Research results often such a waste of money

One of the greatest wastes of taxpayer money can be the hiring of research groups. Not always, but sometimes.

Both large and small governments like to hire companies to find out why citizens do this or do that, and often it is just to find out why they don’t do what the government wants them to do.

The idea of course is that once the government finds out “the why,” they can then change how they go about getting the little people to do what Big Brother wants them to do. Unless the cost is too great to make that change.

For instance, last year Canada Revenue Agency paid $47,121 to a company to find out why a number of poor people don’t file their income tax returns.

The research company organized focus groups at four locations across Canada to get a good blend of the monetarily challenged; and it included unwanted government dependents, you know, like people receiving their own funds back that they paid to CPP, social assistance, Old Age Security, Employment Insurance or Workers Compensation. Not shockingly, the results from the interviewees found that filling out tax return forms was; “irritating, painful, complex, stressful, hard, long, boring, complicated, long winded,” and “unnecessary red tape.” . . .