But they neither benefit nor are adversely affected by these changes. Again, all this does is say to the poor people: “Fuck you we’ve going to mess you up because we just love to fuck with you.”
The ones I already mentioned. Sorry, technical difficulties prevent me reviewing them at the moment, but you’ll see them upthread.
I don’t want any of the people treated as if they are bad. They’re just people who don’t have money right now. Nothing about that means they are bad or deserving of punishment regardless of whether they tried to plan sensibly or not.
It’s a hypothetical example, so everything you need to answer is included.
If they’re spending it on something they don’t need, they didn’t need it.
You haven’t cited relevant parts of the law, you’ve cited the entire thing. I like reading laws as much as the next person, but I’m not spending time to learn the details of the laws of Kansas.
I have reviewed this thread. I have found no such quotes.
This law, however, says they are bad, can’t be trusted with money, and must be punished by not be allowing to have cash money even if they need it. I oppose this law. You support this law, and thereby support treating all poor people as if they are bad. Your words don’t match your support.
Okay, I’m going to answer that you need to sit down with this hypothetical child and develop a realistic budget with her (not for her, but with her). If and only if she individually proves she is not willing to abide by a realistic budget should she face punitive action.
If bills are going unpaid and necessaries are not being acquired, yes, they did need the money.
I provided the exact text of the regulations governing the program in #151. I didn’t even just give a cite; I copied the EXACT TEXT into my reply. TANF cash beneficiaries in Kansas may access their benefits at point-of-sale (POS) devices and via automated teller machines. Those are the only two ways in which those benefits can be accessed.
I’ve read the new law. It contains no provisions by which those benefits can be accessed via any other means. It adds a $25/day restriction, but it does not add or replace the mechanisms for access. The entire text of the law is the only thing I can cite to show that there are no new mechanisms therein. If you can’t be bothered to learn the details of what you are arguing for, does that not mean you are deliberately arguing from a state of ignorance?
Weird.
MY bank allows unlimited free ATM transactions every month (Well, OK, maximum $400/day in withdrawals but if I’m spending that much money I’ll write a check). WTF is wrong with your credit union? Why are you doing business with someone who charges you fees when other, similar institutions do not charge their customers fees for that transaction?
I don’t think you’re spending your money wisely, perhaps you need the state to step in and teach you proper money management.
My reply is that posts that say that 85 cent charges are rape, and that anyone who dissents wants to send poor people to the rendering plant, get the kind of response that they deserve.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, if you want to know what will happen to poor minorities in Kansas, you need only explore what’s already happened to them in he gentrifying, liberal, yuppified cities of the Northeast.
Where’d all the black people move after rich, liberal white Yuppies started occupying Brooklyn and Washington, DC (or my home, Austin, TX, for that matter)?
That’s silly. The citizens of Kansas are certainly affected by these changes; it’s their money. In fact, the citizens of Kansas ARE the State.
If the State spends money in a sub-optimal manner, the expenditures affect the citizens through the need for higher taxes, reduced services (which can include government employment hiring freezes, reduced COLA’s, and layoffs) or a combination thereof.
And if a State continually and regularly spends in excess of revenues (cf. Illinois), their credit rating tanks, making future borrowing even more expensive, leaving less money for actual services. Remember, States cannot print money. They are limited to what they take in, plus what they can borrow.
Finally, there are indirect costs to a State’s overspending. Businesses may forego expanding in a state, and new businesses might seek out opportunities in other states with a more favorable economic climate. Even citizens can and do move to other states, to take advantage of better opportunities elsewhere.
There are reasons that the population of Texas between 2010 and 2014 has grown by 7.20%, (#2 out of 50) while Illinois has only grown by .39% (#45 out of 50).
And it’s not just the weather.
Snort. I think not.
I’m not seeing HOW the non-benefit-receiving citizens are affected by the changes in Kansas, except adversely.
The current contract for EBT card services will be in effect until 2018. It calls for the state to pay a fixed amount per card per month. (See the contract documents for details.) That amount varies based on how many cards are issued; it does NOT vary based on how often the cards are used.
Limiting the dollar amount per withdrawal will require some programming changes to the system, and the state will be billed for those changes. However, there’s nothing in the contract that I can see that would enable the state to recoup any of the extra fees the contractor will receive from the beneficiaries, at least until the contract is renegotiated.
In other words, in this particular circumstance the state’s taxpayers will be paying slightly more for the privilege of billing the state’s beneficiaries the extra fees.
Under which circumstance will the state’s taxpayers pay more?
Under the current contract that expires in 2018, or if the State adopts Broomstick’s proposal, where the state pays 100% of the fees (not just billing and programming charges) and the recipients pay $0?
The state is currently paying a per-card fee every month, no matter whether the card is used once or one hundred times. (That is, they’re not just paying billing and programming now.)
Without knowing more about market forces, I don’t know what the fees need to be (I’ve not seen the RFP that led to the current fee structure). For example, the Kansas Dept of Labor currently has a contract to pay unemployment insurance benefits via a debit card; the state pays nothing at all. (“As full consideration hereunder, Bank will receive the interest or ‘float’ from the KDOL funds deposits with Bank for UI benefit payments to claimants. For this valuable consideration, KDOL requires the Services to be at no cost to KDOL and no cost to the claimant subject only as specified herein.”–from page 15-16 of the contract. The specified services that have fees include withdrawals at ATMs outside the Bank of America/Allpoint network, international transactions, and card replacement.)
