There has been plenty of evidence that it is a problem. there have been plenty of news pieces from several states showing millions of dollars per year being wasted.
The law disagrees with you.
Theft of less than $1,000 = petty theft - misdemeanor
Theft of more than $1,000 = grand theft - felony
(your state's specific laws may vary)
Every law is a cost/benefit analysis. It is unlikely that it is worth the effort to recover $.02. As the dollar amount increases, the viability of measures to restrict it increase. I would not be happy with any amount of my money being used at the strip club, but I certainly wouldn't be foolish enough to want to enact a law to recover two pennies.
What's so bad about casinos and strip clubs? Guess what, I disagree that churches should receive taxes breaks of any kind because they're basically cults.
It doesnt matter. People will either flat out break the laws or find ways around them.
Yesterday saw a woman using her food stamp card (or whatever) to buy a bunch of garbage at 7-11. She used under-the-table cash from her job to buy cigarettes.
As if to drive home the point of how sad those people are, she didnt understand buying a 5-pack of Black N Milds was a better deal than buying 5 individual Black N Milds. The cashier had to explain it several times. She got tired trying to figure out the difference between 5.50 and 4.50 & just gave in.
Other regular thing is to sell your 100 dollars of food stamps for 90 bucks cash to someone else. Then buy all the cigs and beer you want.
Am thinking it would be better for the government to invest in MRE's and pass them out once a week.
As it should be, implementation is left to the states which provide the benefits based on federal funding.
Simple solution would be to deny transactions from debit/whatever cards in those locations.
Agreed with your sentiments, but the MRE's would be sold/traded just as any other thing of value that can then be converted to whatever the heart desires.
Like big businesses burying shady deals and criminal acts under layers and layers of obfuscating documentation and having their expensive lawyers exploiting grey areas and loopholes in laws/regs, the folks on welfare do the same thing on an infintismally smaller and simpler scale.
As usual though, it's so much easier and less expensive to pick on the poor that have no expensive lawyers and unlimited reserves of cash to fight and stall any laws or regs that get in their way.
If it is everything is left to the States then why should they deserve Federal funding?
My personal opinion is that even at basic levels of government assistance, we should let people make choices. You want to buy Fruit Roll Ups instead of fruit? Ok. You want to spend money at the strip club instead of going to community college? Ok. As long as you are following the same laws everyone else is, and as long as the money we are giving them isn't enough to discourage them from working, I'm personally okay with that.
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GOP is on top of the big non-issues facing this country.
What's so bad about casinos and strip clubs? Guess what, I disagree that churches should receive taxes breaks of any kind because they're basically cults.
I think all this talk of "fungible money" and "morality" misses the mark, completely.
We're told by Liberals that we need to make these type of welfare payments so the kids don't go hungry etc.
If we're providing money to meet certain basic needs it's obviously a good thing when you can ensure that the govt money actually goes for those things.
What they do with other money they have is irrelevant.
If we cannot make reasonably sure that the money we provide for certain needs is actually spent on those needs then we shouldn't bother providing it.
Fern
I'm sorry Fern, ensuring how that money is spent is still largely irrelevant.
-snip-
Why is this money being provided? What is the purpose?
Fern