Food stamps, medicaid, for ERE

[jim234]

You can't quote a website as a source for the law, it has no weight, and no bearing for legal interpretation. You say the rules for eligibility are written poorly. I disagree, the political process has created the wording with a specific meaning. Either you meet the requirements or don't.

You are forgetting the primary driver for food stamps is the agriculture industry, who want consumers for their goods. It is always part of the farm bill.
Also Medicare/ACA/Medicaid is wanted by the medical complex so that they get paid for services rendered, things are not always as they seem.

[GandK]

The best part of ERE (for me) is the independence it brings, so participating in *any* government program runs counter to what I'm trying to accomplish and my personal view of what ERE means.

I agree with this. Regarding ER, our family's goal is financial self-sufficiency, not just having more self-directed hours in the day. I'm certain that we will tap Social Security and Medicare when we're old enough, but I would feel too vulnerable for comfort if we required tax-supported income in order to make both ends meet. (Does this mean that I'm more comfortable accepting benefits that I don't strictly need? Uh-oh. )

If, after G retires, we fell on hard times and needed government assistance, I'm sure we would use the benefits that were available. But I'm also sure that one or both of us would work during that time to build our nest egg back up again until benefits were no longer necessary.

[Ego]

Some people might want to look up the meaning of situational ethics. It allows you to justify any unjustifiable action.

Programs like welfare or food stamps were not intended to help people who ERE. It's as simple as that. That is where the moral question becomes very simple and clear. To answer for yourself, should I apply for welfare or food stamps, you do not ask yourself, am I legally entitled to do so? You ask yourself, am I the person the program was intended to help? You know the answer and so you know if it is morally justifiable or not.

So, in other words, we should consider the context of the taker and whether the person receiving help fits into the situation the lawmakers intended regardless of whether they qualify?

Sounds familiar....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_ethics

Situational ethics, or situation ethics, takes into account the particular context of an act when evaluating it ethically, rather than judging it according to absolute moral standards.


If the Canadian government began means testing medical benefits using only Canadian assets as evidence of means, while you legally hold the bulk of your assets in the UK, what would you do? Would you continue to accept the benefits knowing that the intention of the lawmakers was to stop wealthy people from receiving them or would you go through the hassle of having to opt out of a program for which you legally qualify?

It may sound convoluted, because it is, but there are programs like ACA that are putting people in very similar situations.

I'm not sure why, but I find it queasy to use the intention of the lawmakers as the ethical yardstick. The Supreme Court spends most of its time on that and it ain't pretty. In Jenny's situation you must consider the intention of the original law plus the intention of the state legislators trying to bring more dollars back to their state. With ACA you've got to read the intention of lawmakers every year when they publish the new subsidy thresholds.

[Dragline]

I think there are three different questions here, and if you confuse them you might get different answers or confused answers.

On the soap box:

The First Question is "Given these available benefits, what would I choose for myself?" This is a very personal question, and there are only personal answers. But if you choose "all that are available", ou may be faced with another question related to counter-party risk. We are all exposed to counter-party risk, whether we know it or not. Counter-party risk is the risk that whomever you are transacting with will be ready, willing and able to pay you when payment is demanded. Investors in Madoff funds learned this bitterly when that bubble burst. But the same types of risks exist for whatever you invest in and whatever governmental entity is supposed to be paying your pension, insurance or whatever. This includes the risk that the law will change, or maybe you misapprehended it. While this is lower for universal programs like Social Security and Medicaid, other things like SNAP could very well disappear or become unavailable to you in a very short time-frame. It is not a very robust strategy to rely on them I also recently listened to a podcast about Cliff Ravenscraft, who obtained food stamps when his family was hurting but then came to find out he wasn't really eligible due to retirement savings and got into legal hot water and had to give the money back. Buyer beware!

The Second Question is "Given these available benefits, how do I deal with/judge other eligible people who apply for them?" Most people confuse this question with the first one in a effort to avoid cognitive dissonance and be consistent. This is the foolish consistency that is the hobgoblin of little minds that Emerson warned against. There is no reason why what you choose to do should be applied to other people. You are not a god. There is also no reason to waste mental energy and become angry or judgmental at others who choose legal choices (we are not talking about fraud here) that you might not choose. For another example, see http://www.gocurrycracker.com/never-pay-taxes-again/ Should we really be angry that these people don't pay taxes? I am not -- they are simply following the rules. If you are angry about these things, its about you, not about them, however you define "them". Chances are neither you, nor they picked this particular benefits regime. This is the kind of thing that makes people who have everything they need in life turn into miserable wretches, who spend their life's energy trying to find ways to punish other people to don't agree or do as they say/recommend.

