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posted by takyon on Friday May 22 2015, @12:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the withdrawal-symptoms dept.

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.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by urza9814 on Friday May 22 2015, @05:42PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Friday May 22 2015, @05:42PM (#186555) Journal

    Most ATMs that I've been to in the US will only let you withdraw money in increments of $20. (I've occasionally run into an ATM that will dispense two different denominations of bills; usually that's been $20 and $10 but the most recent one - near my workplace - is now dispensing $50 and $20 bills.) So this is effectively a limit of $20/day.

    The extra $5 is so you can pay the ATM fee when you pull out $20...

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  • (Score: 2) by ilPapa on Friday May 22 2015, @05:54PM

    by ilPapa (2366) on Friday May 22 2015, @05:54PM (#186566) Journal

    The extra $5 is so you can pay the ATM fee when you pull out $20...

    I wish I could mod that "+1, Funny but True"

    --
    You are still welcome on my lawn.
    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Friday May 22 2015, @07:27PM

      by edIII (791) on Friday May 22 2015, @07:27PM (#186615)

      I thought it was to pay for the extra gas for the extra trips to the ATM? Unless they're smart enough to take out $20 at 11:59pm and then another $20 at 12:01am.

      In any case, those fees are quite often waived completely with coops, credit unions, and a minimum number of transactions. It's not the fees, but the gas, time, wear & tear on vehicles, and lost opportunities. Of course, legislators are not going to be considerate of the poor, or even think of the logistics of enforcement.

      I live rural now, but I still need to breathe through my fucking face. This requires psuedo-phederawhatever, or the "good shit". However, due to the meth-heads that inspired Breaking Bad, I needed to spend about an extra $75 per month in just gas, my vehicle costs. My lost time during the trip into the city is even worse, if I were to bill it at my consulting rate. Why? I can only receive 10 pills at a time, and some days I just need more than one pill (regardless if it is advised) just to get *any* air through my nose at all. I'm also without medical coverage of any kind, so it's not like I can sit back like the 1% with a home doctor visit and he hands me my pills and reminds of our golf game on Saturday. I'm a slave to the pharmacy, just as much as the welfare recipients have become slaves to the bank and ATM.

      Legislators act like psychotics sometimes, and that's not hyperbole. While I found my solution to reduce the costs (my entire family buys the 10 pills per valid ID, so I can end up with about 40 at a time), I can easily imagine how much harder that is to do for people on welfare. It's unfortunate and disgusting that our legislators can't figure out any other way of dealing with the poor, other than to abuse them and push their faces in the dirt deeper.

      What I would like to do is steal $10,000 from every legislators pocket to "simulate" that lost $5, as $5 when your nearly homeless is a ridiculous amount of money when it might feed you, or your hungry child. Perhaps, when their heads are spinning about how they keep losing their 'pocket change', maybe they will develop some empathy for the poor and downtrodden.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @02:22AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 23 2015, @02:22AM (#186750)

        > In any case, those fees are quite often waived completely with coops, credit unions, and a minimum number of transactions.

        People on welfare rarely qualify for, and even fewer can afford, accounts at any of those institutions. The term is "unbanked" and even credit unions have been doing a shitty job of helping them. Just look at all the credit unions that charge maintenance fees (just like banks) for accounts with low balances.