> opt out of providing stuff for poor people to make a political point.

I would certainly hope my state isn’t giving out tax-payer funded luxury stoves.

There is no such thing as “free” here.

My Bosch 36" mid-range induction cook top was about $2500. High-end ones are like $4000-8000 or even more. So nobody's getting a luxury anything.

I really do not get this. We have twice a 300 euros AEG in two kitchens already running 10 years. How many pits do you cook on simultaneously?

Mine has 2 round elements and one rectangular flex element. Generally 1-2.

One for simmering sauce, one for boiling pasta, and a third for frying up some sausage, veggies, etc. Three at a time isn't unreasonable if you know how long everything takes and do it in parallel to all finish at the same time.

Mine is very similar to [0]. We use 4 pits max, which i think is comfortable. 7kW combined, it does a kind of qos when you set all pits to max power, which works out just fine. It has pause/resume and a countdown timer per pit that works intuitively. I would say the price is not a holding back factor. That's why I really do not get what people in this thread are talking about.

[0] https://www.eldi.be/nl/aeg-ikb64301xb-inductie-kookplaat

One of the few durable consumer goods that is a lot cheaper in Germany: a new 60cm (24”) Bosch induction range is about 800 EUR. 80cm ones are also available, but I wasn’t looking at them, as 60cm works better with our existing kitchen, though I doubt they start at 2500 EUR.

Off-topic but I just don't get why we means-test this. So what if 1% of Americans get $840 so long as the other 99% also get $840 towards a new stove. Surely the cost of means testing and administration is more than 1%?

I think you're totally correct. Unfortunately, lots of people have trouble thinking rationally about people getting things they don't deserve (for whatever definition of "deserve").

I don't understand the math that you're doing. 10% of Americans qualify as low income. We're talking about 31 billion to replace the stoves for every low income person and 310 billion dollars to replace the stoves for everyone. Do you really think that means testing cost $280 billion dollars?

That's more money than the entire state budget for every state but California.

On the flip side, do you think looking at a single tax return for 10 seconds cost more than $840?

> do you think looking at a single tax return for 10 seconds cost more than $840?

This isn't the real cost. The real cost is when people turn down promotions at work or new jobs because it puts them 2,000 above the poverty line, and they no longer qualify for subsidies. That means that in 10 years they cannot become comfortably middle class after another 3 promotions or new jobs.

That's why we shouldn't have welfare cliffs. Earning 1 more dollar should never incur 2 dollars of benefit loss. That's an argument against hard cut offs and having benefits as a linear function of income.

I wholeheartedly agree that well Fair Cliffs are one of the most problematic elements of us subsidies. They punish people for bettering their situation and being more independent.

Any help should gradually Fade Out and provide an incentive for earning more.

It's still a punishment though. It means instead of a 2k raise you got a $0 raise, and why should you take that risk, plus extra learning required for the promotion?

Stop means-testing for things like this, and raise taxes at the higher brackets to cover it.

I think you misunderstand me. It should never be a $0 raise - that's my point. A $1 raise can be less than 1, but should always be positive.

The thing is, means-testing affects the people with the lowest incomes who don't qualify the most. It's like an extra tax on the lowest earners (of the class of people who don't qualify fully).

If you just passed the poverty threshold and get a 2k raise, that 2k is going to be "taxed" twice - once with regular taxes and once with losing out on your benefits. That's just not fair.

Whereas if I make 150k/year or 180k, depending which bracket you want to put it at (also idr where the brackets are exactly), as a single person, I can afford to have my taxes on everything over 120k/180k/whatever go up by a bit to make sure I'm reimbursing that 3k that I got from the government in various grants just to make sure I was doing ok.

And if you look at it real close, tax brackets are indeed a sort of means testing, so in the end it all works out.

I agree with you, but I think you're talking about welfare cliffs, not means testing.

Well designed subsidies for the poor don't have sharp monetary drop offs like these [1].

Ideally it would be something like for every extra dollar you earn, you get 10 cents less benefit. That way if you get up $1,000 raise, your subsidies go down by a hundred bucks, but you're still up $900 total. There should be no magic number where if you make $1 more you lose a huge benefit.

nobody should lose $500 of food stamps because they picked up a shift and earned and extra $100. that doesn't mean every single American needs food stamps. If you make $150k, you dont need food stamps, and the government shouldnt be giving them to you.

https://fee.org/media/17757/welfare_cliff.png?width=600&heig...

No, what I'm saying is, if you make a 1000 raise, your subsidies should go down by 0. Otherwise you're effectively being taxed by losing the subsidies (even if gradually).

Make the subsidies universal. You make 500k a year and want food stamps? Sure thing. You're being taxed so much on every dollar above 180k that it hardly makes a difference.

That seems completely backwards to me. If you make more you should have be effectively taxed more, just gradually. Why would we ever want to have higher taxes just so someone who makes a hundred or 500K gets food stamps they don't need. You just get a bunch of people that don't need food stamps using food stamps as a tragedy of the commons. If you make 100k you still have to pay for everyone else's food stamps, so you want to use them too.

How is it a tragedy if everyone is using the food stamps? That means they find value in them. So they're paying for them in taxes, then spending them. Where I come from that's called getting what you pay for.

That's no more a tragedy than everyone paying for then using the highway. We don't really means test the highway right? Why shouldn't the rich have to pay for their own roads? ;)

> We don't really means test the highway right?

Wow, that's a fantastic analogy, thank you

So far I believe only one state has opted out, Florida. It's not really comparable to opting out of expanded Medicaid because at least with expanded Medicaid a state could make a somewhat colorable non-political argument for not participating.

Under the ACA Medicaid expansion the federal government covered 90% of the cost and the state covered 10% of the cost. I believe some of the states claimed that they could not afford that 10%.

With the energy efficiency rebates under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) each state has to administer the rebates for that state's consumers, but the allows the states to use a portion of their gran for for the cost of that, including hiring staff.

So basically a state just has to apply, get the administrative money to cover setting up a program to distribute the rebates, then get their share of the IRA and BIL money and distribute it.

In Florida deSantis used his veto to block authorization for the state to get and use the $5 million portion of their grant that would be for administration and so Florida residents will not be getting the $174 million in energy efficiency improvement rebates, or the $173 million in appliance rebates, or the $7 million for a training program for electrification contracts, or other smaller grants from those laws. All in all, Florida is turning down $377 million.

deSantis has not given a reason, but it is likely part of his "Fight Back Against the Woke Agenda" theme he's basing his campaign on. Reducing emissions and increasing energy efficiency is "woke" in current far right circle.

Other recent actions taken in his fight against "woke"ness are tax breaks for purchasing gas stoves and killing a bill that would have directed state agencies to consider lifetime cost of ownership when purchasing cars.