Should There Be Restrictions To Where Welfare Money Can Be Spent?

I'd fully support this. But rather than make a list of "approved items" I'd be more inclined to label some things as unacceptable to get on welfare, like food from high end restaurants, video games, and the like. That way there's no reason to argue for certain borderline items being included or not.

 

Please give us a full proposal so we can see exactly how you think this policy is supposed to work.

Since my membership on this forum is more important to me than expressing exactly how I feel about your views, I'd rather just hear more of what you have to say. As they say: "If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all."

 

There's no such thing as "welfare." There are certain programs that are for assistance. What SNAP boils down to is about $1.36 a day for each person to eat with. It's not very much, and when people bitch about these people on food stamps, I just think to myself " If they only knew how it was on that tight a budget, they'd feel sympathy and not disdain."

 

Yes. To say it's OK for someone to use welfare money to buy alcohol and cigarettes would be to say it's OK for them to buy drugs with it, and, if you want to get technical, they ARE drugs.

I'm more open-minded on other stuff, though. I don't think it's OK to use welfare to buy 20lb of candy, but if you want to buy a Hershey bar, or some Halloween/Easter/Valentine's Day candy for your friends/family, I don't see anything wrong with that.

If this matters to anyone, my family's only income comes from my mother's eBay business and loans from my alcoholic step-father's mother. We've been on food stamps for half a year now. I was uninsured for 7 years and I've just recently been approved for Medicaid. I've only been to the doctor once since I've been uninsured, 4 times if you count the eye doctor. My parents have been divorced for over 14 years, and my birth-father owes over $7,000 in missed child support payments. I'm currently staying at a family member's house, while my mom is attempting to move out of the ghetto.

So, yes, I know how much it sucks to be poor.

 

Putting restrictions on what poor people can buy with money they get from the government will only reinforce the stereotype that poor people can't afford nice things, and that being on social welfare programs are bad things that should be ashamed of.

 

From an economics point of view, giving a person cash will provide them with the greatest utility and "happiness" because they know what to spend the money where they most need it. That said, it seems even Republicans believe in a "nanny state" where the government tells people where to spend the money .

But, it also depends on what kind of aid you're talking about. If it's WIC or Food Stamps, the things that they can buy with it are already limited to foodstuffs. The same for other kinds of "benefits in kind" welfare (e.g. the above mentioned and things like Section 8 vouchers and daycare benefits).

Cash welfare (i.e. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) on the other hand, basically gives cash to the people to spend as they need/desire. How you control "cash" is beyond me.

 

This is the thing, people don't understand the welfare system. Currently, I have an EBT card for food only. Lots of single people like me only qualify for food. In the state of Michigan, that cannot be used for alcohol. Michigan passed a similar law regarding cash benefits because so many people were going to Motor City Casino and MGM with cards they had bought/stolen etc and gambled with them.

Are there people who abuse the system? Yes. Are they the majority? No.

I do think they should be able to monitor the junk food purchases for the food program. If you are spending over 50% of the allotment(which in my case is $90) on junk food, something is very fish. I do know of store owners who will buy their stuff at a party store with the card just to re-sell it at their store.

 

WIC does have restrictions on what you can buy, though, when it comes to junk food. I'm sure most people on EBT/SNAP also would buy healthier food if it was less expensive than junk, which is why I think the government should subsidize companies that have much lower prices on healthier goods.

One thing that people who want to get rid of SNAP/EBT/WIC hate to hear is that the fraud rate is less than 1%. We should get more people on said programs.

 

Not that it's directly related, but the inability of poor people to afford nice things is probably less a stereotype than a fact. I'm not on govt. aid, but because I'm out of a job and deep in student debt, I go without a LOT. Pretty much everything I have is because of somebody else's generosity, and out of my own money I buy nothing but the barest essentials.

And while I'd disagree that aid programs are bad or shameful, they (at least in my mind) are intended to be temporary assistance until the recipient can resume supporting his or her own expenses. I'm generally all for less government restriction, but to spend public money on frivolities* seems extremely irresponsible.

*This can be a big category so that's why my opinion was to keep a list of just the most decadent luxury items that can't really be argued.

 

One issue with junk food is that the cost per calorie of "junk food" is cheaper than for wholesome foods. For people who receive limited and/or insufficient aid, it is only rational that they buy what they can afford to satisfy their caloric needs. In the long run, sure, it can lead to health problems, but when you're trying to survive day-to-day, it's rational to eschew healthy foods for those that "fit the budget."

Eating healthy, it seems, is the privilege of those who can afford it. I would like for us to eventually tackle the issue of making healthy foods cheaper so that people can rationally choose healthy foods on both economical and health grounds.

 

When you say luxury items, that could be debated that having a cell phone is a luxury item, or a decent car, or name brand clothes. Dehumanizing poor people is something that a good percentage of people on the right have done and have been doing for years. Also, restrictions on purchases would be getting rid of a free market for poor people. If a poor person wants an iPhone and not a tracfone, they should be able to buy the iPhone if they think it's the best phone for them. For every dollar we put into welfare programs, about two dollars is put back into the economy.

 

There are restrictions but people find away around it

 

Absolutely not. Yes, people have a personal responsibility to spend their money wisely. But this an assault to liberty that I cannot possibly condone. It also completely ignores the fact that someone might decide to cut back in some areas in order to afford something they want, and basically screws any chance anyone has of living a kind of life other than what the government approves of. All this would amount to is taking money away from 'offenders' and ever-increasing surveillance to catch them.

And honestly, anything of this nature most certainly is anti-poor, and amounts to nothing more that the dehumanisation and demonisation of some of the more vulnerable people in society. And really, all this kind of thing would do is to say "The poor are dirty, stupid animals who don't know their place."

 

I absolutely support restrictions on how welfare money can be spent. People who need welfare money surely don't have a "need" to use that money to get a tattoo, or get wasted at a bar. But I don't know how that would be enforced. Maybe like a debit card system?

In theory, I would also support restrictions on food stamps that would prohibit people from purchasing crap like pop and junk food. But the problem is that food that is good for you is often really expensive, while junk food and pop are both on the cheaper side. It's a difficult problem to solve and there really is no magic answer.