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The Washington Post reports:
A dollar bill is a special kind of thing. You can keep it as long as you like. You can pay for things with it. No one will ever charge you a fee. No one will ask any questions about your credit history. And other people won't try to tell you that they know how to spend that dollar better than you do.
For these reasons, cash is one of the most valuable resources a poor person in the United States can possess. Yet legislators in Kansas, not trusting the poor to use their money wisely, have voted to limit how much cash that welfare beneficiaries can receive, effectively reducing their overall benefits, as well.
The legislature placed a daily cap of $25 on cash withdrawals beginning July 1, which will force beneficiaries to make more frequent trips to the ATM to withdraw money from the debit cards used to pay public assistance benefits.
Since there's a fee for every withdrawal, the limit means that some families will get substantially less money.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Friday May 22 2015, @12:32PM
Business Opportunity?
1.) Sell some 'product' to welfare beneficiary who uses their debit card.
2.) Customer returns that 'product' and takes the value of it onto a different debit card.
3.) Charge a 'handling fee' for the return which is less than the per-withdrawal fee they would otherwise be charged.
4. ...
5.) Profit!
Anecdote: A friend of mine used to work at Whole Foods. He witnessed on more than one occasion people who came into the store and bought milk in heavy glass bottles, left the store, poured out the milk, and then returned to the store to return the empty bottles for the returnable container fee which was quite high ($0.50? $1.00?) per bottle.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1, Troll) by t-3 on Friday May 22 2015, @01:01PM
Plenty of people I know sell their excess food stamps for 50-75% of the value, and that's probably what will happen here. Those with cash who don't want it tied to an account for whatever reason use the card, and everybody benefits except the ATM company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @07:43PM
Liar. Food stamps have not existed for over a decade. Disbursements are in the form of EBT cards.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @11:14PM
People still call them food stamps, and people do still sell them. You either give them your EBT card and the PIN for it or you go to the store with them and buy them the stuff they want, in exchange for cash. The general cost is 0.5 USD per 1 EBTD.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Friday May 22 2015, @02:31PM
Easier still - get them to hand over their card and PIN and authorization, do the daily withdrawals yourself and hand them a lump sum every now and then (minus a small fee of course). It's up to you how much risk you are willing to take on giving them an "advance". See how wonderful this legislation is? Already we've come up with two completely new ways to screw the poor even more.