While reading this thread, I came upon this brilliant post, by our very own drachillix.
Let’s see. Why would a single mother legitmately on welfare need to withdraw more than a Jackson? BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO BUY DRUGS. Clearly that is the answer. or maybe it is BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL WHORE AND YOU NEED AT LEAST $30.00 TO BE A WHORE. I don’t know. maybe THEY AREN’T PEOPLE AND ONLY PEOPLE NEED MONEY.
Yeah. That must be it. The couldn’t possibly need to pay the babysitter. The garage sales and thrift stores where they buy their furniture and clothing surely accepts credit cards. They never ever have the right to take their kids to lunch and a matinee movie. The couldn’t possible need to pay, say the motherfucking doctor.
drachillix, you are one smart hombre. You understand the needs of the poor far more clearly than any social worker, researcher, or actual poor person. Because you don’t carry cash, and because you can eat the buck fifty transaction fee (and you apparently realize that nobody minds going to the bank and paying a couple bucks for a money order every time they want to buy something someplace that doesn’t accept cards) than it is totally clear that everyone in the world- especially the poor- can and should live that lifestyle, too.
The current system of EBT cards for welfare benefits is corporate welfare, plain and simple.
This is not simply direct deposit of benefits into an account of the recipient’s designation, the way my paycheck is directly deposited in my bank account. Even if you have your own bank account, they won’t deposit your benefits there. No, they go into a restricted account opened for you by the government that you can only withdraw from on the terms agreed to by the government and the bank. The bank charges the government to hold the money for you (usually, sometimes they agree to do it for no fee to the government) and also charges your account fees every time you do anything with the account – even for things that most banks do not charge their regular customers. You don’t get to choose the bank, the government did that. Nobody who had a choice would agree to open a bank account on the terms that apply to these accounts, not when there are competing banks with better terms.
The banks that handle EBT accounts make a lot of money off of this scheme. A lot of that money is money that was supposedly paid to needy families as assistance. But no, it wasn’t paid to them, it was paid to a bank.