[lupire]

What we learned from COVID is that it's absolutely disastrous to send everyone a check, because most of that money gets stolen. Better to give away resources that are valuable to consume but expensive to transact in.

And what we learned from taxing high earners is that the highest earners hide their money and don't pay the expected taxes.

[maxrecursion]

The money that was stolen wasn't sent to everyone. You can't steal money sent to everyone. It was the PPP 'Paycheck Protection Program' money that was stolen where tons of small businesses filed to get that money when it wasn't needed. That's not the same thing at all as putting money in the same bank accounts that file tax returns, which is the example I was providing.

[lupire]

CA tried something very close to that

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/18/1128561539/pandemic-fraud-bil...

https://edd.ca.gov/en/about_edd/fraud-response/

[diego_sandoval]

> because most of that money gets stolen.

Huh? I'm out of the loop on this.

[hypothesis]

Not OP, but here is some data:

“We estimate that SBA disbursed over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID-19 EIDLs, EIDL Targeted Advances, Supplemental Targeted Advances, and PPP loans. This means at least 17 percent of all COVID-19 EIDL and PPP funds were disbursed to potentially fraudulent actors.”

https://www.sba.gov/document/report-23-09-covid-19-pandemic-...

IRS also covered some:

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-criminal-investigation-rele...

[chii]

a program administered with poor oversight (may be due to time constraints or whatever reason) doesn't make that program a poor policy decision.

I think means tested welfare can backfire a lot in ways that locks people into dependency on the welfare and not look for a higher paying job.