"Targeting"

However you want to design the set of people who are "deserving" of whatever help is being offered, any eligibility rules and system for implementing them will end up excluding a lot of people who are actually in that set.

Yellen on stimulus checks: "The truth is, there are pockets of pain that go beyond what can be reached in highly-targeted ways." Points to people who have dropped out of labor force don't qualify for UI https://t.co/gXo5JWxTuf

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) February 22, 2021

Especially given our 50 separate state bureaucracies and the fact that even the IRS doesn't have recent income data for most people.