It would be doable enough, but there is not any will to do anything.

There always have been and always will be those who will bend the rules to benefit themselves at the expense of others. It happens at all levels of the economic spectrum. And if bending the rules isn't enough, the politically savvy just have the rules rewritten. To blame it on any one group is ignore reality.
The only answer is to change human nature. Good luck with that.

The basic issue, many people who would never steal or defraud a person, have no issue with stealing from a government. I saw/see this all the time in the Socialist or Social Democracy countries. In Mexico, about 25% of electricity is not metered because you can pay an electrician a few dollars to create a bypass around the meter. My Spanish friends tell me that people that cheat on welfare or the government are considered "clever" not as cheats.

disagree. we all know who the cheats are and could easily be far more efficient at dealing with it. nobody wants to take the heat for doing it.

Apparently not.

Enlighten us.

If it would not violate patient confidentiality, I could probably come up with 20-30 off the top of my head

The people we have put in charge of "monitoring" often take joy in "helping the unfortunate" by "sticking it to the wealthy". In other words, they feel that helping people, even people bending the rules almost to the point of breaking, is doing society good because it is redistributing wealth.

Maybe. It would take an evaluation of what is more cost effective, handing out money to people knowing a percentage of them is gaming the system, or hiring more case workers to minimize cheating. Maybe the answer is to "drain the swamp" by hiring welfare cheats to run the welfare department. Our government seems to think that's the answer to cleaning up financial industry.

true.

I have had conversations with unemployment office employees who argued that the employee who stole company data, was documented playing video games 6 hours a day while at work and who cussed out the staff when fired was deserving of unemployment.

inmates running the prison.

Twenty plus years ago I dealt with employers and HR people on a regular basis when working with the Welfare to Work program as part of my job at the time. I think it would be an eye opener for anybody to work with the welfare crowd. Part of my job was to get them educated, vocationally trained, and find jobs for them. Like one of the young university grads working for the company handling the local welfare contract said, " When I was at the university, they told me 95% of these people want to work. Now that I'm working in the field, I realize 95% of them don't want to work." I used to get calls from HR & employers asking about someone who didn't show or call for an interview. When I talked to the person asking why they didn't show up or call, his/her answer most of the time was, "I had things to do." I can also say case workers' jobs are to hand out money. Think about it. If they don't or if the agency doesn't hand it out & increase clients, there is no job or agency. The entitlement mentality is a large part of unemployment scams and the feelings people are entitled to things they are not.

The answer is basic income, but many folks who are mainly on the right side of the political spectrum don't see it as the answer.

Simply put, basic income does away with all forms of government financial support like welfare, food stamps, unemployment, subsidized housing, etc. and it gets rid of the associated government agencies that run all these programs.

It works like this: every adult citizen is guaranteed a certain basic income, let's say $20,000.

For every dollar they earn they lose 50 cents of that $20,000 so if they make $20,000 in income they still get $10,000 of the basic income. If they earn $40K or more they get zero basic income.

So there's incentive to work if you don't want be poor or if you can live on $20K, fine just don't ***** about being poor.

Of course folks with take money under the table to skirt this but that will happen anywhere there's an incentive to under report income like folks do with taxes.

And who will pay for that? And then there will be exceptions. And people to administer the exceptions. And people to monitor the people who administer the exceptions. It's just another entitlement.

Where's the incentive to work? Why should I get a job, when I get 20K just for breathing? And as Legion asked, who's going to pay for this?

The objective is not necessarily incentivize work, rather it's to get rid of all that costly overhead in supporting the slackers. The premise being far more money is spent on overhead for the slackers, it would be cheaper simply to give them a basic income and forgo all the overhead in support. Such however would compromise the purpose behind the overhead in supporting the slackers, I wouldn't put it past the government to attempt a basic income PLUS retain all the overhear support for the slackers.

Finland is experimenting with this concept. Other localities are as well. Somewhere in Brazil and somewhere in Canada comes to mind. That is to say small populations. I've no idea if such could be scaled to a country of our size.

What if we gave the slacker overhead basic?

IF you must put people on "basic", make it like in the Novel "The Expanse".

The same argument could be then made for why try to get promoted, or why switch employers for a better gig, or any of the other myriad reasons people who started out making $20k did what they did to make more.

Disagree. When you're working, and you see that it's not too hard to get ahead by applying yourself a little more, you can leverage your career by switching employers, taking on more responsibility, and getting promotions. Work becomes natural.

When you're sitting on your dead ass collecting 20K, where's the motivation to get a job and cut into your days of leisure? And if you did get a job, the more you worked, the less you'd be paid for breathing. Some people are professional slackers.

OK so I'll take a swing at this having direct knowledge of someone who is gaming the system at a place where my wife was this persons manager and did payroll. employee said to her basically that you are supposed to get WIC and the employee saying this admitted to getting WIC. Both this employee and her baby daddy not married so they could game the system both fully gainfully employed at a large hospital making very good money.

Stomachmonkey - your statement that low paying jobs not sloth (being lazy) is the issue, how I ask? Is it the fault of the employer they are not paying someone enough to cook the fries or burgers at a fast food place as an example? How much should they pay? Oh wait I know your answer on this - a living wage.... Where exactly is it written that minimum wage is supposed to support a family 4? maybe people should act their wage

How do we keep people from feeling entitled to a government funded program? Easy, get rid of the program. Let charities and churches take over helping those in need, make a personal action for someone in need to go ask someone else for help instead of a nameless bureaucrat in a cube in an office where money just shows up in the mail box because the person in need filled out a form to get money from a magic pot in the sky at the unicorn farm.

We have mistaken being nice for being kind. It's always easy to be nice, it always feels good to be nice. Nice is the best intentions. Being kind does not always feel good and it is not always easy to be kind. Case in point if you are a dog lover and have to put down your dog for some reason, nothing nice about that at all but it is kind.

The motivation is to not be poor.

Same motivation that drives everyone who improves their situation.

Some will still be slackers, that'll never change.