America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

Re:America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cas... by mlyle on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @08:12PM (#30172201)

> At what point do they have "enough" income?

If you require public assistance for housing and food, I think you don't have enough income.

But public benefits can phase out, leaving you in an awkward place where you have more income but less household resources and become unable to feed your family by virtue of making more.

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Re:America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cas... by geoduck14 on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @08:52PM (#30172501)

>If you require public assistance for housing and food, I think you don't have enough income.

Public assistance? Like UBI?

By using your definition, it is BETTER if we stop giving people money. I'm pretty sure that is not the intended direction

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Re:America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cas... by mlyle on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @09:35PM (#30172892)

> Public assistance? Like UBI?

I think it's important that to whatever extent we decide that some people need assistance, that we do it in a way that doesn't have a cliff and preferably doesn't have any phase-out at all, for the reasons I described.

Yes, the assistance is still economically distortive, but less so than otherwise. Everyone still has an incentive to increase their income and economic output.

This idea came to me from none other than Milton Friedman, in the form of the negative income tax.

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