The Third Question is "What Kind of Regime Do We Think is Moral, Just and Correct?" You can fill in the blank here. But chances are, the one you live in does not match your definition. Get over it (stoic position). Or spend your time trying to change it, if you find Purpose in that endeavor. Or move to somewhere with a different regime or none at all. But stop whining. Yes, being "offended" and attaching dramatic labels to whatever the system is, is ultimately just whining. Just louder than run-of-the-mill whining. This is timely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb2mVGE63YU Some of you are just whiners when it comes to dealing with realities you cannot change. You know who you are.

Off the soap box. As you were.

[Laura Ingalls]

The notion that the spirit of the law is unknowable, and so we must embrace only the letter of the law is hogwash. Records are kept of this stuff. Even the legislation provides clues.

They seem to think that people using the program won't have many assets, won't have much income, and that this is preventing them from eating well.

There are a crap ton of exceptions which I assume is how ERErs could quality. I don't feel like reading the whole body of legislation. But I personally found enough evidence in the act to satisfy my intent of the enactors' intent.

Except that the 2008 snap revision/farm bill permitted waiver of asset tests. Thirty-six states have none.
This article says it only changed the people who qualified by 1% in PA
http://www.governing.com/topics/health- ... tamps.html

Asset tests are going away because they waste the human resources of states and dollars of taxpayers.

[bottlerocks]

Asset tests are going away because they waste the human resources of states and dollars of taxpayers.

To me that suggests that the extent at which people "taking advantage" of the program is harming others is negligible. If it's not harming other people, is it immoral? Is there a morality threshold to be crossed with a dollar sign attached to it?

Using morality as a measuring stick is always hilarious...it's so rarely a binary thing. It's also like a glue, no one who uses it in their argument is ever going to convinced to move from their platform without some major tug which probably removes some skin. Politicians who are "morally" opposed to homosexuality until their own child comes out as gay, for instance.

I want to echo that it's very strange the way these interpretations change for older people. How can you morally justify taking Social Security when you're FI and don't "need" it? Something like 40% of people in the U.S. over 65 are kept out of poverty by the program...is that not enough evidence of intent for you? Oh, it's because you've been forced into paying for it your whole working career? Two wrongs make a right? Sounds super moral.

For the record, I do not plan on taking advantage of all the programs afforded to me in FI/ER simply because every dollar I don't consume is one someone else can and I'd like to see these programs prosper for the sake of living in a pleasant society. In other words, the dollar I don't take is a dollar I'm spending for wealth redistribution in a specific direction. I don't equate that sentiment with morality whatsoever. Side note, I'm not super educated on surrendering social security benefits or if it's even possible, but for the sake of argument I've never seen anyone petitioning for that to be a possibility.

[OldPro]

You can argue about legality all you want jim234. That something is legal does not necessarily make it moral.

Jennypenny writes, "I'm not sure if the burden of 'morality' falls on the unintended recipient to deny services or on the program's administration for not executing their mandate properly." Morality does not fall on either/or, it falls on both. The individual hopefully does what is morally right as does the state. Neither is perfect and both will sometimes get it wrong, but hopefully, not INTENTIONALLY.

As for, how do I know the intent of something, that is a pathetic argument. No one can say they don't know who food stamps are intended for. Nor can anyone really think they are intended for someone who has the equivalent of $200k cash in their pocket, REGARDLESS of whether the law would allow them to claim food stamps or not.

[George the original one]

@OldPro - pretend, for a moment, that the intent of food stamps was clearly stated as being for any individual (even someone with assets) who finds themselves with a low income temporarily and is willing to apply for work. Are you morally against it at that point?

[TopHatFox]

I will take whatever I can legally get, with no qualms. I have paid taxes for [1] years, this will never recover a fraction of what has been paid, I consider it recovery of stolen property.

I favor the idea of government as a coercive entity that takes and hands some money back every now and again. I wish I could selective choose which taxes and services I pay for (I like some roads and some support systems).

Since I can't, and since I'm at the beginning of the accumulation phase, I will also take whatever money I can legally get and optimize. A friend of mine uses SNAP. He suggested for me to apply and put the money to good use; I said I'd think about it, and I think I might since the govt. has already coercively taxed me ~$400 for I-don't-know-what-and-can't-even-legally-choose for only the work performed this summer.

