The ignorance displayed in the comments on that article is scary. It's quite obvious a lot of people have never been in the position to actually need this sort of aid before, so it's easy to knock everyone using it as "an illegal" or "lazy."
Of course people will abuse this, too, just like they abuse the unemployment insurance we have now. But to me, the net positives that come out of this will outweigh the (probably minor) fraud that will happen. Adding benchmarks (e.g., you have to legally register a business, you have to prove some sort of business activity to a case worker, and so on) will keep a lot of the fraud out, even if they're token requirements.
After they just wasted another $535M of taxpayer money in crony capitalist payments, why do you think it's "ignorance" to evince strong opposition to these kind of attempts at meddling in the economy?
VCs and angels fund selectively and with their own money. The govt funds politically and with other people's money. That selects for Chris Gronet and George Kaiser, not Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel.
I've long stopped reading comments on news sites specifically because they are obviously overrun by trolls. The problem is the trolls are winning as I can see by some comments I see on facebook by people who believe the bullshit.
Yeah sorry if that wasn't clear; I meant on the article's page on the original post, not here.
And I agree, it's a terrible argument for OR against the improvements. The abuse isn't so widespread that it should stop (what I conceive to be) a great way to improve it.
Of course people will abuse this, too, just like they abuse the unemployment insurance we have now. But to me, the net positives that come out of this will outweigh the (probably minor) fraud that will happen. Adding benchmarks (e.g., you have to legally register a business, you have to prove some sort of business activity to a case worker, and so on) will keep a lot of the fraud out, even if they're token requirements.