Comment by jon-wood
3 years ago
I don’t know if that statement is backed by the article, which I will admit to not having read, but in general I agree. Completely eradicating benefit fraud will necessarily increase the burden on legitimate claimants to prove that they are in fact legitimate. Doing that is going to place enough burden on some people who should otherwise be able to claim that it results in them not doing so, or failing to do so because they were unable to provide the required evidence.
I’d much rather see a few people who didn’t need benefits manage to claim them than see people who do need them be left without. The first option costs tax payers a bit more money. The second results in people’s lives being made significantly worse, and in some cases in deaths.
Also, not means testing universal benefits means everybody appreciates them as just something their society does, so that reduces stigma for the beneficiaries and increases pride in your society. "We ensure children in this country have nutritious food" not "Why are my taxes going to feed this 10 year old whose mother has a full time job".
I grew up in an area where many parents could afford (maybe if they budget carefully, maybe just anyway) to privately educate a child. But they mostly didn't, because the government funded schools were pretty good. In fact, as children it was actually a minor stigma to be privately educated, because if your parents are spending a lot of money on the fancy school, either they don't know how to spend their cash (so they're stupid) or you're really stupid and they sent you to that school in the hope of making up for it. It was seen as like easy mode. Smart kids don't go to private school, why would they waste the money?
> The first option costs tax payers a bit more money.
The first option costs taxpayers significantly more than a ‘bit’.
Just look at how much it cost when they basically turned off all the checks in order to get covid relief into the hands of people who really needed it. In Arizona, after a while, they made it so you had to sit on (virtual) hold for 8-10 hours to verify your identity with a human or they would cut you off. Which worked well enough to ensure only the people who really needed it went through all the hassle. It really sucked for those people but they stopped sending billions of dollars overseas to people who just googled someone’s address.