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Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know if participation rate is fair either. Largely because (a) the population is aging and is likely to retire (with wealth amassed and (b) this is really only possible because the government has started subsidizing pretty much everything (food, healthcare, housing, etc) either generally or for those “too poor”.

I personally know a significant number (at least 10-15) that exclusively live from government handouts (this is beyond simple social security). They have little incentive to try and find a job, frankly and many actively live with food stamps, housing subsidies, free healthcare, and just kinda bum around.

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> I personally know a significant number (at least 10-15) that exclusively live from government handouts (this is beyond simple social security). They have little incentive to try and find a job, frankly and many actively live with food stamps, housing subsidies, free healthcare, and just kinda bum around.

I will be very honest: this is a very unsubstantiated claim, even if you know personally 10-15 people who are just bumming around and living on benefits that is a very small portion of benefits claim in society and this kind of behaviour will always exist. Benefits fraud is a thing, the good that benefits and welfare does to a society are much larger than the impact of fraud.

Do you really believe that someone who lives with handouts from the government have very little incentive to get better? Do you believe that this almost less-than-baseline level of living is enough to make a significant portion of the populace unwilling to work? To the level where participation rate would become unfair? Have you ever lived on that lifestyle to check your assumption that they have "very little incentive to try and find a job"?

As someone who grew up relatively disadvantaged, I think I probably know a larger percentage of those “taking advantage” over the the “average” American. Further. I also used to volunteer regularly helping donate food, helping families, etc.

I don’t think people realize how good “baseline” really is, compared to even 2-3 decades ago. Just as an example, most people can get free housing from the state provided some paperwork (again I helped quite a few people, including family members, with this.).

I actually stopped volunteering in this space, BECAUSE I saw it being taken advantage of. Probably 75% of the people I assisted were capable of working physically. Now, mental faculties are a bit of a different issue, only probably 50% had the mental disposition to work a regular job.

That being said most people can contribute something in exchange for wages. Unfortunately, many don’t because it’ll either cut their incentives there’s a valley between maintaining life quality off the state and the minimum wage. You have to make significantly more than minimum wage to have the same quality of life in some cases. You can even see stories of this with the pandemic (people making more on unemployment, so they don’t work).

I’m also not arguing if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. Just that, at least from my experience, it appears to be a thing. I also don’t think we are collecting good data on this, particularly for political reasons (or incompetence). If we had the real stats I’m sure people who need these programs would also be left without them (because programs would be cut). I really don’t know a good solution. Just that it really should be explored, because many people have an inaccurate understanding (again from my experience).

I think it is really difficult to fix the issue where having a job is worse than not having one.

If you make sure the benefits are below what the market more or less defines as minimum wage, then people on benefits are going to have a dreadful time.

If you try to smooth the benefits loss, then you mostly end up subsidising employers. (I can reduce wages because the state will pick up the difference.)

If you increase the minimum wage, then you increase the numbers of people who "can contribute something" but not enough to make sense economically speaking.

yeah - but if you increase the minimum wage all you're doing is hurting the middle class. If i had a relatively Okay/good job that required some kind of education (phlebotomy, for instance) and get paid $20 an hour, I can live comfortably. Once you raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour, my pay isn't going to jump but you can bet inflation will.

> Benefits fraud is a thing, the good that benefits and welfare does to a society are much larger than the impact of fraud.

To back this up, Florida implemented drug testing for some welfare [1] and the cost of the testing _far_ outweighed the money lost via fraud. It may be hard to believe for some, but there are a staggering amount of needy families that wouldn't be able to survive without assistance. I concur with the article about living wage being an issue, but that number is very region-specific.

1 - https://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/florida-didnt-save-mone...

The cost of fighting fraud often is more than the fraud you catch - because the act of fighting fraud means those who would commit fraud either don't, or hide their tracks. Thus the result isn't unexpected and doesn't say anything about if it is a good idea or not (which is a very complex argument that I don't know enough to get into)

People vastly and I mean vastly under estimate how poor of living conditions many will accept if they don't have to lift a finger to provide for themselves.

More than half our federal budget goes to aid programs, from social security, medicare and medicaid, to thousands of assistance programs. States then add to this total. People routinely complain that the government does not do enough to aid the poor but what they fail to understand just how much is already spent and that a good portion is misdirected; too much ends up as jobs programs for friends and family of politicians.

The problem is it is hard to figure out what is required.

