Let me elucidate why this system kind of sucks, as someone else who knows someone personally who lives a "full benefits" poverty life.
These benefits are binary, not tiered, so once you earn a dollar over the incredibly low threshold, they vanish. So the person I know cannot get a job and work, because if they earn over ~$16k in a year all the benefits go away. And where she lives you need about $50k/yr minimum to scrape by. So there is this $34k/yr gap which creates a no-mans land of livelihood.
In addition to income, there are extremely low "wealth" qualifiers. You cannot save money while on most of these programs to try to improve your situation or build a personal safety net. If you manage to save more than a couple thousand dollars, you become ineligible for benefits.
> So there is this $34k/yr gap which creates a no-mans land of livelihood.
it also creates/necessitates a vast enforcement bureaucracy to make it all "work" which in itself is a huge waste when you could just tax it back from high-earners at the end of the tax year... its almost as if it was designed to suck
These benefits are binary, not tiered, so once you earn a dollar over the incredibly low threshold, they vanish. So the person I know cannot get a job and work, because if they earn over ~$16k in a year all the benefits go away. And where she lives you need about $50k/yr minimum to scrape by. So there is this $34k/yr gap which creates a no-mans land of livelihood.