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 say, pay 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.
I AM SO GLAD YOU HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT
I’m so glad you know that poor people never ever ever ever ever need more than twenty bucks at a time. I’m glad to learn this, because I am poor, and living off of financial aid (which is just a fancy form of welfare) and damned if I don’t have sixty bucks in my wallet. I guess I forgot to blow it all on crack and vodka on my way home. I guess I better go have some kids so I can use all this extra money to beat them or something.
You know, I read a newspaper article a year or so ago about how many anethesiologists were refusing to do anything for medicaid patients in labor unless they paid cash in advance. Maybe this “don’t let them have cash” crap is another way of discouraging the poor from reproducing.
I am saying a prayer right now of thanks that I don’t feel the need to meddle with the poor that so many seem to. Yes, there are poor people that make unwise decisions. There are those in every socioeconomic class that make unwise decisions. I am grateful that I don’t understand this need to micromanage and humiliate others because they get benefits from the government.
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.
Considering the fact I have never once to this day worked in a job working for more than $10 an hour, quite often multiple part time jobs/roomates to make ends meet. At one point I lost 45 pounds because I could not afford to buy much food for 6-8 months after a g/f moved out on me. I do know what poor is, and single part time working 20-something males don’t get much sympathy from the system when they fall on hard times.
I made no such implication.
Every doctor I have been anywhere near in the last 5 years has accepted debit cards. Then again I also know that most people who qualify for such support also qualify for medical/medicaid and pay little if anything for medical care. Lunch/movies…last movies I went to I used the little automated ticket kiosk at the theatre, the lines usually shorter too. Lunch…many fast food places and damn near any full service restaraunts happily take cards.
Been there done that…still have the shirt, I do know.
Pick better banks…bitch at your state reps not me. My primary bank does not charge me any transaction fees. Maybe I have two accounts because it made it easier to budget and let scheduled payments trigger without fear of bouncing a check. If I was on a program like this I would happily take the restriction I mentioned. I made the comment I did more along the lines of “sounds workable to me” not “fuck the poor people, they are all junkies anyway”
The reason I thought it sounded workable is that with the instances of welfare fraud that do occur, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to trace the transactions.
So if an aid recipient in question got their deposit and it all got withdrawn at an ATM in Las Vegas 700 miles away the next day, you might want to go take a looksie at how they are paying their bills the rest of the month. Go ahead and laugh, the sister of an ex of mine had that happen, her husband ran off to Vegas with the welfare check and left her home alone with the kids and no money.
By metering out their cash it would also help prevent poor budgeters from making a major budgetary mistake. If they want to save up for a while to make a large non-card chargable purchase…fine, but it makes it impossible to do so on spur of the moment impulse.
Our level of technology is at a point where many of us function almost purely on ATM/debit cards. I stopped carrying cash as a savings measure because it made the little stop for a soda/munchies etc less convenient. I also found that anything I really needed I could pay with a debit card or online billpay.
KellyM I totally agree with your comment about corporate welfare, however it doesn’t make the idea wrong, just the implementation. I full well realize they are not plunking it into an account of your choice.
Why would a single mother need more than $20.00 in her wallet? Are you kidding me?
As I have no cheque-account/CC, I pay for a lot of things with cash. There is currently over $300 in my wallet, $180 of which is earmarked to send with my kid to school tomorrow to pay for his 3 day Outdoor Ed. camp next week.
Oh, but that leaves $120 (plus some schrapnel)…lessee, what on earth else could I need the money for? Public transport tickets for the kids and I for the next week ($44) (can’t pay for them with a debit card at my milkbar around the corner), maybe a take-away pizza on Friday night, a whimsical purchase of some stuff at the Opportunity Shop (it’s cold and I need a ‘new’ coat). I might like to buy the latest New Scientist and the newspaper, and I think I’ll just duck up to the supermarket and grab some milk and veggies, and OOPS, I almost forgot, it’s School Photo day on Thursday, and that’s another $28.00.
Oh, and Brutus, as KellyM made allusion to, there is a helluva lot more ‘corporate welfare’ going on that never gets included in the traditional ‘welfare’ bill. Save your honest-taxpayer-ire for the greatest recipients of government monies…let me give you a hint: it isn’t the single parent or the unemployed.
drachilix, a lot of poor people do business at businesses that do not accept debit cards because they can’t afford the cost of getting a merchant agreement. Those things are expensive to get if you’re a small business in a poor neighborhood that does a relatively low volume. They often also cannot afford the reduction in margin that goes with accepting plastic (merchants pay a transaction fee on each transaction, which is related to the processor’s evaluation of the business’ fraud and failure risk; businesses that serve the poor will pay the highest premiums). Very few landlords take credit cards. I’ve seen landlords who will not take money orders. I’ve never seen a babysitter that takes plastic. Not many surplus shops do, either.
