Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November.
The dubious promise would likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.
When I was growing up (in a very conservative environment) means tests were usually sold as being both fiscally prudent, because giving benefits to someone who doesn’t truly, desperately need it is wasteful spending; and civic-minded, because all that money that money that was saved can go toward some other vaguely-defined government expenditure. The cost-benefit analysis never really came up, it was just taken as given that means testing would reduce the number of recipients and therefore reduce the overall cost. It truly did not occur to me that means tests might not be worth the cost of implementing them until I got to college and met my first leftist.
I think the notion that means tests increase efficiency and reduce costs is a pretty widespread one, even among left-leaning folk. And Americans IME are very suspicious of giving something to someone without any preconditions or strings attached, unless they know the recipient personally.