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hansvm12/08/20251 replyview on HN

Monotonic is what we have, and it allows cliffs.

Suppose, e.g., that you can get $5k/yr in benefits if you make less than $10k/yr in other revenue and $0 otherwise. Unless you have a viable strategy for pushing past $15k/yr it's a strong financial disencentive against actually working, and even then your incremental ROI isn't very good past that cliff (if it takes an extra hundred hours to push to $15.1k/yr, then compared to your $10k/yr option you're only making $1/hr for the extra work).


Replies

Chinjut12/08/2025

This doesn't sound monotonic. This sounds like a mapping from pre-benefit income to post-benefit income which sends just under $10k/yr to just under $15k/yr, but sends just over $10k/yr to just over $10k/yr. So it sends a larger input to a smaller output.