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.
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
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.
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.
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.Especially when said government is actively firing the people who reported the fraud and waste? Or maybe you’re thinking about the government who classified tracking active deadly diseases as fraud and is preventing people from getting protection against such things as the flu? Oh wait, I bet it’s the government who is gutting the life-saving weather prediction services that helps guide most of the farmers and fishermen while protecting human lives from deadly storms.
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.
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.
Sure, I’m completely okay with that too. Although I was thinking of tackling fraud more of an ex post facto audit system, rather than adding in compliance paperwork.
I’m very much not opposed to taxation, including taxing me, if that means that people have stable jobs or get the help they need. And as long as billionaires also get guillotined.
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.
The lack of specificty is also a strategy used to bolster support for deregulation.
Simply say “we are eliminating regulations” , and dont ever talk about what you are deregulating, because actually many regulations are a net good for society and were implemented for a reason. Preventing companies from dumping poison is a regulation.
