pick up an extra shift here and there, or get a modest raise, and end up LOSING income as a result. That's absurd.
Those programs should gradually taper such that when you make more income at work, you always also still net more income overall. Past a certain point, instead of dropping to nothing, the assistance lowers gradually the more you make from other income. Progress is a bit slowed that way, but it is still progress, not a pit.
As is intended. They know what they’re doing. The system didn’t end up like this on accident. Poor people are easy to control, and easy to exploit.
It’s ridiculous that we means test our safety nets at all, instead of providing for all and just clawing back from those who don’t need it at tax time, or giving people who make above a certain amount (like idk 150k single 200k married?) the option to pay it back through W-2 tax automatically, similar to claiming exemptions and stuff. It would be easier, and achieve the same outcome, but would help a ton more people, as targeted support tends to be socially stigmatized, in addition to nearly guaranteeing a life of extreme poverty to use.
Heck, with the number of people we need to handle current social safety net programs, there’s a solid chance it would be cheaper to just give it to everyone.
Morally speaking, I’m 100% with you
Would probably want to do automatic payment plans for a portion of the population
The purpose of a system is what it does
If a fisherman is paid to catch fish, and a dolphin gets caught in the net and dies, is the fisherman's purpose to kill dolphins?
If the fisherman has made no efforts, and placed no structure to avoid killing dolphins?
Yes. Because they structured things in such a way that it will happen, so its part of the design of the system. Being a byproduct doesn't make it any less intentional if there is no effort to alter the design.
No, then it's his porpoise.
Once the rules of a system are set, everything that follows is inevitable.
The hardest time my wife and I had financially was when we were escaping poverty. We made 2K to much the year my first son was born to qualify for any government assistance. My wife's main memories of when he was first born was of the endless stream of bill collectors calling in to demand payment. We were buying diapers instead of paying them.
Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. I'm a new father myself. I have a beautiful 6 month old girl, and even without the financial troubles, it's a lot of work, worry, and stress. Having to skrimp and save every dollar for your kid's basic needs on top of that is horrible. And there's no reason for it. No reason someone in your situation shouldn't have been helped. I'm sorry you had to go through that, but you made the right call on how to priorize your money. The kid comes first, right? I hope you guys are in a better situation now.
That was 20 years ago. We have clawed out way out of poverty and held onto it by the skin of our teeth at times. It was not easy and still isn't but we have mostly made it.
However it's always just step away from falling back down. One layoff due to "market conditions" and soon enough they try to shove you down in that hole.
Like the layoff notification I got this morning, yep one of those can we meet e-mails at 7am...
Jokes on them though, I saw this one coming 6 months ago and set myself up to take all of the suppliers and customers for my division. Hopefully by the end of the week I will have everything on-line.
I am currently laying here going holy fuck, I am really going to do it....
My mom decided to gradually start working a while back, she's on all the government assistance programs you can think of and after years of that decided she wanted some financial independence.
She worked part time for like 3 months at a seasonal holiday place and made something like $2.5k. It was great, she was planning on doing it again the next year and seeing what she could do on the summer. She was happy, more of a person, made some friends.
The only problem is with that extra $2.5k she lost like $6k in benefits the next year, which for someone getting a couple hundred bucks a month to surving is a lot. So she never went back and fell back into a semi reclusive state. I can't blame her for it either, who wants to go to work to lose money at the end of the day.
It was the same for a friend and the ACA, didn't make enough for subsidies and made too much to qualify for Medicaid.
I'm in a similar boat. I make enough where I don't qualify for the assistance but not enough to actually be able to afford health insurance. Instead I have to pay extra every tax season for being in a situation I didn't ask for.
I hate that this situation is even possible, but I just wanted to clarify that the individual mandate tax penalty has not been a thing since 2018. It was removed effective January 1, 2019.
Crazy to me that they can't just prorate it, like everything else in the world.
Republicans love adding poverty traps and means testing to everything. I don't know why this specific thing is like this, but I would bet money it's because a Republican negotiated it