Virtually everyone I do business with accepts plastic. But I don’t do business with the sort of places that the underclass does business with. Not many people who have a choice patronize these businesses: their products are not as good as those I buy for myself. But they are cheaper, or at least more readily available to the people who need them. Taking away the ability of the poor to use these businesses will increase how much the poor have to spend to meet their basic needs, either directly or indirectly (usually through increased transportation costs).
The surfance intention of EBT procedures is to streamline government by eliminating the cost of printing and mailing checks. This is a laudable goal. However, the implementation, using mandatory restricted accounts, reveals two inappropriate underlying goals: one, to restrict the ability of the poor to maximize the value of their benefits; and two, to funnel government funds to those who have no need them at the expense of those who do. Like so many welfare programs, a good idea has been coopted by those who want to insure that welfare keeps people down instead of helps bring them up.
I’d suspect that they can’t afford the overhead it takes to run cards, but I couldn’t back up that suspicion with anything other than an impression that they’re on a shoestring and covering the care of a fair number of uninsured.
Then doesn’t that make the rest of your comments moot?
An EBT card is NOT a Debit/ATM card. It looks like one, and it has the disadvantages of one, but it shares none of the protections of one, nor can they just “pick a better bank” if they don’t like the problems with it. If they use the EBT card at their OWN bank, they still pay the transaction fees, as it’s not coming from their checking/savings account. This was all fully covered in the thread in question.
Up until about 2-3 years ago I was part of these “poor people” you all claim I don’t understand I am doing better now and working 50-60 hours a week sometimes to stay that way. I was shopping at the thrift stores, walking to the grocery store and only being able to buy what I could carry in/tied to a backpack because I didn’t have a car for 3 years at one point. Garage sales hell, all of my furniture at one point came from things other people in my apt complex were throwing away.
I also have twin 5 year old sons, I am very much aware of the costs for medical/day care, in fact I have a bill for $200 that my insurance didn’t cover… sitting on my desk at work until my next check when I will pay whatever part of it I can afford.
And I understood it the first time. The idea of EBT is solid, but our elected officials have fucked it up. Luckily in my world people don’t give up on the prototype if it doesn’t happen to work perfectly. Do what I do, write letters and vote. Stop whining about the system and try to do something to fix it.
Maybe the question should be asked “why isn’t medicaid covering needed medical services” rather than blaming doctors for wanting to get paid for what they do. I had to pay $600 for parts of my sons prenatal care and delivery that were not covered by my insurance at the time. I guess I should have quit my two slightly over minimum wage jobs to go apply for welfare/medi-cal/food stamps so I would have a “better understanding of the issues”.
Fuck that, I work for a living and I am proud of it. Even if it was part time at a pizza place I was not going down without trying and amazingly enough I came out of it just fine.
I have no fundamental problem with welfare/food stamps, I just hate to think of them being abused and I have seen people drive away in nice cars and wearing nice clothes drop $150 in food stamps on all the fancy name brand stuff and wondered how if they were in such great need they didn’t try to make it go further.
I’m unfamiliar with the term EBT, but I’m guessing that it’s the new “food stamps card”, or is it what takes the place of the monthly check? How nice for legitimate welfare recipients, no more trips to food shop at 3am so that you don’t have to use the dreaded (and OH so obvious bright pink, green and blue foodstamps).
Welfare was created to assist people in a transitory state, if I remember right, it was brought about either at the end of the great depression, or shortly after.
Unfortunately, it seems to have devolved into a lifestyle rather than a short term helping hand. There are still people who use it for its intended purpose. But it seems that more people than not abuse it.
Those people that do work hard for their money and have been fortunate to have never been forced to accept public assistance feel angry that their taxes are going to perfectly able-bodied people who refuse to work. Unfortunately, those few people who are using the system for the way it was meant to be used get lumped in with all the frauds, druggies, lifers, etc by the “real workers”.
even sven, I understand your frustration, the welfare system sucks, and for some bizarre reason (our government minds at work no doubt), it’s easier for the dumb lifers to defraud and stay on the system than it is for an intelligent person to get an education/job and get OFF Of it.
My sister worked in the welfare dept way back in the 80s, and I spent some time actually ON the damn system (only part time) myself way back then, (before I got schoolin’:D).
Sweetie? Keep your chin up, it doesn’t last forever. I know it sucks, but stick to your guns, if I could make it, and come out with a good career anyone can!!!
Actually, I see the WhoreCard more as a gift/bonus card sort of thing. You buy the card, and when you redeem it at your local Whores’R’Us, you get a 10% discount on this week’s featured service. The perfect gift for Mom, Dad, bride or grad this June!