If you care about poverty and the social safety net in the US, please read this important piece on Administrative Burden from @emilymbadger & @sangerkatz in the @nytimes. It supports the case that @ideas42's Economic Justice team has been making for years.
@emilymbadger @sangerkatz @nytimes @ideas42 To wit: if we want to genuinely help people living with low incomes, we should make the social safety net easier to access, more generous, and more humane. See @ideas42's "Poverty Interrupted" white paper where we lay out 3 behavioral design principles: ideas42.org/wp-content/upl…
@emilymbadger @sangerkatz @nytimes @ideas42 Part of the problem with the punitive and suspicious nature of our approach to social policy in the US is that we have inaccurate beliefs about what drives human choice and action, especially for folks living without a lot of money. We propose a different view: 
@emilymbadger @sangerkatz @nytimes @ideas42 If we understand both poverty (the context of chronic scarcity) and social policy through a behavioral lens, we will craft and deliver social safety net programs much differently. Think, for example, about the awful work requirements regime. We know that #workrequirementsdontwork
@emilymbadger @sangerkatz @nytimes @ideas42 Work requirements simply add administrative burden to people who are already squeezed on key resources like time and attention. Our @ideas42 Economic Justice team lays out a strong case against them here, premised on our 3 design principles (and evidence): ideas42.org/wp-content/upl…
@emilymbadger @sangerkatz @nytimes @ideas42 As the @nytimes piece does so well, we wanted to help people viscerally understand what it takes to comply with work requirements. So, we put together this board game so that you can see if you'd be able to keep your medicaid in Arkansas. It's a cruel game. Could you "win?"
@emilymbadger @sangerkatz @nytimes @ideas42 And, of course, there are myriad other administrative burdens across our social safety net. Some, like the public charge rule changes that SCOTUS just upheld, explicitly target vulnerable groups like immigrants. This is, as we argue, pure sludge. ideas42.org/blog/public-ch…
@emilymbadger @sangerkatz @nytimes @ideas42 As you'll see in that blog post, the mere announcement of the public charge rule change has already had a chilling effect on programs critical to our collective well-being, from WIC, to SNAP, to Medicaid. This is likely to have negative effects trans-generationally.
@emilymbadger @sangerkatz @nytimes @ideas42 Our hope at @ideas42 is that corrosive narratives about people living with low incomes can be supplanted. Until we regard each other with dignity and humanity, we'll never have the social safety net we need & deserve. arithmeticofcompassion.org/blog/2019/10/2…
@emilymbadger @sangerkatz @nytimes @ideas42 To end, a big shoutout to the @ideas42 Economic Justice team, past and present: @besttrousers @ayatesberg @JBarofsky @Hayesified @NatalieDabney & the rest of ya'll who aren't on twitter!
