Price-like costs ration free public services by discouraging contact

Evidence

Street-level bureaucracies can rarely assign monetary costs for services, since by definition public services are free. However, monetary costs are imposed in several instructive instances. In income-providing programs citizens’ contributions to the income package may be manipulated as policy. Medicare patients may be asked to pay a higher deductible before insurance provisions become operable. Food-stamp recipients may be asked to pay more for their stamps. The effective taxation of earned income in welfare reduces the number of people in contact with this street-level bureaucracy. Clearly differences in monetary costs serve to ration street-level bureaucrats’ services. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 655

Categorization

• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Monetary costs imposed on clients ration access to street-level services — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 656; Procedural requirements ration services by exploiting the poor’s lower opportunity costs — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 663; Transaction costs comprise negotiation, adaptation, and enforcement expenses that models ignore (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Transaction costs comprise negotiation, adaptation, and enforcement expenses that models ignore #expands (0.80)
• Procedural requirements ration services by exploiting the poor’s lower opportunity costs #corroborates (0.75) — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 663
• Free digital services are paid for by users’ attention. #qualifies (0.75)
• Privatizing state services produces bifurcated access to social goods #qualifies (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1742
• Defunding public services structurally forces wage-dependence and demobilizes workers #complicates (0.70) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 145