Leftists hate means-testing. If we’ve learned nothing else from listening to leftists talk about policy in the last 5 or 6 years, it’s that. They heap scorn upon it. They claim to avoid it when they work on their own advocacy and mutual aid projects. And they criticize politicians who put it into programs, especially liberal Democrats.
But I think the term ‘means-testing’ carries a lot of ambiguity. Leftists, in particular, tend to use the term interchangeably with ‘paperwork.’ That is to say, they seem to think applying a means test amounts to requiring people to submit (often extensive) paperwork proving they have a low income and thereby ‘deserve’ support.
Let’s talk about that.
What is Means-Testing?
Means-testing happens when an agency limits benefits to people with a certain socioeconomic status (SES). In short, an agency – usually a government – wants to limit benefits only to people who can’t otherwise afford them. And it might add other criteria, such as residency or citizenship. And so, the agency ‘tests’ for those things. Usually agencies define ‘need’ in terms of income, though in theory they could define it in other ways (e.g., wealth, educational status, and so on).
Typically the ‘test’ comes in the form of paperwork to document income and other criteria. Sometimes very extensive and burdensome paperwork. However, paperwork isn’t part of the definition of ‘means-testing.’ In many cases, an agency could waive the paperwork requirement and ‘test’ by asking people to report their own income levels or whether they meet other criteria.
And so, a program that targets benefits to low-income people, but doesn’t require extensive paperwork, is still a means-tested program. It still targets benefits to people without the means to pay rather than offer benefits to all SES groups (i.e., a universal program).
Means-Testing and the Left
I’ve found lots of leftists who seem confused about the last point. Many leftists oppose what they call means-testing. But quite a few of them – maybe most of them – actually oppose paperwork requirements, not means-testing itself. It took me a long time to realize many leftists just use the term ‘means-testing’ to mean ‘paperwork.’
Mutual aid orgs often create various kinds of benefits programs. Rent relief programs, for example. And most of those programs are means-tested, despite often being advertised as not means-tested. The difference is that mutual aid orgs usually employ very non-invasive forms of means-testing. They tend not to require much – if any – paperwork. They usually just ask recipients to say they need the benefits.
But, despite not requiring paperwork, the orgs usually target relief programs to low-income people. Or at least to people who otherwise lack funds (i.e., means). So, yeah, it’s still means-testing.
Programs that aren’t means-tested tend to happen at a large scale and only under the power and authority of a large government. Think, for example, about the NHS universal health care system in the UK. Every in the UK – at all income levels – can access it. In the U.S., Medicare isn’t means-tested. You have to hit a certain age to gain benefits – and so, you might say it’s age-tested – but once you reach that age, you get benefits from it regardless of income.
Universal Programs > Means-Tested Programs
That last point brings me to a key lesson of this post: to achieve its longer mission of building a society run democratically and not under the private ownership of the economy, the left has to fight toward rejection of all means-testing and not just paperwork.
As part of its broader strategy, the left should support universal programs even in the short term. Why? For one, most people already support universal programs. They benefit everyone, don’t cause the petty resentment and division that means-tested programs cause, and they avoid the implication that some people deserve benefits and others do not.
But also, universal programs are often just better. They can benefit more people and cost less. And they don’t require onerous or unrealistic tax increases. I’ve repeatedly pointed these things out when it comes to public housing. You can make a public housing program eligible to people at all income ranges, charge them a portion of their income as rent, and then use higher rents from people at middle incomes to replace the taxpayer money lost by giving free housing to people without incomes. By contrast, it costs far, far more to send housing vouchers to fewer people using means-testing.
Does this mean the left is wrong to use means-testing (i.e., income targets) for its smaller scale mutual aid projects? Of course not. These projects can do good work and can help build leftist orgs. But it’s misleading to say they’re “not means-tested.” And it doesn’t replace universal programs – programs we can only build larger scale using the power of the state.
