I mean in the sense that it's not cash assistance to the poor; instead, it's the government saying "these are the things you need to buy" and providing a voucher system for those particular things. You cannot decide that you want to economize on food and spend half your SNAP benefits on liquor, and so you cannot decide that you want to economize on food and spend half your SNAP benefits on a car repair to upgrade to a better job that you'd have to drive to.

> we could call ... tax forms social engineering

Tax forms are obviously social engineering. The government incentivizes (having kids, having a mortgage, saving for retirement, charitable giving) and disincentivizes all kinds of things via the tax code.