Fine. I see no problem with some small percentage of people gaming the system as long as the people who actually need help are not denied help (or forced through unreasonable hoops to get help).

You don't understand, it's better for 10 innocent people to go to jail than for one guilty one to escape.

Sounds like Boomer logic to me!

Of course. These people exist. Wealthy people also seek to construct their retirement portfolio in order to minimize (or even eliminate) taxes. This is especially common and valuable now with ACA subsidies.

But so what?

The goal of a program should be effectively improving the functioning of society. That can still be a real outcome even if there are people who choose to be less productive so they can obtain benefits.

Well there's a motivation from some people to claim that people taking advantage of social programs don't exist, and the opposite as well to claim that social programs are overrun with fraud.

So what? Neither is right, generally. The political discussion about social programs needs to be about how to maximize their effectiveness, not to be about this existential struggle between two sides who both deny reality.

I'm not sure if you're framing it this way, but how is this a problem?

The concept might be foreign to most HNers, but lots of people lack entrepreneurial spirit, they instead attempt to minimize pain in their lives.

As long as it's sustainable, why worry? Do we want to drag people into productivity or just let them live their own lives?

I think it's inefficient to do the former.

When I have the discussion about safety nets the topic of these types of people come up regularly where conservatives tend to say they're mooches and a drain on society and liberals tend to say they're an uncommon edge case. I think they're both arguing about the wrong thing.

I think this is the perfect outcome for the type of person who wants to live their life that way because the alternative, working somewhere, means they will be the worst coworker or employee you have ever had. They'll do just enough to not be fired and never enough to actually be worth their paycheck, walking the line and wasting resources that could be spent elsewhere. I've worked with this person and they destroy team morale and productivity without even trying, they're not bad people and I harbor no ill-will towards them, they just don't want to be there and have very few other options in our society.

While I think we must take care not to create too much of incentive for this lifestyle, I will happily pay money out of my paycheck to not have to work with those that prefer it.

I know some people, who parasite on the system, by leveraging systemic knowledge via the stock market. Never really contributed anything of value in their whole life - whole systems of parasites with parasites on top.

So remove the 'limit', and instead make state support programs reduce by a fraction of the earned amount. I.e. (as I mentioned elsewhere), if every after tax dollar earned equaled 50 cents loss in state support...there is no ceiling any longer where it doesn't make sense to earn more, while at the same time cutting state support off entirely at 2x what it pays if you don't do anything.

I'm fine with that. The amount of governmental waste trying to keep people from abusing the social services net is likely to cost far more than a small number of people taking advantage of the system.

But why?

Sounds like another symptom of a larger problem. Maybe a lack of reasonable opportunities? Or wages are too low to justify working due to child care or commuting costs? Maybe it's the insane cost of healthcare?

These people aren't living a comfortable life on meager government benefits. They subsisting on it because the alternative of working for a poverty wage is worse.

If you want more people to work, push for higher wages. If you want people to be capable of working for less money, ensure that childcare, public transportation, and healthcare are subsidized enough to make those wages livable.

They literally just didn't want to work.

They had ample opportunity to work, were technically skilled in a desirable field, and had a job in that field for some time.

There wasn't a mitigating circumstance outside of not wanting to work very much. If you have your housing set up for you, the state pays your healthcare and gives you food assistance, and you like cooking simple meals for yourself... well you don't actually need money for all that much.

It wasn't a matter of earning a poverty wage or not, it was a matter of earning a middle class wage or not. They chose not because they figured out how to do so and live the life they wanted.

There were social media posts boasting about this.

Did they do the early retirement thing? Like pay off their house ASAP while dumping their salary into 401k and Roth?

I ask because my family member tries something similar, but it only really works because I pay for their housing. It just doesn't seem possible to live on $350/mo otherwise.

Do you care to substantiate your anecdote?

I'm not sure what they could do to prove it, given that this is a pseudonymous forum and also that they probably aren't interested in revealing too much about their contact.

I would not. Nobody asked me to substantiate my story about the homeless program.

And I could point to social media posts admitting to this strategy to take advantage of these support programs, but I wouldn’t.