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If your government proposed an initiative to tackle fraud, but the initiative would cost more than it would save, would you support it or not? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

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.

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