User:Bluerasberry/automating

Automating Inequality is a 2018 book by Virginia Eubanks on the relationship between working class Americans and the automation of decisions which apply public policy to access to social welfare.

Summary
The author relates a personal story of Medical billing and Health insurance in the United States.
 * Preface - Red Flags

Describes the concept of the 18-19th century poorhouse and the history of welfare.
 * From Poorhouse to Database

Other topics discussed include the House of Industry, Josiah Quincy III, the The Philadelphia Negro, Pauper's oath, Panic of 1873, Great Railroad Strike of 1877, Scientific Charity Movement, Mary Richmond's Social Diagnosis, Eugenics, Buck v. Bell, the Clutch Plague, New Deal, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Social Security Act, National Welfare Rights Organization, Electronic Data Systems in welfare reform, and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act.

The government of the state of Indiana awards a contract to privatize the management of welfare management to companies which can automate the processes. The new automated system rejects the application of a severely ill child who seems eligible for benefits, but who faces an automated accusation that they are unwilling to comply with the robot system's unclear demands and rules.
 * Automating Eligibility in the Heartland

Response
Eubanks compares the automation of social work to the establishment of poorhouses from past generations. She argues that the hope of automation is "to escape our shared responsibility for eradicating poverty", when actually, solutions to poverty must include more resources and not only reallocation of the existing resources.

A reviewer for The New York Times called the book "riveting" and said that its target audience should be professional classes, policymakers, social workers, and poor people.

As examples of how United States government agencies apply algorithms to allocate social services, the book examined a system in Indiana for welfare benefits, one in Los Angeles for public housing, and one in Pennsylvania for child protection.

One commentator remarked that the book was justified in being critical, but also noted that there is little comparison between use of automation versus the alternatives.

Eubanks said that a theme of the book is that while automation can enable easier access to and management of access to government services, the automation tends to bring problematic design features of the last generation of administrative processes into practice at scale. The book argues that when government agencies have unclear goals about their strategies for addressing complicated social issues, then no one should predict good outcomes from deferring responsibility for governance to an automated tool.

In an interview with Sumo Logic, Eubanks remarked that she took inspiration for the book when she realized that the transition of the paper United States food stamp program into the Electronic benefit transfer permitted new tracking of users locations and purchase decisions.

A reviewer for the London School of Economics said the book described how American society views the poor.