Means testing breeds resentment, up and down.

The poor/middle class hate being tested to prove they "deserve" something. The rich resent that a thing they "don't use" exists AT ALL & work to divest all resources from perceived "waste."

Much better: everybody in, nobody out! https://twitter.com/AlxThomp/status/1200227721923760130

The rich should be invested in public resources they actually use (schools, water, roads, libraries, museums, colleges, subways, parks), so they’re not running off to their private, racially segregated spaces while letting public infrastructure rot

And the poor and middle class shouldn’t have to lose time & face stigma to prove they can use a public good, anymore than they have to prove need to drink tap water or call 911 during a fire.

The funny thing is, tho centrist Dems and Republicans often frame taxing billionaires as “class war,” it is means testing which creates actual class war. By saying who shouldn’t get access to public education, medicine & transit, the tests pit the classes against each other.

I am told by @pocojump that “means testing” is passé and that “targeting” and “targeted goals” are the new technocratic nomenclature and she is correct. But I am OLD school—older than Buttigieg!—and learning about means testing during the Clinton yrs has stuck with me.