How Techies Rescued Food Stamps (wired.com)

New submitter rgh02 writes: There is an endless variety of apps designed to manage life for the upper middle class, but most low-income Americans don't benefit from the same time-saving hacks. Thanks to new trends in civic technology, that's beginning to change. The 43 million Americans depending on food stamps are seeing the introduction of apps like Propel's Fresh EBT, which allows users to check balances, track deals, and organize budgets accordingly. And Propel is only one of several companies looking to disrupt outdated social programs, Tonya Riley reports at Backchannel. But the Trump administration, with its hiring freezes and budget cuts, poses threats to these advancements. Riley dives deep into the progress that's been made and how companies are navigating these obstacles.

Comments

Re:Can't afford to buy food but can afford a phone

[Snotnose]

You have a steady job, buy a phone. Lose the job, can't find another, manage to get food stamps. Voila, you have a phone and welfare.

Re:EBT... a good idea, but...

[TobesWSU]

When you see people in the checkout buying their food with EBT and then get $20 cash back so they can buy alcohol with cash at the same register. Your tax dollars at work.

http://www.snopes.com/politics...

Re:The key with businessmen like Trump

[ShanghaiBill]

1. If a person is on food stamps, they pretty much should not have enough money to buy a smartphone with data plan to use EBT apps....?

Social programs should be designed, not to help people be poor, but to help them OUT of poverty. A used smartphone costs $20, the cost of groceries for one day. The apps can use Wifi, so no "data plan" is needed. But having a cellphone can make a big difference in a person's ability to find a job, deal with childcare, and manage their life.

Rather than prohibiting smartphones, it may make more sense to make them mandatory.

2. One argument against making social programs like food stamps easier...is that making them a PAIN IN THE ASS might help encourage folks to double down on work and education,

It is a dumb argument. By making benefits only for the "truly poor" you create a poverty trap. As people start to do a little better, they lose their benefits, pulling them back down. So the incentives are exactly backwards. For a well designed program, look at EITC. When a poor person works more, their benefits go UP, and only start to fade away when they are making enough to no longer be poor.

Re:Or just get rid of the EBT program completely.

[hey!]

Instead, the people receiving these taxpayer-funded handouts would have to actually do something productive with their lives.

Let's look at the how well this notion fares in light of Department of Agriculture figures on the program:

• About 1/3 of food stamp recipients already work.
• 1/5 of recipients have a disability such as blindness or acute cancer that prevents them from working.
• 1/5 of recipients have no income. Most commonly they are single mothers with young children; nonetheless the median time in program for people in this class is about three months.
• 10% are on some time-limited welfare program.

So the idea that ending food stamps will make people more productive isn't really supported by the data.

Contrary to the stereotype of a food stamp recipient as a black person living indefinitely on welfare (technically impossible since 1996), the most common food stamp recipient is white (not that that should matter but it evidently does) and has a job. Of those that *could* be forced to get a job by ending the program, most already do so within a few months.

For various reasons its also doubtful that ending the program per se will save much if any money. For example it is much easier to help a senior stay healthy and independent with food assistance than it is to institutionalize him.

You *could* save government expenditures by getting rid of medicare, medicaid and food stamps at the same time.

Re:The key with businessmen like Trump

[Dorianny]

You should read the articles you link to:

“In some areas, restaurants can be authorized to accept SNAP benefits from qualified homeless, elderly, or disabled people in exchange for low-cost meals.” Note that based on the published information, the Restaurant Meals Program (as this initiative is known) is available only for homeless, elderly, or disabled recipients of EBT. Furthermore the article states that the program is only widely available in a handful of states Florida, Michigan, Arizona, and California. The vast majority of states do not participate at all.

In short the program is optional for states and limited to those that aren't able to prepare their own meals