then it looks like they will start doing means testing (tarveharkinta) on your savings and will stop paying you if it doesn’t look like you’re living hand-to-mouth. … There’s also a spectrum of make-work programs from “send your application to this poorly matching open job we picked for you” to “attend this useless training course” to “rehabilitative labor activity” which can end up looking sort of like the American prisoner labor thing.
Now here’s why these are really, really dumb policies: they amount to a capital levy and a corvée that are selectively applied to low-income folks who would otherwise qualify for welfare. Needless to say, there’s a reason we don’t use capital levies and corvées anymore, and limiting them to low-income folks does not change that assessment much.
Now here’s why these are really, really dumb policies: they amount to a capital levy and a corvée that are selectively applied to low-income folks who would otherwise qualify for welfare. Needless to say, there’s a reason we don’t use capital levies and corvées anymore, and limiting them to low-income folks does not change that assessment much.