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.
I’d say yes, because dishonesty shouldn’t be tolerated. They’re going after the million-dollar fraudsters as well, right?
Going after the rich people? Ah you made me laugh. No just poor people.
I would say probably yes, because if you leave something like that unenforced, people learn that they can get away with it and the trend spreads.
Sure the enforcement might cost more than it saves today, but it quite likely might cost less than it would cost once the problem expands 5-10 years from today.
I would say there is two things at play here one is that you should have is simplifying the compliance requirements to make fraud easier to detect. Like for example in the US for disability if you have more than 2k in your bank account you lose disability.
All these requirements were created to show that a government will offer welfare when they really don’t want to. If we just said if you make less than X you get help. It would be simple math and a SQL query to check for fraud. At the same time having a fraud team in that looks at businesses doing the fraud would be better served like with the US Medicaid fraud that dwarfs any fraud coming from individuals.
The specifics matter, but generally no.
When an actual fraud investigation is being done into something major like a casino laundering money, my government tends not to turn it into a media circus until after investigations are underway.
When a politician tells me they want to ‘tackle fraud’, especially welfare fraud, I hear “I want to arrest people for being poor”. It sounds like a dog-whistle to me, because every time I hear it used, it’s by people bearing a “the cruelty is the point” mindset.
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).
Don’t allow what is not allowed. Maybe the initial cost ia higger but doesnt incentivise the following persons to follow and do the same.
And if it really costs more, just increase the penalties to make it worthwhile.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.
I see where you’re coming from, but would like to add some nuance (not everywhere is like the US).
As a general rule, I think penalising malicious fraud (i.e. fraud not committed out of dire necessity, but in order to scrape an extra buck) is worth it on a societal level, even if the economic benefits aren’t a net positive. It’s about sending the message that we live in a society where people need to treat each other fairly, and where we can trust the system to protect us. Even if society as a whole loses money going after some of this fraud, it can mean an enormous amount to the individuals that have been exposed to fraud to know that society has their back.
On the second level, there’s welfare fraud. First of all, we definitely have a more generous welfare system where I’m from than what’s found in the US, and I think that’s a good thing. We also have some issues with people that are capable of working, or who do work under the table, who still claim benefits they aren’t qualified for. The major issue I see with it is this: By gaming the system, these people in the long term threaten to make the system unsustainable, thus stealing resources and putting pressure on the people the system is actually designed to help.
In a way I see actual welfare fraud (i.e. people with more than enough resources gaming the system to pull government money they don’t need) as worse, because they’re violating the trust of a system society has put in place to help the most exposed among us. This kind of fraud indirectly impacts the least resourceful (possibly a poor translation) people in our society.
In either case, I think the social element of fighting fraud is worth it, even if it is a net negative economically. Fraud in general is a severe violation of the social contract we live under, and “letting it slide” contributes to eroding peoples trust in both each other, and the social system as a whole. It’s worth spending some money to prevent that.
Nobody ever talks about banking fraud, stocks fraud, even when done by the literal president.
They absolutely do talk about those things, maybe almost as much, under full understanding of which discussions will lead to actual action and which won’t.
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.
And so on, and so on…
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.
