Automation of social benefit distribution solves.

As explained above, the option to implement PI in a deliberately underinclusive fashion does not comply with Atkinson’s idea of PI, which aims to liberate people from the shackles of means-testing. The same goes for the ironclad administration strategy. The essence of the participation condition is to include people, not to exclude them. As for the administrative costs, the critique by De Wispelaere and Stirton (2007) ignores the fact that existing social assistance schemes already include effective enforcement mechanisms (Atkinson 2015). However, it is debatable if they can be extended to cover the wide range of activities included in PI. In any event, for a claimant participation conditions would be easier to meet than the current conditions for social assistance. Since the time of writing of “The Public Administration Case against Participation Income”, digitalization has reduced the costs of benefit administration and made access to benefits easier. For example, in Finland the general social assistance (guaranteed minimum resources scheme) was in 2017 transferred from the municipalities to the Social Security Institution (Kela), where it became possible to claim the benefit digitally. The reform improved access to benefit and reduced the number of those eligible for benefit who did not claim it (Korpela et al. 2020). COVID-19 has accelerated digitalization of social security (Masiero 2020). This is the silver lining of automation for social assistance recipients. However, De Wispelaere and Stirton (2007) make a valid point in referring to problems in PI’s attempt to cover the entire population.