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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 And Propel is only one of several companies looking to disrupt outdated social programs, Tonya Riley reports at Backchannel.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.
Is to show how this not just reduces time for the EBT customers, but can reduce headcount in government call centers by reducing the need for customer service. I don't understand why techies have never figured out that government and business have similar goals.
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My major plan is to build our social insurances on top of a universal social security. This improves the financial position of all households, most-importantly the lowest-income households. When you do the computation for necessary aid, you're starting from a higher annual income, so the amount of necessary aid is smaller.
Can these apps provide deal tracking and budgeting from cash for lower-income households without EBT services?
Great idea except where do you get sustainable funding for it?
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Seriously?
WTF is the government allowing cash back on EBT cards in the first place????
Stopping that would seem a quick way to make sure those funds are ONLY being used on food.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
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...
WTF is the government allowing cash back on EBT cards in the first place????
They are not. People are paying for the EBT-qualifying items with their EBT card, then paying for the remainder with their debit card, and then getting cash back from that.
Stopping that would seem a quick way to make sure those funds are ONLY being used on food.
The biggest benefit to the EBT card is not having to mail people pieces of paper, and then collect the pieces back. But a significant secondary benefit is that it does eliminate change.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This, of course, does not happen. It is a made-up story with the cynical intent to make middle-class people hate poor people.
I have seen this happen. There was a women that worked with my ex-wife who was not married but had a domestic partner. The domestic partner bought a brand new 5 bedroom house and this women and her kids lived there. She drew on every single social program they could including EBT. She drove a newer Durango to the store to use EBT. Yes, it does happen. People game the system. In addition to this anecdote, I have several white trash family members who engage in similar gaming. I can call them white trash because they are my family and we both know they are. They have no problems proudly admitting it either and emphasizing how they are justified in doing what they're doing because everything is corrupt and this and that. They consider it social justice.
We'll make great pets
WTF is the government allowing cash back on EBT cards in the first place????
The OP is likely either:
1. Lying.
2. Quoting a story he/she heard that was a lie.
3. Misunderstood the transaction, and the cash back came from a debit card.
4. The vendor was committing fraud.
AFAIK you can't get cash back from an EBT transaction. EBT won't allow you to purchase non-food items with it. This includes things everyone needs, like toilet paper.
The tit suckers aren't responsible enough for cash. That's how you get malnourished poor kids and 22 inch rims on the parents junker.
They had to convert to cards to stop the routine sale of food stamps. Which just changed it to sale of food. But at least the kids get a chance to grab a bite before the food is sold to a neighbor with a job.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
1. I pay with a good plan about 20 euro per month for my smart phone, and 30 euro for my land line... So explain us carefully why smart phone are money thrown out ? Keep in mind that to get a job almost certainly you will need to have some sort of phone connection, so that you get called back.
2. the puritain moral argument... The worst things ever. Program like food stamp make sure people and children get food and do not have to make choice like "phone/rent/food or medicine pick 1". Making it a PITA to get benefits never showed that people get a job quicker (there are some cheater, but they are a crushing minority). It only make people more desperate and more outcast.
Let me guess, you are a republican, and you get your news from fox news or breitbart.
And in case you bring the choomer argument that they are using EBT to get money in cash : http://www.snopes.com/politics... it is false.
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WTF do you eat that you spend less than $100 on food for 3 every month
I'm really terrified that I'm 100 comments into this thread and you're the first person to seem to recognize that having 43 of 323 million (nearly 14 percent!) of the population of the country on food stamps is a major problem.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
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:
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.
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When you incentivize something you get more of it. {...} The biggest problems with our welfare programs is that they incentivize laziness and nonwork.
The thing that you dare to call "welfare" on your side of the Atlantic pond would be considered as backward and medieval by European standards.
(Common you just recently started to try to provide universal healthcare like the rest of the developed world. And the guy who you elected president is even trying to repel it).
If "more welfare" leads to "less workers" as you suggest, Europe would have completly collapsed following 100% unemployment half a century ago.
That didn't happen.
In fact, some of the best faring countries in Europe (e.g.: Scandinavian countries, Germany, etc.) are also country with the most advanced social welfare systems. And those still aren't collapsing under unemployment today.
Not everybody who gets welfare is lazy - some are actually very hard workers.
There are large-scale studies which have been done in Germany and in France (yes, France, the country where "going on strike every other week to insist on social welfare and benefits" is a national sport).
Verdict : there are actually very few abuses of the welfare system.
Far less than what far-right parties would like you to think.
There are a few lazy people, but nearly the vast majority are very hard workers.
But the programs need to be structured in a way that encourages people to work by making sure that work always pays more than not working.
If you do that by making access to welfare more tedious and difficult, you won't be helping.
- The few lazy person, who have the intent of abusing the system will find more creative ways around your hurdles and still manage to get the money.
- Most of the remaining people, those who have real difficulties and need help suddenly are even more likely to get their help if it is so difficult. They are already in deep shit, if you make their life even shittier, you're not helping.
You need to help measures that can help finding new jobs :
- cover basic needs (food / shelter) without any question. If the people can't even get those, they'll never work.
- helping people move to where the jobs are, as you suggested in your comment.
- helping people retrain to other jobs that are available here. Cover the costs to make sure that education is available to anyone who wants a new job. (I know that seems hard in a country that relies on "college loans" and where the cost of a diploma is close to the budget of some small countries).
etc.
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What the fuck happened to personal responsibility....???
Being that personal responsibility is only applied to poor people that can't afford to incorporate, why should we care?
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WTF is the government allowing cash back on EBT cards in the first place????
They don't for food stamp benefits. But what most tech-bro libertarian right slashdotters don't know is that the cards support multiple types of benefits and that some of the benefits are cash even if food stamps aren't.
For example, someone on unemployment could have both a "food stamp" benefit AND an unemployment benefit on the same card. They could use the same card to purchase food AND get cash from the unemployment portion on the card. Or purchase qualifying food and non-qualifying alcohol on the same card.
This is what the slashdotters who report these incidents are truly seeing, but since they don't know how the cards actually work they think the EBT users are deadbeat cheats and then they mention it on slashdot to the OTHER tech-bros who might be pre-disposed to look down on people not like them.
Being one of those predisposed tech-bros, you got riled up over misinformation, making YOU a low-information citizen.