I applaud the effort, but the bureaucratic structure of these government programs are Byzantine for a reason. The more people they keep from successfully enrolling, the less has to be paid out.
Rather than government partnering with the private sector to implement even more technical crap and everybody patting themselves on the back for a job well done, why don't they take a step back and realize how fucked up the fundamental administrative process is and just fucking fix it?
MRelief may get one to the door, but it doesn't provide any greater accountability once you're there. Maybe the system actually works in California (blue state?), I don't know, but in other parts of the country even if someone holds your hand to get the application submitted you get to look forward to your paper applications going missing/stuck in processing purgatory, online application portals being down for months on end, ignored phone lines that ring to full voicemail boxes, social workers terminating your account over requests for documents that were never actually requested (or that you already provided multiple times), notices of scheduled phone interviews that consistently show up in the mail after the fact and all manner of other shady nonsense.
Any excuse that can be played to kick you off the books is fair game, and it's not like you can get a hold of anyone to appeal it-- your only option is to re-apply, but meanwhile you're not their problem for a few pay cycles.
For the brief period of time I had to take advantage of food stamps, it really opened my eyes as to what sorts of bullshit gets heaped upon the people who need it most.
It's not just programs for the poor that are Byzantine. Taxes, securities, environmental regulation, and building permits are too. For these, there are entire professions who specialize in shepherding the paperwork through and the end users can usually afford to pay someone to do it rather than learning how to deal with the bureaucracy themselves.
But to help people apply for entitlement programs, it has to be a non-profit.
> Maybe the system actually works in California (blue state?)
I can't speak for food stamps, but for unemployment, it's a complete mess. My one experience dealing with it involved a perfectly justified claim where my former employer didn't keep proper records. I got called a liar, waited 3 months for my appeal and then had it scheduled during the one week I informed them, over a month in advance, that I would be out of town and was then charged a $150 penalty fee for the 2 weeks benefits they advanced me. At no point in the process was there any consideration by anyone working for the state that I might be in the right or that the "facts" stated by my former employer might be incorrect, even when I had documents that proved it.
After reading many other accounts similar to mine, it's made me believe that one of the reasons they've managed to make employment numbers in this country seem so rosy is the use of these kind of bureaucratic tactics to keep people out of the unemployment statistics. I'm lucky enough to have had savings, family resources and job prospects that kept my experience from causing too much discomfort, but I can imagine others going through what I did being made homeless and/or having their savings wiped out.
> After reading many other accounts similar to mine, it's made me believe that one of the reasons they've managed to make employment numbers in this country seem so rosy is the use of these kind of bureaucratic tactics to keep people out of the unemployment statistics
Nope; the headline unemployment statistic is unrelated to statistics on unemployment insurance benefits (those are gathered, and used for some purposes, but they aren't a key unemployment measure.)
Great points, jstarfish. Its an artificial way to get people to not apply by demotivating them with bureaucracy. We even had a saying for it here in NL in mid '00s: "purple crocodile" [1].
SSDI/Medicare has similar bureaucracy. Many phone calls, forms, witness forms (I filled them in for a friend, but it all got void because since I wasn't from USA it was invalid proof so my autistic and allegedly (she got it in the end) disabled friend had to ask someone else. She already had virtually no real-life friends...), long waiting times, and all kind of proof (such as bank statement IIRC though perhaps that was for the food stamps). Kinda ironic given the typical jokes about German bureaucracy. And those are also vulnerable people already.
Food stamps also can't be used to buy toilet paper & diapers. As if you don't need those when you buy them. One already feels ashamed they gotta pay with food stamps. All these experiences are miserable and humiliating. I can end on a positive note since what did genuinely surprise me is that California (including all these forms, city council, and such) is very dual language: English and Spanish.
How are the foodbank in USA, and Cali specifically?
It's not so much deliberate as it is inherent in the system.
Workers are poorly paid and don't have any real incentive to care. The process is byzantine and form-dense because it's the government: bureaucrats don't have much else to do but create and update processes and policies, and the politicans who make the actual laws are always doing favors for one group or another, which creates complexity and need for excessive documentation about which group you fit into.
I realize government is fueled by apathy and paperwork, but this isn't workers sitting around doing nothing and barraging applicants with forms...everything about this system suggests the opposite-- social workers are incentivized to actively kick people off the books. It's a cost center, not a revenue generator.
How many times a year does any other agency need copies of your children's birth certificates or social security cards? How many times a year does the DMV need to schedule phone interviews with you to ask the exact same questions you answered on the application and in every subsequent interview? This is actual work they're having to do, and lots of it.
When you go to file your taxes, how often is the only channel available to you a fax machine, the receiving end of which is always conveniently out of paper? Not to mention the hundred pages (in the case of Medicaid) you're expected to shove through it at $.10 a page, since who the hell has a landline or fax machine at home anymore.
There's no number you can call, no email you can write, no mail ever reaches their office and anything hand-delivered ends up languishing in the inbox under the desk. You can physically go to the office and spend all day in the waiting room, only to be told "we're working on it." They're completely inaccessible.
Every time they demand your attention, it's an opportunity for them to say you failed to respond...the consequences of which are always immediate termination. Anybody who's played the rebate or health insurance games should recognize how this works. Both systems are designed to minimize payouts by disqualifying as many applicants as possible.
But again, hopefully California is different, and I'm glad to see people get utility out of this service. It's just sad that it's necessary in the first place.
Everything you mentioned was probably originally created as a well-intentioned response to the fraud that sadly is rampant in social assistance programs.
Other countries manage to get this right. Taxes are the most obvious example.
Taxes in the USA are (by all accounts) an absolute pain to deal with. There's an entire industry built on helping the average American fill out their tax return.
In New Zealand, to file your tax return for >90% of people, you just log in online, tick the boxes to confirm the numbers they have are correct, and then click submit.
Hmm, I wonder if these processes are features designed to combat perceived fraud. (Or, in the case of some administrators, because they don't believe the benefits should be paid?)
It’s an old con that has worked for far longer than we’ve been alive. It’s just a quirk in us humans, that we can be distracted from the politicians, corporations, and billionaires, by the idea that some poor folks might get a cent they didn’t earn through hard work. It’s amplified by puritanical notions of hard work, and the fear that poor people will just spend it all on crap.
Never mind the evidence to the contrary, and the “waste” which represents a rounding error against the price of a couple of Middle Eastern wars we can’t win.
Rather than government partnering with the private sector to implement even more technical crap and everybody patting themselves on the back for a job well done, why don't they take a step back and realize how fucked up the fundamental administrative process is and just fucking fix it?
MRelief may get one to the door, but it doesn't provide any greater accountability once you're there. Maybe the system actually works in California (blue state?), I don't know, but in other parts of the country even if someone holds your hand to get the application submitted you get to look forward to your paper applications going missing/stuck in processing purgatory, online application portals being down for months on end, ignored phone lines that ring to full voicemail boxes, social workers terminating your account over requests for documents that were never actually requested (or that you already provided multiple times), notices of scheduled phone interviews that consistently show up in the mail after the fact and all manner of other shady nonsense.
Any excuse that can be played to kick you off the books is fair game, and it's not like you can get a hold of anyone to appeal it-- your only option is to re-apply, but meanwhile you're not their problem for a few pay cycles.
For the brief period of time I had to take advantage of food stamps, it really opened my eyes as to what sorts of bullshit gets heaped upon the people who need it most.