What "current results" are you referring to? No, people 50+ years ago weren't arguing that cliffs can lead to disincentives, they were arguing that the whole system is "socialism" and bad - something that has been repeatedly disproven.

There are few things more evil in our society than the breed of conservative that will talk about how their family needed social welfare growing up to survive, how it worked and they did survive, but how "ashamed" they feel so they thing we should tear everything down and remove the ladder now that they've climbed it.

Every employee is off welfare. Employment is very lucrative.

We all know that person on the left that struggles with reasoning that involves economic or statistical intuition, but has extremely strong instincts of right and wrong, and is quick to outrage and moral certainty, and low in curiosity.

Their thinking is that poor people are poor, which is bad. So let's check if they're poor, and give them money so they're not poor anymore, which is good. That feels right. Let's do that.

Negative income tax? But that gives rich people money too! Giving rich people money is bad because they're rich already. QED.

> because income requirements that cause people to fall of medicaid or SNAP completely are sharp

How often do pay increases perfectly keep someone in the gap? Presumably some of them will be large enough, through changes of jobs for example, that the family would completely jump that gap.

> because income requirements that cause people to fall of medicaid or SNAP completely are sharp

Why would it? This is perhaps intentional as well. Only allow the program to benefit half the country. I'm sure you can predict how that political split occurs and insulates politicians from the ballot box.

> It serves to have an underclass that politicians can dump on, it seems.

It helps keeps wages suppressed. Politicians want money. They don't care about "dumping" on you, they'll make any excuse they need to keep the money coming in.

Maybe it's just incompetence, bureaucratic morass etc but it really does feel like the system was designed to fail, and trap us into this false choice of a broken welfare system vs. no welfare at all.

UBI and/or UBS (universal basic services) would be so much better but there was a sustained propaganda campaign to tell people that free things are communism and therefore bad. Now Western countries are becoming ungovernable due to regulatory capture, tax evasion and industrial-scale manipulation of opinion by the elites, so fixing these problems within the current democratic system is an extremely uphill battle. At least Mamdani's election gives us some hope in the US, but there's only so much one city or even one country can do on its own without worldwide changes.

> Literally no one is immune to the character-destroying nature of entitlement programs.

I personally know people who appear 'immune'. I find the issue is trauma, not 'character-destroying' - the uncertainty; the demoralizing nature; the experience living continually on a precipice, and seeing your kids, other dependants, and loved ones living that way. People are in a continual state of survival - of fight or flight, not of growth and health. Over a long term, that will injure anyone.

You can see the privileged atmosphere of HN in the comments, mostly from people with no contact with US welfare programs. It's like reading software development analysis from people who have no contact with that. (I have seen people on HN who do have experience, but they don't seem to be commenting.)

Destroying the character of those administering the programs?

How does an executive such as yourself find empathy and compassion for people who did not simply lift themselves up by their bootstraps?

A considerable part of this is the fact that in a society where utilizing these programs is stigmatized to the degree that the USA does, people who see themselves as honest tend to avoid utilizing them.

And even those who are less than honest, but have a sense of propriety, would understand that the correct, culturally approved time to engage in these activities is AFTER one acquires a significant amount of wealth, when entitlements are knighted to become "economic incentives".

Were you somehow exposed to a random sampling of welfare recipients through your work?

If no, how did you account for this sampling bias as you came to form your beliefs?