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.
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.)
The problem with such systems is that every check introduced in the name of minimising fraud, is an extra hoop that someone needs to jump through to obtain legitimate benefits.
Unless you are also going to boost funding and have a well resourced, easily accesible team available to help people navigate the additional bureaucracy, you are going to do more harm to marginalised people in need than to fraudsters.
Sure, I’m completely okay with that too. Although I was thinking of tackling fraud more of an ex post facto audit system, rather than adding in compliance paperwork.
I’m very much not opposed to taxation, including taxing me, if that means that people have stable jobs or get the help they need. And as long as billionaires also get guillotined.