[fdr]

You are looking for the term "effective marginal tax rate." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_marginal_tax_rate

To give a sense how much benefits code and tax code have in common, see this worksheet for SNAP eligibility, which resembles a second tax return: https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/recipient/eligibility. You get to do something similar, again(!), for Medicaid.

The American benefits code is a patchwork of conflicting sensibilities of the electorate: the smallest possible tax, paternalism and suspicion against the poor, plus a few policy analysis trying to obtain the maximum poverty reduction within those constraints. The result is a thicket of means tested programs with extremely steep phase-outs and a lot of paperwork. The all-in EMTR for an American with income between 0-40K a year is chaotic beyond reason as a result as they roll up the income spectrum.

This person who gave the presentation is indeed in one of the worst cases for the code: a single parent with multiple children.

[namibj]

Under that concept, well, if actually taking the social security (Grundsicherung) in Germany as a given, even assuming low CoL situations (it's worse in higher-CoL situations), the effective average tax rate past like about 160 EUR/month of income will rise to a peak at around 1500 EUR/month income and then continuously decrease to the super wealthy limit tax just under 50%.

At least you technically never have less money from more work (but only if you consider bureaucracy free; there is severe bureaucracy especially for those that fluctuate in and out of coverage).

[AnthonyMouse]

> At least you technically never have less money from more work (but only if you consider bureaucracy free; there is severe bureaucracy especially for those that fluctuate in and out of coverage).

When the effective marginal tax rate is high, this is often as close as makes no difference, because you not only have the cost of bureaucracy but also the cost of working. You're paying an effective marginal tax rate of 80% so nominally you get to keep 20% of your income and have the incentive to work, but working requires you to commute, so you have to buy transit tickets or maintain a vehicle.

And because you're now spending your day working, you can't use that time to prepare food or maintain your household, so you may have to pay someone else to do some of those things -- but their entire compensation has to come out of the 20% of your pay you actually get to spend, so this can easily eat the entire thing and make you better off to not take the job.

[HPsquared]

Maybe it could be reframed as "incremental hourly income". Partial derivative of disposable income w.r.t hours worked (including time overheads)

[ziggyzecat]

> severe bureaucracy

been there, done that. it's not severe, it's not even 2 hours per month and maybe waiting for 2 or three letters from xyz.

2 hours of non-engaging bureaucratic work for 1300 € per month. Thats 650 €/h ...

[namibj]

The problem is that I'm not talking about getting +1300 EUR/month situations, but about +300 EUR/month situations. And suddenly you have to explain your finances to the bureaucracy and... you still have to earn +1000 EUR/month in addition to the bureaucracy needed so you get to keep at least some of it (without committing social security fraud, ofc).

It's not that bad if it's steady; but if it's fluctuating you easily spend a couple hours each month. And for at least some people, that type of work is far worse than their occupation of choice.

[ziggyzecat]

oh, and I'm aware that it might be engaging for some, but they either fall into the category that better learns to organize and administer themselves now rather than later or into the category that will always need a social worker, who will the find the bureaucracy easy as well and the organization is paid by his employer