[JohnMakin]

I don’t know what you mean “influence people’s behavior” which implies you think that people who are in this situation are there because of behavioral issues, which I fundamentally disagree with and see no evidence for. I also provided personal examples and could provide many more where this amount was life changing in the long term. To me it’s silly to call this “short term help” when short term problems can cause a massive irrecoverable collapse of a financially vulnerable person’s life in a very short amount of time.

[brailsafe]

I very much agree with your responses and can relate to them on some level, but I do also disagree with your interpretation that the other person's interpretation necessarily means that a person needs to be in whichever financially dire situation they're in because of poor financial behavior; quite a mouthful, I know.

For example, I've been at absolute zero and living in my car largely because I just couldn't find a job and literally ran out of money trying (I guess count the car and laptop as an asset, w/e, but actually in the red), and if I'd been given 2x $2k cheques, I'd have a hard time finding a way that it would change my habits for positive or negative for longer than a few months, except if I'd looked for a quick source of substance based relief, which I didn't and wouldn't but assume that's irrelevant for now. I'd probably just try to stretch as far as possible and maybe get a few more calories, or a shower, or temporary gym membership. I can sympathize with the confusion somewhat, because to influence my decision making long-term, I'd have to be set back or set forward in a more reliable way than sudden burst of cash. Like I'm not going to get a loan or a 1 year apartment lease, it would be more like a campground instead of the street for a week every month. I do think worst case scenario, back to the substance topic, is that if you're in a really bad place financially, for no fault of your own (which I absolutely agree that this applies to a majority of people in those situations), it's that you become addicted to something, but everyone's dealt a different hand from a different deck and I do believe I'm way off the mark in terms of what other people might do.

Edit: Actually, that sort of windfall might also make it feel way easier to start spending on food delivery bs, which I have to imagine is a somewhat crippling negative long-term financial habit, especially if you're already working like hell with a family and it's an obvious efficiency increase.

[vladms]

By influence people behavior I mean for example "make them thinking about spending more than they were spending before receiving the 2k, 6 months after they stopped receiving the aid". And I mean by this impulsive spending, not planning and the like. You will tell me "but they need that, it's not impulsive, etc.". But don't forget we started from the article that "defaults jump to...". This can be due to multiple causes: "people got actually poorer" (not related mainly to behavior, but more to economy) OR "people changed behavior and suddenly they do things they were not doing before" (possible).

To clarify my opinion (hopefully beyond doubt so that you can't imply things I do not think), I think that blaming people will not solve anything, people are not poor due to behavioral issues, people that are currently poor must just be aided (in multiple ways) to get out of the situation. But people do react differently to different ways of helping, and as we don't have infinite resources, we need to discuss how such interventions affect them on short/medium/long term.

If you prefer more to find points in which you disagree (points that were not clearly there or semantic points as "short term help") I don't think I can bring anything to the discussion. I remained without a formed opinion of why the jump in defaults appeared...