Hacker News Reader

Comment by cattenwallen | Hacker News Reader

In my understanding when it comes to doling out benefits, it's not an overhead connected to a jobs program. The less eligible people use benefits, the less the government has to pay out benefits. It's strictly better for the government to make getting benefits as hard as possible.

View on HN

In practice, the government spends far more trying to prevent the boogeyman of people who "shouldn't" get benefits receiving them than any actual fraud would ever cost.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

It's not really about the dollar amount of fraud, but maintaining public support for benefits schemes. If people feel that benefits aren't going strictly to the intended recipients the sense of fairness that underlies the system is eroded.

There's also the issue that if you don't counter fraud it will accelerate as organized crime jumps on the bandwagon.

> If people feel that benefits aren't going strictly to the intended recipients the sense of fairness that underlies the system is eroded.

And in an ideal world, you then say "that will literally cost you more money than not doing it", and the argument ends.

In practice, gatekeeping on government programs is primarily pushed for by people who don't think the programs should exist at all. The Venn diagram of the set of people who will withdraw their support for programs without such gatekeeping, and the set of people who mostly don't support such programs in the first place, is close to a circle.

One could argue that by making benefits hard to access, you under-provision and over-reward. This makes fraud more lucrative getting you into a viscous cycle. Normal people less likely to use benefits and dedicated fraudsters more likely.

> It's strictly better for the government to make getting benefits as hard as possible.

iunno, even when they bother to do means-testing in my jurisdiction, they exclude any slightly illiquid assets, regardless of size.

Have a paid off house (any value), paid off motor vehicle (any value) and a corporate pension plan you can start collecting in X years? No problem! You still qualify for long-term social assistance if your income is low as long as your on-paper deposits/investments are also low.

No vehicle/home/pension but your main asset is your self-funded retirement account? You gotta cash that out first. What could you possibly need that for?

I'd get it in the short-term, but the government seems to make it easiest for itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com