[shadowfiend]

Just to make sure I understand—you're saying that because your family, which is 4x the poverty level income, got this discount, and did not need it, you believe that this program did not help people under the poverty line?

Or is it that because your family, which is 4x the poverty level income, got this discount, and did not need it, you believe this program was not meant to help people under the poverty line?

Which is to say, can you make your point more precisely?

[silent_cal]

The second one - it's not meant to help the poor only. They just use that language to make it more popular. It should be more difficult to qualify for this program, such that people well over the poverty level like me would not receive it.

[yowzadave]

> They just use that language to make it more popular.

I agree that sometimes issues are framed that way to get sympathy for a program’s beneficiaries, but I think it’s probably a bad tactic (from a marketing perspective) and an even worse move (from a policy design perspective) when programs are specifically designed to benefit the poor only.

The problem is that there are a lot of people who don’t like to think of themselves as “moochers”, or as in need; they have a reflexive negative attitude toward “welfare recipients”. Better to just make the programs universal, and to advertise them as universal; when everybody benefits, so do the poor, but it’s no longer a wedge issue, it’s just something we’re proud of that our society does. People who go to public school are just normal people. Yes, public school happens to benefit the poor. The fact that rich people can also send their kids to public school is not a problem, though, and it would hurt public school to frame it as something for the poor.

[silent_cal]

Yeah I agree with this. I'd prefer a society of mostly "self-reliant" people, but those days have long passed. We live under a welfare state, and we pay so much in tax that we might as well get some free services out of it.

Unfortunately, the main recipients of government welfare in this country are the big government contractors. The rest goes to the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security. So there's no money left for anyone else. Furthermore, the money that does go out is all borrowed, which we have to pay back with interest. We are so screwed.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

What's the rate of error you're willing to tolerate in such a system, and what does it cost to achieve that rate?

There is a breakpoint in those numbers where it becomes cheaper to allow some error.

[silent_cal]

It's not cheaper to allow error when the error is the only thing driving excess cost.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

What evidence do you have that erroneous benefits are the only thing driving excess cost?

Do you feel that correcting the errors can be done with no cost whatsoever?

We can argue about where that break point is, but the break point absolutely exists. There is a level of verification / enforcement that will cost more than what you're getting back through reduction of erroneously distributed benefits.

[jauntywundrkind]

Congrats to this thread for intelligently considerately tugging at the thread here.

I have such a hard time staying so level. It's so obvious to me what a a benefit internet connectivity is to this nation. Giving families access will set people on far better paths, will have economic returns for the nation. The costs here seem not bad. I'm definitely not worried about a couple arguably less deserving people getting access, especially given the relatively minor pay-out involved. It seems obviously not worth it to care so intensely about some borderline cases of oh you make $62k now (or whatever), sorry you are cut off now.

Ideally we would be figuring out how to make connectivity a public utility, as so many municipalities have done over the world, greatly reducing cost and increasing speed. But in America we keep having to pay businesses to do things at enormous costs, protect their absurd profit margins, because in part there's so much fear & angst around government & public ownership.

[silent_cal]

Yeah, it's very simple, just lower the income requirement. There is no cost to it at all.