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Every time. Every single time there is somebody totally okay with fraud if it relates to a program he is otherwise in favor of.

Can't you just spell out, "UC is good, but fraud is bad, so let's eliminate the fraud, even if it's a mere XY billion dollars." It does not require any internal contradiction to think that way.

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Retail stores, banks, corporations, all price in fraud and risk. It's a matter of trading cost of enforcement vs. impact to core mission vs. money recovered.

Some level of fraud in a social welfare system is absolutely acceptable, if tightening controls to eliminate the fraud would mean that otherwise eligible people didn’t receive benefits they qualified for, or even if it meant that accessing those benefits became much more onerous. I don’t doubt that $36bn is too high, but this kind of analysis is almost never present in these articles and politically in this country the spectre of fraud is usually used as an anti-welfare cudgel

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