You have the right to have that opinion. But don’t get offended when someone else calls it “wrong-headed” to place that opinion above the goal of actually improving someone’s life in a cost-effective manner.
I was asking you to estimate what you think the percentages are, based on what you know about life, the universe, and everything. But the main point is to acknowledge that the numbers are not zero. Our current system is less than 100% efficient.
Will you at least admit that if it could be shown that putting conditions on how the money is spent leads to x% being wasted whereas removing the conditions entirely would lead to y% being wasted then if y<x we’d get more bang for our buck by removing the conditions?
But if you still want some sources, here’s a couple.
This one says that fraud and waste have dropped from 3% to about 1% and errors are at 3.8%.
Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. But give a man some money, maybe he’ll buy a fishing pole, or maybe he’ll take a cooking class, or maybe he’ll spend it on something else. Maybe he doesn’t like fish. Who are you to tell him what to eat?
Getting back to the OP, it seems to me that the eBay post is fulfilling a legitimate need. People end up with gift cards or electronic money that they don’t need and things they need which require cash (like rent). Having a way to convert one to another can be helpful.
I’ve also seen websites where you can unload gift cards for specific stores and restaurants, for a heavy percentage off the value of the card.
Another possibility for the OP is that what they’re really buying/selling is positive feedback. Some parts of eBay are notorious for this - they sell something practically valueless for a low price, accumulating 30 or 40 positive seller scores (and the person on the other side accumulating positive feedback as well), then when they sell something fraudulent with a higher price tag, the people looking at the auction figure this seller must be on the level, look how much positive feedback they have.
I have no idea why somebody might buy a random 20-dollar bill, but inspired by this thread, I’ve listed one for $24.20 (+ shipping). I’ll let you know if it sells, because it seems like a very odd thing for somebody to buy.
The person who is giving the money has every right to put conditions on it.
If I work for $50, then I have the right to spend it on fish, fishing poles, steak, beer, liquor, or (if I don’t get caught) cocaine.
If you give me $50 out of charity, you can give me cash, or condition it on following me to the grocery store to make sure that I spend the $50 on needed nutrition for me or my family. I have no basic right to YOUR $50 to spend how I see fit.
I think this is so basic as to not really be the topic of a legitimate dispute.
There are many who might say that to give you $50 and to then impose conditions of what you can do with it, is not charity but something else entirely.
How so? Say my electric is going to be shut off unless I pay $200 by tomorrow. You, being the charitable person you are, offer to pay my bill to keep the lights on. You then ask for my account number to put on your check so the electric company can properly credit my account.
I tell you to just write the check to me and I will take care of it. Knowing me, you worry that a check to me will turn into cases of Bud Light and my wife and kids will still be without electricity tomorrow and you will be $200 poorer.
How is it somehow improper for you to refuse to give me cash, but insist on paying the electric company directly? It is still charity as you are giving me a gift under no obligation of your own, and are receiving nothing in return. It is your money, after all, and you can refuse it outright.
Isn’t that the personal choice of the giver? I, personally, have no trouble giving a homeless guy a $20 bill, knowing that it will likely end up in his veins. He has larger problems and if his daily fix helps him get through the day, that’s his choice, IMHO. Others might insist on buying him a meal. Either way, it was the giver’s money and nobody was under the obligation to give anything to begin with. What’s wrong with giving a gift, but making sure it goes to a laudable purpose?
In addition to the above, we have the fact that once the democratic political system decides that $X will be collected from each taxpayer and $Y given to each of the poor, then the individual act of paying your X ceases to be an act of charity and becomes an act of legal obligation. Even for taxpayers who voted in favor of the policy.
The math up above about various percentages for fraud and whether it’s less or greater than the percentage additional overhead to create and manage rules ignores a very real factor of human nature: the nudge effect.
If given cash, X% of recipients will spend it truly frivolously or harmfully. If given the same amount of scrip, Y% of recipients will go to the extra trouble and expense in the sense of foregone “good” spending to instead spend badly via the black market in discounted benefits.
The real leverage comes in where Y is much smaller than X. Some will argue that since Y<>0, any reduction from X isn’t good enough. Everything the actual data and our knowledge of human nature tells us is there’s a large majority who will take the path of least resistance. If given cash, that’s beer. If given EBT, that’s groceries.
*That’s *what gets bought by the expenditure on rules, process, and enforcement. It’s a win for the taxpayers, a win for the poor, both individually & collectively, and a win for society. Is it perfect? Shit no.
I’m not getting offended. I’m arguing that I think this is not “wrong-headed”. That’s the point of a debate about a political issue: Some people agree with a policy, others disagree and think it’s wrong-headed, and those in favour of the policy argue that this is not the case.
The numbers are not zero, this I admit. But you were the one building an argument on the basis of a compariosn between two percentages. The fact that these percentages are not zero is not enough for such an argument.
I admit that, but it’s a tautological argument. What you say is tautologically true if all the assumptions (most crucially, that y<x) are correct. We don’t know if they are.
So? Could you please formulate your argument on the basis of these numbers?
I don’t have a stake in what someone else eats; that’s not my business. But iof that someone else gets the money from others for the specific purpose of eating, and then spends the money on something else than eating, then those who gave it to him have a legitimate point in intervening to enforce the purpose for which they gave the money in the first place.
Can you guys read? This thread is not about taxes and government programs. Some of us are interested in the actual subject of this thread. It’s been requested that you start your own thread.
They are. Still, if the public assistance is justified at the level of the political debate with certain objectives, then the general public has a legitimate interest in putting mechanisms in place to ensure (or at least increase the probability) that the money is actually used for that purpose and not for other purposes that were not part of the political argument that was made when the scheme was introduced.
Rather than warn 10 posters who hijacked this thread, I’ve closed it. I apologize to those who had an interest in the original OP, but it’s gone so far off the rails I don’t think we can do anything to bring it back.