These programs are created to be used by the demographic that the laws state, which I think low-income students and under-incomed retired folk fit. Since I fit the former demographic, and the OP the latter, I don't see why we should not use it.

[jacob]

Hummm ... It's been almost 10 years since I decided not to commit to political debates and I've been much happier for it. So I'll just add this in case it'll be helpful for others to adopt a live and let live attitude. My argument/reason for no longer giving a hoot about this kind of re/distribution-politics is pretty simple.

1) On a rudimentary abstract model level, the system is like this ...
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/how-d ... works.html

Note that only the middle class creates wealth, hence wealth (the production of stuff, roads, iThings, ice cream, TSP reports) flows from the middle class to the upper and lower class. In return the middle class gets stability.

2) The lower, middle, and upper class operate with very different and mutually incomprehensible sets of morals. It is almost impossible for one groups to sympathisize with the others. A characteristic of the middle class is the strong emphasiz on equally-priced-exchange. You can test which class by giving your test subject something of value. If this gift makes the subject emotionally/morally uncomfortable until they've returned something of equal value, i.e. "paid for it", they're solid middle class. The upper and lower class will see the "gift" very differently.

1+2) The task of the political class is to dress the payment transfer system (from the middle to the upper and lower, respectively) up in words that appeal to the morals of the middle class. (Because they're the quantitative majority. The vote that counts. The source of revolutions. So it has to look good to them.) From the perspective of the money flow of person X, it doesn't matter one bit whether you take $100 in taxes or you take $150 and then allow a $50 deduction, or you take $160; allow a $30 deduction, give a $10 credit, a $10 subsidy, and pay an extra $10 without mentioning it. However, morally, etc. it matters greatly. See this thread. Hence what's important is that whatever we call taxes, whatever we call deductions, whatever we call credits, whatever we call subsidies, and whatever we definitely do never mention (just like we never mention the existence of water to the fish) are all mostly determined by middle class values.

This is why policing (which is not mentioned but just taken for granted, like water---you don't want to tell the middle class that they're directly paying for the stability because they must take it for granted lest they start questioning the foundations of the system they're supporting) is not called a subsidy (and given out in disproportionally large amounts to richer property owners); why health care is not a tax (but a mandatory rule with a credit); and so on...

3) It is in the interest of the other classes and even to some extent to the middle class that the middle class doesn't realize how the system works (there's stability and safety in ignorance---which is also a family value, you know) and instead spend their time arguing left/right wing positions that mainly serve to play the upper class and the lower class against each other by proxy (in reality they're barely affected) ... ironically while arguing in middle class terms. Obviously, this works quite successfully as this system has been stable for quite a while. Divide and conquer!

In many ways the classes comprise a eusocial arrangement with the groups feeding on each other and providing various services back. The middle class is mostly blind to anything that doesn't involve the concept of "paid for it". Of course the other classes tend to be blind to other concepts.

4) From the perspective of the individual, the system is fixed. There's nothing you can do to change the system. But you can greatly change your response to the system when realizing what is happening and why. That whole Matrix or Plato's Cave thing again. Fundamentally, it's just cash flows. It doesn't matter to the financial transactions whether politicians call them credits or taxes. It's still dollars. You can call them whatever you want but good luck if you want to convince someone else to call them by the same names that you do.

Now we return to your regularly scheduled programming, ha!

[7Wannabe5]

If I qualified for food stamps, what I might consider doing would be using the benefit to buy stuff I can't grow and then dropping off a lot of fresh produce at my local food bank. I must admit that I do occasionally partake of a government subsidized snack when I am substitute teaching a classroom full of low-income children and feel my blood-sugar dropping as I desperately attempt to simultaneously maintain order and maybe pass on the skill of long-division. Also, when I lived in graduate student family housing as a young mother, I would sometimes take one of the cans of meat with a picture of a cow on it and take another shot at cooking it into something edible. However, this was in part just a passive-aggressive move to counter my ex-husband's complaints about my mostly vegetarian cooking style, as in "Don't like my black bean burritos? Okay, have at these cow-in-a-can burritos!" -lol. Ah, youth...

[Tyler9000]

I think the biggest issue here (amongst EREs) is that government programs aren't as cut and dry as they once were, so it's hard to know where to draw the line.

Precisely. As wealth redistribution becomes more widespread and socially acceptable, the line between handout for the needy and normal government program for all becomes blurry. The ACA is a great example, blending health insurance payments with income taxes in a manner that bumps the advertised sticker price to the max possible rate and hands out discounts to nearly everyone to compensate (a family of four making $94k/year still qualifies for subsidies!). When the "handout" simply returns the average price paid to the actual market rate for coverage, I would argue it is no longer "welfare" in the way we historically think about it. It's an integral part of the system.

