How the Government learnt to waste your time

The Atlantic ^ | 7/27/2021 | Annie Lowery

[anthropocene_x]

Not long ago, a New York City data analyst who had been laid off shortly after the pandemic hit told me she had filed for unemployment-insurance payments and then spent the next six months calling, emailing, and using social media to try to figure out why the state’s Labor Department would not send her the money she was owed.

A mother in Philadelphia living below the poverty line told me about her struggle to maintain government aid. Disabled herself and caring for a disabled daughter, she had not gotten all of her stimulus checks and, because she does not regularly file taxes or use a computer, needed help from a legal-aid group to make sure she would get the newly expanded child-tax-credit payments.

A Colorado systems administrator with a chronic medical condition told me that switching jobs had caused an accidental lapse in his health coverage, which led to a cascade of paperwork over responsibility for a medical bill. He estimated that he had spent 100 hours resolving the issue.

Many Americans have stories like these. To make sure that the safety net catches us, to make sure that our social-insurance programs insure us, to make sure that we get what we pay Uncle Sam for, we work as our own health-care administrators. Our own tax professionals. Our own social workers. Our own disability-law experts. Our own child-support advocates, long-term-care reps, and public-housing officials.

In America, losing a job means making a hundred phone calls to a state unemployment-insurance system. Getting hit by a car means becoming your own hospital-billing expert. Having a disability means launching into a Jarndyce v. Jarndyce–type legal battle. Needing help to feed a toddler means filling out a novel-length application for aid.

[BipolarBob]

Good luck talking to a person on a lot of the government agencies. All automated to make you chase your tail and frustrate you into giving up.

[House Atreides]

“Good luck talking to a person on a lot of the government agencies. All automated to make you chase your tail and frustrate you into giving up.”
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All the while the government “workers” sit at home watching Jerry Springer and pretending to work.

[from occupied ga]

Sounds to me like it’s a bit difficult for some people to suck on the taxpayer funded government tit. Pardon me while I wipe away my tears about how hard it is for these people to spend my money.

[wildcard_redneck]

What is really going on is that at least 30 to 40% of all welfare payments are fraud and the money is going to well-connected people living off our tax dollars.

Once a “person” is on the dole they never kick them off because that’s how the big grifters get paid.

[Fungi]

“learnt” is archaic, only used outside the US. So why does she use this word? Good question, perhaps because she used to work for the NY Slime. As if it was not enough to be a persona non grata there, shes has to spread her leftist vocabulary and philosophy elsewhere, and there is no better place than the Atlantic.

[sauropod]

true dat.

Ain’t I learnt you no better?

[Fungi]

No.

[SaraJohnson]

“learnt”?

[sauropod]

*grin*

[Svartalfiar]

I’m in the US and “learnt” is what I use for that tense. You are learned because you learnt something.