AndrocatAug 2, 2023

Gentle reminder: Whenever someone is trying to sell you a story about welfare fraud, they're actually just trying to make it harder for deserving applicants to get the help they need.

Stories about welfare fraud are 100% about making it hard for people to get help.
Measures to combat fraud all amount to making the walls higher.
There is absolutely zero effort made to check whether it reduces valid applications, and also zero effort made to check whether it reduces fraudulent applications.

So, next time someone wants to tell you about "social scrounging" or whatever fancy-ass vocab they've made up for their bullshit, just tell them to go fuck themselves, in the nicest possible way.

Show threadदुःख блядьAug 25, 2023
@androcat Talked to a lady who worked for the tax authority here in Norway once. She told me straight away that welfare fraud is such a minor phenomenon that it has zero effect on the welfare budget. She followed that up by saying, "So we need to decide what kind of society we want - one where we're so afraid that someone might get some help they didn't qualify for, at the risk of depriving many others who need that help? Or one where we help folks through tough times and help them become tax payers again?"
A year or two later, I read a study that showed a significant amount of "welfare fraud" cases are folks who genuinely believed they qualified.
The more accessible benefits are, the better for everyone, ultimately.
Show threadSchrödinger's PratAug 26, 2023

@souvlaki @androcat I recently saw someone get dog-piled for saying she accidentally ticked ye "first in family" [to go to university] box, because it was fraud.

But those questions are really ambiguous, poorly documented with few, if any, explanatory notes, and fail completely for a number of very common edge cases. Few people piling on understood that.

Someone ticking the wrong box by accident is very much a feature not a bug of means testing.

Show threadBjörn 🌸 Starkimarm

@Rhodium103

Imho it really couldn't be considered fraud if you just check boxes without forging some kind of document to "prove" your claim

@souvlaki @androcat

Aug 29, 2023 at 6:08amWeb
Show threadAndrocatAug 29, 2023

@Starkimarm @Rhodium103 @souvlaki Ideally, there'd be people whose job it is to make it easy to get the help one needs.

Because ultimately, for the people who are worst off, any sort of paperwork can be a wall too high.