Kansas passes law banning food stamp receipients from pools, movie theaters

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If this bill works it will be a boon to ATM service fees, since people will be going back every day.  But this bill looks so unworkable on the face of it, I suspect before long the government will just pretend it was never passed, like a far-right mirror image of Atlasia.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If someone wants to spend their money at the race track, they'll still find a way to do it by buying some approved purchase and selling it for a cash or an unapproved product - just as some people do with food stamps.  Republicans of all people should recognize the principle that regulation creates black/grey markets. 

This bill also sets a lifetime limit on TANF at 36 months, which may be the bigger impact on recipients.

Reaganfan is right that there's nothing here that would go against the Civil Rights Act, even if he's wrong in this thread about everything else.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I can't believe Republicans are okay with the bank account freezing aspect. The government taking control of your money and demanding how it be spent is hardly a libertarian concept.

It's almost as if poor people just completely don't matter to them.

What bank account freezing aspect? As someone else said, most government benefits these days are on their own EBT card, linked to that account.  Banning welfare benefits from being used at strip clubs or theme parks is as simple as blocking card use there.  Similarly, blocking the purchase of tobacco or whatever with welfare benefits can easily be done electronically.  Nothing is stopping a welfare recipient from using money in a personal bank account to go to a strip club or buy cigarettes, or auditing that personal account.

That seems exactly to be what this law does.   This bill isn't directly about food stamps, it's about TANF, monetary assistance (it's just that usually these are the same people as qualify for food stamps) and it plans to monitor debit and credit purchases.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I agree with everything in your post, King, except there's an element of moral hazard that comes in if children or other dependents are involved.

Yeah, if you are giving money to an addict or a compulsive gambler, you are contributing to a problem.  That doesn't mean "solutions" like this do any good or aren't worse than the problem.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I agree with everything in your post, King, except there's an element of moral hazard that comes in if children or other dependents are involved.

Yeah, if you are giving money to an addict or a compulsive gambler, you are contributing to a problem.  That doesn't mean "solutions" like this do any good or aren't worse than the problem.

Well, a workable system of the negative income tax, as I see it, is that in order to receive it, there has to be some employer doing this for you--similar to FICA only instead of withholding money, the employer is adding money to your check that the government reimburses to them. It's purely a supplemental income program not to replace SSI disability or TANF. So in that sense, a drug addict would not be able to receive welfare benefits if they can't at least hold a part time job to produce tax forms.

I understand concerns, but to me stopping addiction is not a supplement income problem. It's very War on Drugs to think cutting drug addicts from money stops the problem. There should be a drug rehab program in this country, but tying it to benefits won't solve anything.

I don't understand how, if negative income tax does not replace disability or TANF, it is related to receipt of welfare benefits.