3 ms·
Mailing everyone a check at the scale of the US population is also a technology problem. I don't expect it to go very well -- it will happen slowly, a lot of pe
by twblalock 7y ago
Mailing everyone a check at the scale of the US population is also a technology problem. I don't expect it to go very well -- it will happen slowly, a lot of people entitled to checks won't get them, checks will be sent to the wrong places, etc.
- rocky1138 7y agoDeposit $1000 into every account electronically
- crooked-v 7y agoWhat about the people without bank accounts?
- twblalock 7y agoI have 3 bank accounts. Do I get $3000? What if one of them is a joint account with another person? It's not that simple.
- alexpetralia 7y agoThis part I actually don't think is that complicated. Only one of those bank accounts paid a tax liability or received a tax refund last year. The same one will receive this direct deposit.
- machello13 7y agoIsn't this exactly how they're doing it? They're only mailing out checks to people who didn't use direct deposit for their taxes.
- rchaud 7y agoHow would that be done if the individual hasn't provided direct deposit information?
- blintz 7y agoAgreed, but still radically simpler than the convoluted means testing that we do now. If welfare critics care about the efficiency of the public dollar, this seems like a simple measure to get more benefit at lower cost.
- sizzle 7y agoMailing address should be a part of the intake process and matched with the mandatory census that is done periodically. Seems like this could smooth out a lot of edge cases
- nexuist 7y agoOne of the great mysteries of government solved itself in front of my eyes as soon as I did a hackathon sponsored by a local city. Even simple relationships like matching a person to their address, not only were difficult to access, but literally did not exist (even if they did exist, city officials told us that some people change addresses so quickly we can't count on the data to be accurate). Same goes with similar data points like phone numbers. It's interesting, because this data obviously exists somewhere - with the NSA, cellphone/utility providers, hell, Facebook probably has it - but accessing that as a city official involves a lot of phone calls, warrants, etc. So even things as simple as "send each person a check" are impossible to automate because the data does not exist - and arguably for a lot of people, should not exist in govt hands.