I knew a lady (she died of old age 15 years ago) who was able to work 20 hours a week - not quite enough to live on - but when she went over 25 hours a week had a mental breakdown and spent 6 months in the mental hospital. It took many repeats of the cycle before it was even realized that 20 hours was her limit, but those responsible for her case didn't have options to help her because she could partially support herself normally and appeared able to do more.

The above is but one case - probably unique to just her, but I know of many other unique cases each with a different situation. The point is we cannot treat the poor alike. However not being able to treat them alike means there will be fraud anytime someone figures out how to work the system.

The GP didn't imply nearly the level of judgement that you're projecting on him.

>this is a very unsubstantiated claim, even if you know personally 10-15 people who are just bumming around and living on benefits that is a very small portion of benefits claim in society and this kind of behaviour will always exist.

I know a little under ten people who do the same. Nobody so far in this thread is claiming they aren't a small portion of benefits claims. Nobody is claiming they won't always exist in some number. You're the first person so far to even use the word "fraud" here. Nobody is even saying they should be cut off. People are only saying that they don't fit cleanly into the existing unemployment metrics.

>Do you really believe that someone who lives with handouts from the government have very little incentive to get better?

What good is the incentive if you don't really have the life skills to work towards that end. It's the same kind of incentive that a plumber has to start the next Google and retire as a multimillionaire. Sure it would be nice but all of these people I know are not in a practical position to improve their situation through work.

>Do you believe that this almost less-than-baseline level of living is enough to make a significant portion of the populace unwilling to work? To the level where participation rate would become unfair? Have you ever lived on that lifestyle to check your assumption that they have "very little incentive to try and find a job"?

Unwilling is a strong word. It's not so much an unwillingness in that their existence is stable and they're not gonna rock that boat too much let alone run the rat race just to get inches ahead. These people, in my observation tend to do under the table work or deal drugs to increase their income since those paths are readily available whereas entry points into a career are far more foreign to them. (And before anyone projects their own biases on me, I consider small time drug dealers to be legitimate businesses and I don't think there's anything unethical about an under the table wage laborer job.) It's foolish to expect these people to get McJobs in light of their options and how their benefits tend to interact with income and how little that would improve their situation. The money goes right back out anyway. The value proposition of constantly working harder just isn't there.

These people's incentive to work a job is a lot like a middle age upper middle class white collar professional with a family and a mortgage's incentive to start their own business. Sure you can do it and you might make substantially more money doing it but it's a hell of a lot of work compared to what you're doing now and it comes with risk and since you're stable in your current situation you're probably gonna stay there.

I'm not sure whether there's enough of these people to be an issue for unemployment numbers but there's definitely a lot of them out there (which is regrettable).

> Have you ever lived on that lifestyle to check your assumption that they have "very little incentive to try and find a job"?

Yes, I've lived and clawed my way out of that lifestyle. And yes, I absolutely feel most have very little incentive to do so.

I am told these days welfare benefits fraud is something at some tiny fraction of less than 1%, but my experience and those of my friends who have grown up similarly really shows a vastly stark difference between lived experience and statistics.

If you'd have asked me growing up I would have told you benefits fraud was rampant and the norm. Now I'm not so sure, but I am absolutely certain the definition of fraud has changed. Fraud to me and many others is "someone who could otherwise get a job but puts no effort into doing so or improving themselves towards being a self sufficient person" - where to others it seems more outright fraud in a white collar sense like claiming too many dependents.

It's a difficult topic for me because the "science" so jarringly conflicts with my lived experience.

> They have little incentive to try and find a job, frankly and many actively live with food stamps, housing subsidies, free healthcare, and just kinda bum around.

Like the sibling commenter, I find your post very suspect, mainly because (in the US at least) if you are a non-disabled person without children between the ages of 20 and 55 it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get enough gov't benefits to survive (at least outside of covid-times)

Feel free to read my other response. Generally, I agree you should be suspect of my statements. We should also be suspect if the statements you’re making.

The reality is that neither of us have solid stats because, in my opinion, politically no one wants to investigate how often the system is taken advantage of. Frankly, it’s hard to determine “can someone work” is a nearly impossible question to answer. Instead it’s, “how much money do you make a year” for many of these programs

Thanks, I thought this and your other response were very insightful.

I don’t see how your anecdotal data can be counted as more valuable than BLS data backed by payroll, benefits, and subsidy data from employers and providers.

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