[harryh]

Let's go back to may example of bread and milk.

Would argue for getting rid of SNAP and replacing it with a convoluted system where poor people could get free food but they had to spend hours hunting for just the right coupons to exchange? I would hope not. It might help the poor, but would be a really crappy way of doing so.

Free parking certainly might help the poor a teensy bit. But it's an incredibly bad way of doing so that comes with all kind of other bad side effects.

If helping the poor is our goal, that is not a good way of doing so. You're better off charging a market rate for parking and then taking that money and giving it to poor people.

[decimalenough]

> a convoluted system where poor people could get free food but they had to spend hours hunting for just the right coupons to exchange

You've just described how rationing in Eastern Bloc countries worked.

[cratermoon]

> Would argue for getting rid of SNAP and replacing it with a convoluted system where poor people could get free food but they had to spend hours hunting for just the right coupons to exchange?

Sounds almost exactly like the argument made here https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/citizen-coup...