... or a massively underfunded government, which is precisely what the policies of one of our two major political parties for the last 40 years (at least) have sought to create (they are quite open about this). But hey, maybe that fits under the "intentional negligence" category...

That would make sense on a federal level. But not in NJ which is solid Democrat, and definitely not with their among the highest in the nation taxes.

Again, I am giving quite a bit of leeway. At 14 months with no response, that is not understaffing. That is deliberate sabotage by leaders to prevent people from getting benefits.

You understand that even NJ taxes are low by comparsion with most western European nations, yes? And that even in those nations, people still find publically-facing government agencies frustrating to deal with?

Still, I'm inclined to agree with you that some of what you describe in your 2nd para is likely happening too.

>And that even in those nations, people still find publically-facing government agencies frustrating to deal with?

That seems to contradict your assertion that the government would have given him better service had more taxes been directed at them.

Having worked in this space my cynical observation is that you don't get the budget to run a big appeals process and a quality watchdog team, etc, etc, if you don't suck bad enough to need those things in the first place.

Or a lack of effective metrics tracking and performance management. Maybe those metrics would show the offices were operating at tip-top efficiency and were deserving of additional budget to better serve their constituents. Or maybe it would show something else entirely, but either way the data would be useful.

If you call NJ unemployment offices anytime after 8:05AM, you get a message saying to call back the next day. 22 months after the pandemic started.

All the leaders know what is happening. It has been in the news many times.

Ok. Is that enough evidence to conclude that “they need more budget and then things would be fixed”?

No, my initial comment was the system was designed to in such a way as to inconvenience people and hope they get tired of trying to collect the money.

That is the problem it is so difficult to determine whether the negligence is intentional or not.

I've found it ridiculously easy to add web beacons to emails to political critters.