We cant afford to eleminate them…especially for the poor.
Its cheaper to educate a child to imprison them. If they are poor, and they don’t get an education, they are much more likely to wind up in jail.
Its cheaper to give the poor food then to imprison them. If you have a parent that has a choice between letting their children starve, and comitting a crime, they’re going to commit the crime. And I don’t know any parent that would sit back and watch their kid starve to death rather than do something illegal.
Welfare makes up a tiny percentage of your tax dollar…so little that it you wouldnt notice it if it was gone. But the costs associated with dealing with the desperate starving people, and cleaning up the rotting corpses of the people who starve to death, or die because they cant get medical care would be enormous.
Limiting people to $20 a day in cash might work well if you could use a card for all the smallest incidentals. Unfortunately, that’s often not how it works. I don’t know any place that takes cards for money orders. It’s cash or nothing, baby.
So if your landlord doesn’t take credit cards (does anybody’s?), you’re going to need cash for your rent. $20 a day, for 30 days…hmm, looks like you can’t possibly spend more than $600 on rent. Depending on where you live, that could be a real problem. Most utilities will take cards, if you have the time and transportation to go down to their office and pay them in person.
Sometimes a person needs cash, and a fair amount of it. That’s just life. If a person with an EBT needs to get cash from it, they have to use an
Limiting people to $20 a day in cash might work well if you could use a card for all the smallest incidentals. Unfortunately, that’s often not how it works. I don’t know any place that takes cards for money orders. It’s cash or nothing, baby.
So if your landlord doesn’t take credit cards (does anybody’s?), you’re going to need cash for your rent. $20 a day, for 30 days…hmm, looks like you can’t possibly spend more than $600 on rent. Depending on where you live, that could be a real problem. Most utilities will take cards, if you have the time and transportation to go down to their office and pay them in person.
Sometimes a person needs cash, and a fair amount of it. That’s just life. If a person with an EBT needs to get cash from it, they have to use an ATM, and since the card isn’t issued by the bank owning the machine, you get to pay a transaction fee. Forcing someone to go through multiple withdrawals, and thus multiple transaction fees, to get what they need just takes even more money from those who can least afford it.
And, as I recall, you’re the one who proposed to make it even worse by restricting even further the ability of EBT recipients to get access to their benefits.
Have to agree with you here. Restaurant meals and movies are luxuries. If you cannot afford food or trips to the doctor, you don’t belong in a restaurant or a movie theater. Never ever.
Being poor means that you will not be able to live the way TV commercials tell you is normal. What you need != what you want.
Maybe you want a trip to McDonald’s, or cigarettes, or lottery tickets, or beer. People in hell want ice water - that doesn’t mean they get it.
True, although most of the effort involved in “getting an education” necessarily comes from the person being educated. So the responsibility for avoiding jail is much more that of the poor than of society in general.
Also true, but only if the poor cooperate.
If they cooperate, and put forth the effort expected of most of us to get and hold a job, avoid becoming pregnant with children they cannot support, graduate from high school, etc., they tend to become un-poor, and the money spent on them is a good investment. If they don’t, you have to factor in the cost of the crimes prevented by incarceration before you conclude what is cheapest in the long run.
Naturally, it is not a simple dichotomy between prison or welfare. Poor people have other options in life, and most of them take advantage.
What I am disagreeing with is the idea that welfare is a life-long bribe to prevent the poor from becoming career criminals. Most people get off welfare, and do not wind up in prison.
Also true, but also beside the point. We are not talking about people starving to death; we are talking about allowing people on welfare to withdraw only $20 per day from their benefits. I find it difficult to believe that large numbers of people are going to starve if there is a limit on daily withdrawals of $20. Especially since most grocery stores accept EBT payment without hesitation. The lady in front of me in line at the grocery store yesterday had no problems.
Pick better banks? PICK BETTER BANKS? What? Many poor neighborhoods lack access to basic bank services. They hardly have their choice of banks. The treasury department–yes, a branch of the federal government–started an pilot program to put ATMs in post offices in shitty neighborhoods because this is such a problem.
