People want it without being eligible. And they don’t want the government to means test them. That’s the bottom line.
On a related point I never understood the argument that means testing automatically must be ruled out on expense grounds. The old rebuttal is “means testing costs money and it would be cheaper not to means test and just pay everyone”. But I don’t understand why you can’t build a means testing service / system once and reuse it for all such benefits like this. Surely as a government you can be competent enough to quickly and efficiently prove that someone is or isn’t eligible and make this decision cheaply. Apparently not 😕.
Often as different benefits have different qualifying conditions. But the larger point against means testing (IMO) is that universal benefits are far less likely to be attacked and devalued over time. If something is just given to a small section of society, often a relatively powerless one, it is easy for politicians on the right to scrap that benefit or daemonize those who receive it. On the other hand universal benefits (like this one) see huge pushback when politicians try to take them away.
The better path forward is to make benefits universal, but make them taxable income and raise higher rates of income tax, that way most of the money given to higher earners naturally flows back to the treasury.
Except that the requirements for what counts as eligible vary for each program, and the government can’t use anything the person being means tested reported directly because they could be lying, but still has to ask with a bunch of legally binding forms with the important questions hidden in dozens of pages of questions so they can prosecute fraud, so means testing also has to talk with third parties like the person’s place of work, bank, and energy company to verify that they arn’t a cent over the cutoff and don’t have any hidden assets or investments.
You also have to verify the persons identity, dig up their immigration history, and all these hours of research are to make sure the person in question is deserving of a discount. If a program has means testing but doesn’t require all of this research, it will get added on because what if a handful of people take advantage of a copon? Surely it can’t be that hard to make sure their deserving?
People want it without being eligible. And they don’t want the government to means test them. That’s the bottom line.
On a related point I never understood the argument that means testing automatically must be ruled out on expense grounds. The old rebuttal is “means testing costs money and it would be cheaper not to means test and just pay everyone”. But I don’t understand why you can’t build a means testing service / system once and reuse it for all such benefits like this. Surely as a government you can be competent enough to quickly and efficiently prove that someone is or isn’t eligible and make this decision cheaply. Apparently not 😕.
Often as different benefits have different qualifying conditions. But the larger point against means testing (IMO) is that universal benefits are far less likely to be attacked and devalued over time. If something is just given to a small section of society, often a relatively powerless one, it is easy for politicians on the right to scrap that benefit or daemonize those who receive it. On the other hand universal benefits (like this one) see huge pushback when politicians try to take them away.
The better path forward is to make benefits universal, but make them taxable income and raise higher rates of income tax, that way most of the money given to higher earners naturally flows back to the treasury.
Except that the requirements for what counts as eligible vary for each program, and the government can’t use anything the person being means tested reported directly because they could be lying, but still has to ask with a bunch of legally binding forms with the important questions hidden in dozens of pages of questions so they can prosecute fraud, so means testing also has to talk with third parties like the person’s place of work, bank, and energy company to verify that they arn’t a cent over the cutoff and don’t have any hidden assets or investments.
You also have to verify the persons identity, dig up their immigration history, and all these hours of research are to make sure the person in question is deserving of a discount. If a program has means testing but doesn’t require all of this research, it will get added on because what if a handful of people take advantage of a copon? Surely it can’t be that hard to make sure their deserving?