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Comment by dmurray | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, 10-20% of successful claims being fraudulent sounds plausible: I could easily see there being one successful scammer for every ten genuine applicants, and the scammer claiming 1-2x as much on average.

The number is mostly so large because it's 10% of an even bigger number, the amount CA pays in unemployment claims, which is not in dispute.

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20% fraud would indicate a completely broken system with no checks and balances.

That 10-20% sounds extremely high. The usual estimates for benefit fraud in Finland are something like 0.1%.

Sorry but how is Finland even close to relevant here?

It's another state providing similar benefits with a similar vector for fraud?

probably less of a vector because other benefits like healthcare are provided and financial compensation is a little less important?

If you’re going to impose constraints like that you’ll have a hard time finding a comparison outside of the US.

Why is a comparison outside the US beneficial other than outside some strawman argument?

I feel as though the US has an abundance of unique problems that make outside comparison completely useless.

There are just so many factors between two different countries with different healthcare systems and other factors I don't see why a comparison is useful

Even the UK numbers of < 1% is an order of magnitude less.

The more restrictions and rules you place on benefits the higher the "fraud" rate will be since any mistake in following those becomes "fraud." The US tends to put in many rules and restrictions then increases them if a news articles talks about fraud.

here in California, this EDD unemployment payments fraud is being discussed: it was special to covid-19; really, really out of control; very damaging with the cost of living here, especially rent for working people; in a place that defines high-tech, getting scammed so badly; it is not publicly known exactly all the ways that the EDD scams happened, and there is lying by a lot of people about it right now, in govt and outside govt.

It is not at all comparable to Finland, and it is completely comparable to Finland

Finland via Nokia is quite high-tech in places; many people are poor; Finland unemployment system is not at all like California EDD; high-tech is available to the unemployment benefits people to implement payments, but do they use it?

Personally I care a lot about the Scandinavian lands even though I live in California. It is really interesting to me to hear comparisons of California to Finland. Both systems of government are complex and unique, so superficial comparisons certainly have a lot of hidden detail. People on YNews are uniquely capable with high tech so real inquiry here might lead to something interesting.

Does Finland have good digital identity?

The US doesn’t (although by choice) and trying to prevent fraud without identity infrastructure seems hard.

Most people use their online banking credentials to prove their identity online. The system has been around since the late 90s, and it works well enough in practice. There have been some attempts at creating a national electronic id (like in Estonia), but they have never become popular.

I always wonder how this works? My HR office contacted me and told me unemployment application was rejected because I was still employed (someone submitted one on my behalf). Maybe states differ a lot but the unemployment office seems to check with an employer here before paying (I'm in massachusetts, you don't get unemployment if you are fired with cause). Also a unemployed friend indicated you had to stay in contact with the unemployment office showing that you were searching to get the benefit.

The police officer handling fraud I talked to said he was getting a lot of a calls about this kind of fraud.

It seems to be getting more popular. A number of people (6 and counting, so far) on my current project only learned about fraudulent unemployment claims made under their name when they received a tax document stating they received so much in unemployment benefits, which was quite perplexing to them considering they've been employed the whole time.

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