Shodan, food programs and such (programs to go to the poor directly) make up less than 6% of the federal budget. That 20% must include Medicare, which serves the poor but goes to institutions and doctors?
So should we, by law, prevent the poor from attending movies? Forced nicotine withdrawl for the destitute? No plain McD’s hamburger for those with incomes below $12k per year? Are you high? Perhaps service at stores should be contingent on presentation of a bank statement, which would need to be approved by the welfare police before purchases are made?
You may call it progressive welfare reform. I call it oppression by Asshats.
One of the greatest tools a poor person has is flexibility. In fact, it is one of the few tools they do have. Tying the hands of a drowning man may give him more incentive to gasp for air, but it won’t help him swim.
I was poor last summer. Dead broke, with no job, and facing eviction. With the “luxury” of a computer, I was able to get a job interview (my only one in a year and a half). Just prior, I spent money to get my suit cleaned and a shirt pressed. That’s a luxury. The night before the interview, I treated myself to a nice dinner and a movie. I went to the interview cleaned, pressed, healthy, and relaxed. I got the job.
So – were these luxuries of which I partook a bad thing?
tdn, none of those were luxuries. All of them were preparation for the interview and as such were necessities, given that finding a job is your primary goal when you’re unemployed.
The problem here is the pervasive attitude amongst large segments of the non-poor that poor people are obviously defective in some way and thus not entitled to full participation in society. Their inherent inferiority (which is evidenced by their own poverty, which is obviously the consequence of bad decisions on their part) mandates that we protect them from their own obviously poor judgment by restricting their ability to make free choices.
Every time someone with an EBT card goes to the bank to withdraw money, they are hit with a $1.50-2.00 fee.
Why on earth would anyone go repeatedly to the ATM and withdraw money from their EBT account? It is much easier and smarter to withdraw ALL the money one time and stick it in your bank account.
And Shodan, you’re FOS:
“If you cannot afford food or trips to the doctor, you don’t belong in a restaurant or a movie theater. Never ever.”
You, dear, are a control freak. How do you propose we police this, for starters … and do you, as a taxpayer, want to foot the bill for the Welfare Police? Following around the Great Unwashed making sure they are as downtrodden as possible could get expensive …
Exactly. But there are some that would say they were luxuries. No doubt Judge Judy would have called my computer a luxury despite the fact that’s how I got the interview in the first place. So who makes the determination? I would hope it would be me, rather than some blowhard politician or angry taxpayer.
What about the parents who have a choice? Get off their asses and work?
NOTE I understand there are those who can not support themselves, and they have been trying. How many posters have had a specific case/person/instance in mind when they made a post against welfare/foodstamps? I can think of several abusers of the system. I know one family who claims the husband can not work because he has back problems. These “back problems” do not prevent him from riding his 4-wheeler, or going to the races, or standing for hours at a time when his is out with his buddies. I get fucking angry when the wife tells me about how much aid they get. Why hasn’t someone in the system checked in to his “back problems”? Why I are you and I responsible for feeding his kids when he is not? I would not have a problem with them getting aid if he really was making an effort to work and support himself and his family and was falling short. There is nothing wrong with accepting help if you are trying to make it but can’t. I bet if someone told this family, we are taking away your aid, they wouldn’t have to resort to crime to feed their kids, they would only have to work.
tdn, when I was on welfare I was constantly told that my computer was an unnecessary luxury and I should sell it to raise funds. Yeah, sell the Amiga 2000 that was obsolete when I bought it (long before I went on welfare, too). To whom? For what, $25?
This is all about punishing the poor for being poor. As if being poor wasn’t punishment enough.
misstee, ah, I see, everyone who applies for welfare is presumptively trying to defraud the system, and so everyone should be treated as if they were liars until they prove otherwise.
Having to ask for help is hard enough on the dignity. And then you run into this sort of crap.