Dead Beat Dad's-Government Inefficiency, or, why welfare isn't so bad

[peritonlogon]

As a preface, I don't have the numbers that I can link to.

This post is based off of a conversation that I had with a friend of mine who did an internship with the State of New York to do some grunt work as well as analyze certain government policies. He became quite disillusioned (of course) to a large extent because of the state going and getting money from dead beat dads. This relates to welfare and various other social programs, because often (and I'm not sure of the particular situation, it varries state to state and I mostly know about New Hampshire) welfare for unemployed single women with children is reduced because of child support, the child support doesn't come, the state comes after the dad's who owe the money, the mom and child wait around for the state to get the money from the dad (usually a few thousand dollars owed and they've often lost their jobs) to pay the mom and child so they can eat and pay rent. Sound relatively fair except that the child and mother may suffer while the state goes after the money owed to the mom and child.

But here's the thing that is government inefficiency, and why welfare isn't so bad. The cost of going after these dead beat dads was 10 times the amount that the dads owed. So, rather than just giving the money to needy families, the prosecutors, investigators, judges and administrators get 10 times that instead.

Want to save money...just give it to the poor.