The Moral Hazard Of Entitlements

[faeryedark]

Originally Posted by HappyTexan

And at the other end of the spectrum, we take it all away if they make even $1 over the max limit.
That alone is a big disincentive. Imagine a family of 4 would lose $700 in food stamps because Dad made $1 more in salary. There's no transition period with reduced benefits as salary increases. It's all or none.

And that's one of the major problems.
I had a friend who got SSI. She'd worked when she was younger, had a breakdown at work, and ended up in the state hospital for 6 months. They got her on meds, and she got SSI.
Ten years later, she expressed interest in working with me, at a job that's piece-rate in a building where you don't really deal with the public, and it's low-stress and part-time. She contacted the S.S. office and they told her :we'll take $1 for every $3 you make." Fair enough. So, she started working, thinking to eventually be able to transition back into the workforce.
Haha, 6 mos. later S.S. sends her a letter stating they are stopping her benefits because they feel she can work F.T. They never had her re-evaluated, and I don't know where they got the idea that working part-time in a low-key environment for a few months was going to extend to F.T. somewhere.
They never took into consideration, that she had been a special education student from the mountains who dropped out in the 10th grade, didn't have a GED or a driver's license or any of that.
Thankfully, her therapist was able to hook her up with a case-worker who got her into a Goodwill training program (a miracle because there's usually a waiting list)
I taught her to drive, which was not easy because she had a phobia. She's still working on the GED
Yes, sometimes, people who could work at least part-time, find that it would be harder to do so than just maintain the status quo

[NoJiveMan]

Originally Posted by Frank DeForrest

Welcome to progressive America

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/op...nted=all&_r=2&

Then those Appalachian parents should take their Appalachian rugrats to work mining coal for their entitlements! <heavy>

While endowed with abundant natural resources, Appalachia has long struggled with and been associated with poverty. In the early 20th century, large-scale logging and coal mining firms brought wage-paying jobs and modern amenities to Appalachia, but by the 1960s the region had failed to capitalize on any long-term benefits[citation needed] from these two industries. Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government sought to alleviate poverty in the Appalachian region with a series of New Deal initiatives, such as the construction of dams to provide cheap electricity and the implementation of better farming practices. On March 9, 1965, the Appalachian Regional Commission[3] was created to further alleviate poverty in the region, mainly by diversifying the region's economy and helping to provide better health care and educational opportunities to the region's inhabitants. By 1990, Appalachia had largely joined the economic mainstream, but still lagged behind the rest of the nation in most economic indicators