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.

!asklemmy@lemmy.world

I would not trust my government to tackle fraud/corruption no matter what they said

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.

If my government the 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.

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.

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.

Cost who, my friend? What kind of fraud? Don’t try to be cute.

For example, if someone gets $3 extra on food stamps, FFS good on them. If Musk gets millions (more, but let’s lowball it), he can rot in hell.

Depends on where the burden is being placed. If it’s adding more hoops for everyday people to jump through to get what they need, no. If it’s adding more hoops for large organizations and corporations who can hire people for compliance, yes. If it’s just hiring more people on the government side to analyze the existing data, but the forms and processes stay the same on the other end, sure.

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.

In the “drug test welfare applicants” it was more about putting extra hassles on poor people than a genuine fraud issue. Voter fraud is similarly an excuse to deny voting rights.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

I’d say yes, because dishonesty shouldn’t be tolerated. They’re going after the million-dollar fraudsters as well, right?