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   Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 17-Sep-2024 07:12:36 JST Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

   I wonder how much people would be shocked to see how expensive "cost-cutting" measures in public institutions really are. Cutting down the spending you can see often has the effect of increasing the spending you *can't* see; a classic McNamara fallacy.

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     Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️ (xgranade@wandering.shop)'s status on Tuesday, 17-Sep-2024 07:12:35 JST Cassandra Granade 🏳️‍⚧️

     in reply to

     The same goes for means-testing or just about any other kind of accounting scheme based on reducing costs as much as possible, without reference to institutional effectiveness.

     Bill repeated this.
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     Dana Fried (tess@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 17-Sep-2024 07:12:35 JST Dana Fried

     in reply to

     @xgranade we've always said, it's way better to let a few rich people get a benefit than put in the infrastructure to means-test it, because the latter will always both cost more and exclude people who actually need the program.

     (Also giving everyone a benefit makes it much harder to characterize as "welfare" and therefore politically more challenging to gut when conservatives get into power.)