The 100 Person Test

Policy can be abstract, and while it is best driven by data and analytics, it's often very useful to think about it in terms of real people. But you can get too real - personal stories have a lot of power for persuasion but they can also be easily dismissed as mere anecdote, lacking connection to our own everyday experiences. Somewhere in between impersonal numbers and tales of strangers lies a sweet spot. A useful exercise is to consider one hundred people, a number small enough for us to grasp yet large enough to offer a realistic distribution. What do our decisions mean for the 100.

For instance, let's consider government aid programs. When people talk about cutting programs, their argument almost always is the same: some people who benefit don't deserve it. We all know some people deserve help, but it's hard to view their gain as our own, whereas when someone undeserving gains, whether through fraud or simply exploiting loopholes, it is viewed as our loss, and people hate to lose more than they like to gain. So people are always ready to cut aid programs to prevent getting taken advantage of, and they like to think such cuts will cut off the undeserving without affecting the deserving. That's not how it works. Most government aid programs already have stringent measures to prevent the undeserving from taking advantage of them. Not that they're perfect, but perfection isn't possible. Simply cutting the funding for a program affects everyone, and often reduces the amount of effort put forward to prevent fraud and waste. If you want to help anyone, you have to accept that some help will be siphoned off to those who don't need it. So what are the tradeoffs you're willing to make?

Let's say a hundred people receive food stamps. Food stamps have strict income requirements and stern rules for what they can be used for, but it is possible to get around them. Maybe 10 of those 100 are undeserving (actual estimates are lower, but let's go with a high fraud rate at ten percent). Is it worth reducing the benefits to the 90 who need it in order to root out the dastardly ten? To let 90 people end up hungry because they can't afford enough food? Does it matter that the majority of those 90 deserving recipients are families that include children, the elderly, or disabled persons? Even if it was 50 underserving out of 100, would you be willing to make 50 people go hungry in order to stop a different 50 from getting a free ride? Or would you stop for a second and consider that only two percent of your tax dollars go to help the poor feed themselves, and be willing to let some people get over on you in order to keep children from malnourishment? What's more important, your pride or a hungry child?

On the other hand, let's look at mortgage interest deductions. It's really just another government aid program, reducing the tax burden of those fortunate enough to be able to afford a house. It also has some waste/fraud, people who cheat the system for their own benefit. But in this case, the 'deserving' people are generally those who earn more than the average American and include the very wealthiest individuals. If 10 people are unfairly taking a tax deduction, are you willing to cut the program and limit the tax deduction from the other 90 mostly well-off people who would still be fine without it? Yet, for some reason, I never hear this topic come up when people discuss government waste or people gaming the system, even though it costs five times more than food stamps and a higher fraud rate. Hmm.

The programs people always talk about cutting are largely the ones aimed at helping those most in need -  food stamps, Medicaid, Disability - when the program offering aid to the well off - tax deductions, business subsidies - often have much higher rates of improper usage. But we don't see those people. We all see the person at the grocery store buying soda with food stamps, the person with handicap plates who gets out and walks into the mall. Of course, we don't know their full story, don't know if they buy soda once a year as a special treat for their honor roll kid, or are in remission the day you spotted them walking pain-free. It's much easier to assume they are undeserving and thus there are too many undeservings out there. We don't see the tax cheat, we don't see the business use a loophole to avoid paying their fair share. We might know it happens in the abstract, but if they don't rub our faces in it we don't get angry about it. We should. We should be mad when people cheat the system. But we shouldn't let our outrage hurt the people who need help even if that means we live with a little outrage once in a while. Out of any hundred people I assume most of them deserve my help. How about you?