This contract is much much better financially for both the state and the recipient than the EBT card contract signed by Kansas DCF. What regulatory and/or programmatic requirements preclude a contract like this for EBT benefits? I’m sure they exist, but I don’t have enough grasp of those requirements to say what kind of fee structure is the best deal for the state’s taxpayers. If you’re not having to pay for programming to limit the dollar amount of withdrawals, or to preclude use out of state, what does “100% of the fees” actually amount to?
Perhaps we are talking past one another.
The actual numbers don’t matter. If a State budgets “X” million dollar in benefits, there is going to be some percentage of X that will cost the State in transaction costs to provide the benefits. It could be 5%, or 3%, or 1%.
Assuming 5%, what is inherently wrong with splitting those transactions costs between 95% to the State, and 5% to the recipients? Or 97.5% to the State, and 2.5% to the recipients? Why does it have to be 100% to the State, and 0% to the recipients?
Couldn’t have said it better.
Well yes, your neighborhood drug dealer probably doesn’t take plastic. but utility companies and just about every other merchant does.
Of course educate recipients on efficient use of what money they have! Bleeding obvious! How many poor people are also burdened with ignorance? How many of them know that the outmeal in the bulk bins is precisely the same as the oatmeal in the box with the Amish businessman? How many mothers know how to prepare wholesome meals for growing children that do not rely on meat? (Which is expensive now and going to get more so…)
Like anything else, being poor can be done intelligently or otherwise. The results, for all concerned, are better with option A.
Duh.
Let’s see. You’re here, and I’m here, so our parents, and their parents before them, managed to figure it out. What is different about today’s parents, that they can’t figure out how to take care of their own children?
See page 14 of the actual law:
There is a one transaction per day limit.
Then let me be the first.
Here is that part of the bill:
The above seems to me a lot more infantilizing than the ATM limit.
Also, ill-advised as the $20 ATM limit is, at least no one is likely going to be fined or jailed over it, because, I presume, the cards will be set up to prevent violations. But the other items?
Suppose some Kansas welfare mother with two children scrimps for two months to afford a discounted kids movie. This is worth mobilizing Kansas law enforcement? Do the cops and/or welfare enforcement staff members really have so little to do that they need this laundry list of new potential violations to combat?
Also, what happens when a welfare recipient uses a check to make a supermarket purchase two city blocks into the next state over, and is busted? Even welfare recipients have other small income streams, such as, say, a cash holiday gift. How is it going to be determined whether the check money came from the gift money, or from welfare? Beats me. I suppose this means that it will have to be determined, over a period of years, by the development of case law. Do Kansas judges have so much free time on their hands as to need this to keep busy?
As for cruise ships, if the welfare recipient can afford that, they probably have been hiding some of their income or wealth. So what’s important on the laundry list of forbidden purchases is already illegal.
Having said that:
What’s with the lingerie shops? Does Victoria’s Secret give all their campaign contributions to Democrats?
We know more.
Why would that be? Surely people are more educated today than in our parents’ and grandparents’ generations.
Also, wouldn’t “generational” knowledge, for a lack of a better term, increase over time, rather than decrease? IOW, our children should know more than we did.
For the existing Kansas UI card, the percentage of X that will cost the State in transaction costs to provide the benefits is zero. Not 1% or 5%, but 0%. The company that handles the cards makes their money on the float, not by transaction costs. If this card can operate on this fee structure, what are the operational reasons why the EBT card cannot? Why do there have to be transactional costs to be split?
If there have to be transactional costs, it makes more sense to me for the state to pay the full amount rather than artificially inflate the benefits. “The average beneficiary receives $420” is more useful information than “The average beneficiary receives $450, but you really can’t spend that much because we automatically snatch some part of it back in mandatory fees, and ‘some part’ varies widely depending on a bunch of different factors so we can’t tell youhow much is actually available for spending.” The amount of benefits received will have implications for other programs; does it make sense to count monies as available that the recipient can’t actually spend?
Earlier in this thread somebody compared Indiana and Kansas TANF benefits. That’s a meaningful comparison if and only if the figures quoted are monies actually available to the recipient. If those are purely paper figures, and the “real” amount is some hidden number, how can public policy makers, researchers, journalists, or SDMB types rely upon them? How can beneficiaries make budgets if the fees jump around from month to month depending on what bills need to be paid? (That is, months where bills need to be paid mostly in cash will have very different transaction costs than months where most expenses can be paid via point-of-sale.) That also means that two people with identical family sizes and incomes effectively receive different benefit amounts, which raises issues of fairness and equal treatment.
Finally, splitting those transactions costs between 95% to the State, and 5% to the recipients, or 97.5% to the State, and 2.5% to the recipients, while not the best practice is not inherently awful/horrible/no good. However, in the existing Kansas EBT contract the vendor charges the state an amount in the range of seventy cents to $1.50 per card per month (varies depending on number of cards issued, and whether cards are TANF-only, TANF+SNAP, etc.). A careful beneficiary under the old law could arrange to take a single cash withdrawal for all of the money they didn’t plan to spend at point-of-sale, thereby incurring a single $0.85 fee plus ATM fee, and roughly a 25/75 split between state and recipient. Under the new law, the state is still paying $0.70-1.50 per card, but the recipient may end up paying anywhere up to $40-50 in fees, which means the transaction costs are split more like 2% to the state and 98% to the recipient, and that I believe is simply wrong.