The purest idealistic version of means testing may well be fine in theory, but in practice means testing is universally co-opted by conservative governments to make it difficult or impossible for the people with the least resources (and thus most in need of the benefits) to actually get them.

The Australian Centrelink programme is a pretty good example of what happens: one government introduces a system of unemployment benefits and then later a different conservative government (whose members and voting base don't like poor people) are able to pervert the system through means testing provisions and other bureaucratic hurdles to effectively prevent a large subset of eligible persons from actually collecting the benefits to which they are entitled, but without having to deal with the political fallout of actually ending or reducing benefits on paper.

Adversarial as well as means-tested, I should have said. The Universal Credit system is famously cruel in how it is designed.

Not least it is paid in arrears and is designed to take 6 weeks to get the first (backdated) payment, by which time anyone who actually needs it is already likely to be overdrawn to the tune of a month's rent and utilities.

https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/2022/10/universal-cre...

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/universal-credit-chaos...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/universal-cr...

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/government-benefit-sa...

Because Goodhart's Law complicates things.

If it's helpful, there are cases in which means testing was introduced in the UK Disability benefits. Once disabled people are determined to be able to work, there were more than one case where the disabled person starved in their home because they could no longer afford food. [i.e. they starved before they had time to even worry about rent...]

In practice it almost always leads to people who are entitled to that benefit being wrongly denied it, or unable to access it. It also introduces a grey area of people who should qualify but don't.

Assessors are pressured, and incentivised financially, to get through as many cases as possible[0]. One gentleman recorded his assessment and found multiple falsifications[1]:

> On his phone recording you can clearly hear the assessor carrying out a peak test to measure his lung function, and reading out the data.

> But in the final report, his last reading appears to have doubled from 150 L/min to 300 L/min, making him seem better than he actually was.

The means testing of disability benefits in the UK is such an abject failure, that a noticeable number of people die within a month of being declared fit for work[2].

[0] https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/pip-assessors-paid-bo...

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-41581060

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/27/thousands-di....