Badtux the Snarky PenguinJun 20, 2023

At the rural school district I last worked at, we had 1500 students, of whom 1,000 were free lunch and 500 were not. The cost of personnel (an entire department!), computers, and software for vetting students to make sure those 500 didn't get free lunch cost more than the cost of simply feeding them, already.

The GOP jihad about preventing those 500 from getting free lunch is not about taxes or expense, it's about being mean to children. #gop #antichild #school #lunch #meanness

Show threadJonathan Kamens 86 47
@badtux Yeah, it's pretty much universally true that implementing means-testing ends up costing more than just giving people money. Another argument for UBI, frankly.
The corporate world sometimes gets this right. Years ago when I was at Cisco (don't know if this is still true) receipts for expense reports were sealed in an envelope and sent to corporate, which filed them away and generally didn't look at them. They knew paying people to review the receipts would have cost more than it saved.
Jun 20, 2023 at 7:06pmWeb
Show threadBadtux the Snarky PenguinJun 20, 2023
@jik Once you get above 50% or so qualifying for a means-tested program, it's cheaper to just quit means testing, because it starts costing more to exclude the others than to just give it to everybody.
Show threadRobotistryJun 21, 2023
@badtux @jik My employer doesn't want us to even submit receipts if the expense is under $75. Cuts out the filing and storage expenses.