Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Patrick Frise
“The scale of fraud uncovered in recent years has exposed how government transfer programs function, even as meaningful public or legislative reckoning remains largely absent. What began as a series of pandemic-related scandals has revealed something broader and more troubling: large-scale fraud is not an anomaly within the modern welfare state. The federal government, taxpayers, lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, based on data from 2018 to 2022. It is a predictable outcome of systems that distribute vast sums of money without market discipline, rely on third-party payment structures, and diffuse responsibility across layers of bureaucracy.” (01/30/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/fraud-policy-incentives-modern-welfare-state