I ask because we had a situation in Ireland just like this many years ago. It was for welfare fraud specifically and faced criticism for a few reasons. One was that the suspected levels of fraud may have been much lower than the politician was claiming. The other reason was that the cost of tackling it could likely outweigh any savings.
In the “drug test welfare applicants” it was more about putting extra hassles on poor people than a genuine fraud issue. Voter fraud is similarly an excuse to deny voting rights.
No, because it’s a balancing act. There’s fraud everywhere, it’s just how things are. It’s not worth spending more than it gets back in the name of moral purity.
The allegations of widespread fraud usually have an ulterior motive other than cutting down fraud. It’s usually about the group of people needing the service as a whole and demonizing them with fraud allegations to cut down important social services. Nobody ever talks about banking fraud, stocks fraud, even when done by the literal president. It’s always poor people on welfare programs, food stamps, healthcare that are somehow “the problem”.
I couldn’t care less about poor people not declaring the 10h of work they managed to find, it’s literally impossible to survive on food stamps and welfare without doing undeclared work and if you do declare it you just get penalized more than you earned. It’s a system designed for you to not escape out of.
If it’d cost less than say 2x what it’d save, I’d say it’s beneficial. Making it obvious that corruption isn’t going to work has value, but no need to do really extensive audits just to get the last 0.1% of mistakes/fraud.
Depends on the variety of fraud. Kids qualifying for reduced cost lunches? Ignore. Companies intentionally offering less than their label states? Offer them the scalding enema they deserve.
I would not trust my government to tackle fraud/corruption no matter what they said
It really depends on what the fraud is, who it impacts, and how severe that impact is.
At one extreme, let’s say that someone is defrauding random citizens of a few hundred bucks a pop, and it would cost a few thousand a pop to reduce or eliminate it, that’s worth it because the few hundred can have an outsized impact.
If someone is committing welfare fraud, until it’s enough to prevent the system from working, then the cost has to be much closer to or lower than the amount stolen because it’s better to let fraud slip through the cracks rather than people.
It can be worth it, even if the cost is higher, but it would need to be a long term solution paid once, or it’s just an added cost of running the system rather than an actual fix. No point in implementing an expensive system change that doesn’t eliminate the cost of the fraud entirely.
Sure! It creates real jobs, while also discouraging people from fucking over the system. Even if there’s zero fraud happening, auditing the system to make sure isn’t going to hurt. (Well, it won’t hurt as long as they don’t remove people that are entitled to the benefits.)
The problem with such systems is that every check introduced in the name of minimising fraud, is an extra hoop that someone needs to jump through to obtain legitimate benefits.
Unless you are also going to boost funding and have a well resourced, easily accesible team available to help people navigate the additional bureaucracy, you are going to do more harm to marginalised people in need than to fraudsters.
If
my governmentthe government that’s managed to weasel its way into power over the land on which I happened to be born proposed an initiative to tackle fraud, I would look for the catch, because it’s guaranteed there would be one.I’d support it because criminals shouldn’t be rewarded for their actions. If they are, more people would do it and now It’ll cost even more to stop everyone from doing it.
Depends. You could argue that economically speaking it’s not worthwhile to stop and cite people for speeding. Police do have discretion on that kind of thing so not the best example, but still, there’s probably stuff that isn’t good for the bottom line that just needs to happen. The government is not a business.
Now when I say “depends”, I would be more inclined to go after a small number of people committing massive fraud than a large number committing minor acts of fraud. In the first case I think charges would discourage future abuse but in the second probably not. It wouldn’t be a vast, organized network of people doing the same thing, but a bunch of people that happened to notice the same opportunity. I think you’d do just as well having applicants read and sign a paper that goes over the penalties of abuse (while spending very little resources on enforcement).
Depends on where the burden is being placed. If it’s adding more hoops for everyday people to jump through to get what they need, no. If it’s adding more hoops for large organizations and corporations who can hire people for compliance, yes. If it’s just hiring more people on the government side to analyze the existing data, but the forms and processes stay the same on the other end, sure.
Cost who, my friend? What kind of fraud? Don’t try to be cute.
For example, if someone gets $3 extra on food stamps, FFS good on them. If Musk gets millions (more, but let’s lowball it), he can rot in hell.
