> My reading of this is that the threshhold for the USA government to withdraw financial (and other?) support for disabled people is too low, is that right?

In general, step functions (earn 200 get benefits, 201 no benefits) are really really bad from a public policy perspective. If you want to get people out of these dependency traps then you need to taper them more effectively.

Even tapering them is problematic as you end up with astronomically high effective marginal tax rates, but it's better than a hard cut off.

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butlike 3 hours ago | parent [-]

But at a certain level, you'll need a step function to go from 0 (none; no taper) to 1 (taper).

	▲	zbentley 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm not sure that's true, though most policies are implemented that way. If you get, say, a basic income payout that's a function of the income you make, that function scales all the way from 0 income/max UBI to >= max UBI income/0 UBI. Not that that's like ... a policy slam-dunk or anything. Even putting aside the massive hurdle of getting UBI enacted into law, you'd still have to cope with sources of unreported income, asset/gift valuation, and so on. But that second category are, at least, tractable problems as evidenced by most countries' tax codes having contingencies to deal with them.