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Comment by jnovek | Hacker News Reader

$20,610 is ~$1717/mo.

I’ve been poor. I deal with chronic pain and, for a long while, it rendered me unable to work.

First: $1717 is a very low amount of money to live on.

I covered my costs in about $1200/mo while I received from room and board from family. It was extremely difficult to get my spending down to that, I had to default on loans and I expect it will take the better part of a decade to build credit again.

Second: how does one obtain this $20,610? I was denied virtually every social program I tried to sign up for. I was only able to cover my costs thanks to the charity of others.

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In America, we don’t believe you are unable to work until you bring a lawsuit in front of a judge with evidence. Any social programs to give money to needy citizens is held up in bureaucratic red tape so they can get higher salaries (paid from funds allocated to the program) and waste more money. My son is autistic and is unable to work and it took four court appearances to get his social security benefits approved.

I think there are many (probably most) people who are sympathetic to and willing to open the taxpayers’ coffers to support people who are genuinely and durably unable to work.

I also think there are many (perhaps most) who are reluctant/unwilling to extend those same benefits to those are merely unwilling to work.

So, we use bureaucrats and courts to confirm that a given situation is the former and not the latter.

First: I’m sorry about your son’s experience. My impression is that something like a court appearance would be overwhelming for even an autistic individual with lower support needs.

This is pretty much where I left off with social security. Luckily for me, not long after my rejection I found a treatment option that helped me get back to work. The timeline for my first appeal before a judge would’ve been a year or more.

I would argue that the red tape is not so bureaucrats can make more money, it's that Americans have a very, very strong aversion to seeing people benefit from social programs that they think are undeserving. So we put all of these hurdles up to make things 'fair'.

Just look at the difference in outrage between when there's some story of someone on public assistance buying something like smartphone, vs the reaction when we found out about all of the businesses abusing the PPP loan system. Or the fact that many of the PPP loans were forgiven.

It's like as a country we're fine with wealthy people abusing the system. But then we turn around and would rather let 100 deserving people struggle just so maybe one person can't get a free ride.

Americans seem to have a special aversion to weakness. Being poor is a facet of that:

On public assistance and buying a smartphone? “That’s irresponsible and abusing the system!”

Wealthy and taking PPP loans or dodging taxes? “That’s smart and opportunistic thinking!”

In other words, the rationalizations exist to justify beliefs that were conceived long before these examples were discussed: namely, the wealthy are inherently more virtuous and better people all around.

We are unable to think differently on this because digging into it too much risks tearing down most people’s fragile motivational structures around their own striving.

Wasn't the entire point of the PPP scheme to give away money to be used for payroll? I didn't use it, but it seemed to me like from the outset that it was designed to give away money, notionally documented as a loan, but one which would be forgiven if used to provide payroll continuity to employees. (In other words, documented as a loan so they could claw it back legally if you didn't use it for payroll or other approved purpose, but if used for payroll, it was a loan in fictional name only.)

I don't think that was a mis-use of the system, but rather the intended use of it. (We can argue whether it was a good or bad idea, but it plainly seems within the bounds of the program as designed/intended.)

Likely most of that money goes to children and children’s family.

It is misleading cato complains about general poverty but not look into where the money is going.

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