Why Don't You Just…

In 2013, the United Kingdom launched Universal Credit, a welfare reform ostensibly intended to simplify the benefits system by merging six separate payments into one. The new system was designed to be applied for online, but many claimants had no reliable internet access. Those who did often lacked fixed addresses, which the system required before it would register them. without registration they couldn’t receive payments; without payments they couldn’t maintain an address, and without an address they couldn’t register. Government officials and advice workers, when presented with this loop, would sometimes suggest that claimants “just go to the library” to use a computer. They did not know—or had not thought through the fact—that some libraries require a membership card to use their computers, that membership cards require proof of address, and that the Universal Credit application times out and loses your work if you do not complete it in a single session. The word “just” was doing…