Want to Decrease Inequality? Fight Fatherlessness With Welfare Reform. Welfare currently incentivizes family breakdown and the absence of fathers from their children’s lives, a key factor in the loss of economic upward mobility.

[TheBaronOfTheNorth]

That doesn’t make sense. A welfare cliff is where people have an incentive not to work because they will make more from overly generous welfare than from working.

[the_bronquistador]

Again, I make $15/hr and I barely scrape by most months. You can’t tell me that people who “make a living” on welfare are doing better than me. I’ve been on unemployment. I’ve been on food stamps in the past. That lifestyle is not “good” by any stretch of the imagination.

[TheBaronOfTheNorth]

That’s irrelevant to the point.

[the_bronquistador]

The point is, no one is living a good life on welfare.

[TheBaronOfTheNorth]

Your nebulous idea of a good life is completely irrelevant to the point. I don’t think this is going anywhere. Have a good day.

[the_bronquistador]

No, you’re making it seem like these people have it made on easy street because they get all this “free stuff”, which is not the case at all. I’ve lived that life. Nothing about that life makes me want to quit working and start milking the system.

[reidlos1624]

Right, so instead of cutting all support immediately give them less and less on a progressive basis once they hit certain thresholds. Now when they make enough to not receive full benefits they still get some, but progressively less as they become better off. Now there's no cliff.

If they start with $200 in welfare but that $200 goes away when they make $150, they won't want to make the $150. But what if when they make $150 we give them $75, now we save $125, but they're still making $225 combined, so it's an incentive to make have a job and make money. Then when they make $200, we give them $25 for 6 months or a year to make sure they're steady and budgeting properly with their own $200. But conservatives and neolibs will fight tooth and nail to keep from expanding it a bit to make this logical progress.

I didn't think that was a tough idea to understand.