I personally have no problem with honestly and legally structuring my retirement income to minimize my healthcare costs just as I would to minimize any other tax. Depending on Medicaid in retirement is borderline for me ethically (In my state it isn't really an option, anyway), but I choose to buy a policy on the exchange not for moral reasons but for coverage reasons. I like having more say over providers, and if you manage it well it's honestly very inexpensive for an ERE type.

I have no personal interest in food stamps, unemployment, etc. Perhaps I could qualify. But accepting that is a step too far for me personally. Ethics aside, it just wouldn't fit my personal emotional drive for independence and self reliance. For the same reason, I would turn down monetary gifts from my parents. I don't need the money, nor the dependence it implies.

[7Wannabe5]

@Jacob- What about the concepts of "noblesse oblige" or "potlatch?"

[jacob]

@7w5 - Not a part of the system we live in/with/under/over/... Small exceptions may occur but they're not the rule.

[jennypenny]

@OldPro - pretend, for a moment, that the intent of food stamps was clearly stated as being for any individual (even someone with assets) who finds themselves with a low income temporarily and is willing to apply for work. Are you morally against it at that point?

This is a big part of the reason that Pennsylvania recently eliminated the means test*. Having people exhaust their savings before receiving assistance might put them in a hole they can't get out of and keep them on welfare permanently. Giving them assistance as soon as possible means they might be able to get back on their feet (and off of assistance) more quickly cost the program less money overall. It's the same thinking as unemployment insurance. People apply for those benefits as soon as they're laid off. They don't wait until they're broke to apply.

*The other reason is not to discourage savings.

[Dragline]

4) From the perspective of the individual, the system is fixed. There's nothing you can do to change the system. But you can greatly change your response to the system when realizing what is happening and why. That whole Matrix or Plato's Cave thing again. Fundamentally, it's just cash flows. It doesn't matter to the financial transactions whether politicians call them credits or taxes. It's still dollars. You can call them whatever you want but good luck if you want to convince someone else to call them by the same names that you do.!

Yes. I see very little that is dramatic, moral or ultimately even very meaningful in a metaphysical sense in this exercise. All the hyperbole about it falls flat. It's mostly just about becoming knowledgeable, calculating and adapting. Or packing up and moving.

Or declare war on the Union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRX6hSGeZs4

But that usually doesn't work out so well.

[bryan]

I personally have no problem with honestly and legally structuring my retirement income to minimize my healthcare costs just as I would to minimize any other tax.
...
I have no personal interest in food stamps, unemployment, etc. Perhaps I could qualify. But accepting that is a step too far for me personally. Ethics aside, it just wouldn't fit my personal emotional drive for independence and self reliance.

As an aside, this is how I feel about landlording, that I have little interest ethically/emotionally, especially considering the government incentives available which beg to be taken advantage of. Too bad, as it seems like a great way to use leverage and make some value investments.

[Scrubby]

You can argue about legality all you want jim234. That something is legal does not necessarily make it moral.

I guess we can be quite selective about how we apply morality. According to your earlier messages you have little qualms about paying bribes to obtain something you wouldn't otherwise get. I would probably take the food stamps, but I avoid traveling to countries where corruption is common.

[jennypenny]

@Jacob- What about the concepts of "noblesse oblige" or "potlatch?"

@7w5 - Not a part of the system we live in/with/under/over/... Small exceptions may occur but they're not the rule.

@jacob--I'm going to disagree. I think there are still a majority of people (in the US at least) who believe in a version of that concept (commonly paraphrased from Luke 12:48 as "To whom much is given, much is required."). It's just not the majority opinion in the ERE crowd.

[jacob]

There's a belief, but it's not dominating people's behavior, so people are not acting fully on that belief. Charity is a small exception comprising around 10%(*) of the cash flow relative to what flows through the government through taxes and deficits, but it's not the rule that most government expenses are paid by voluntary contributions.

(*) Which figuratively means that people are willing to lend a finger to others but not both hands.

To change the system from the current, charity contributions (around $300-400B/yr total) would have to be bigger than the government budget (Fed=3.5T/yr, then add states and locals) and the way for leaders to get elected would require them to pay for government projects out of their own pocket (to show their power).

In terms of any kind of transition, in the US there's also a strong reaction against the version of that concept that was popularized by Marx: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" so it would be hard to "install" Luke 12:48 on system-wide basis and use that to pay for most things.