[talmand]

Of which I can only agree. But history shows that entitlements almost always balloon out of control. Often in an effort to be fair or not disparaging to the recipients. For example, food stamps became EBT because the term food stamps has a negative stigma to them. It made people feel bad to be on food stamps so they rename it so they won't feel bad. But you can't really call them food stamps anyway as they have become their own form of currency and you can buy nearly anything with them. So now it's become the "here's some money we hope you'll buy food with" program. Not to say that there are no people who do need these programs to survive through tough times. I'm sure there are many out there who do actually, truly need these programs and I'm happy that they are there to help them. But at the same time, one must recognize that over time such programs may lead to severe problems that require yet more programs, i.e. money, to "fix".

On the other side, if the government installed such controls as you describe then that part would potentially get worse simply because of abuses by the government on its people. Plus, government controls often do not have the intended outcome anyway resulting in worse problems than what they were trying to solve in the first place. Also, keep in mind that politicians often offer to increase the money to these programs to increase their power in their own little corner of the political landscape. Or to buy votes. Or to attack political opponents. I can easily recall the accusations that one party must not be elected because "THEY WERE GOING TO TAKE AWAY YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY!!" even though that party did not claim wanting to do such a thing. The more control you hand over to the government over its people, the more control that it desires to get in the future.

Some would say that welfare is already supposed to provide just enough to survive on to help that person. But with some groups that use the money clearly for things outside of surviving, some groups that are constantly redefining what "surviving" means, and some groups blatantly using welfare measures to buy votes to obtain power means that welfare will almost always not be the solution to the problem at hand.

Taking care of humans fairly is a rather difficult thing to succeed at.

[ForHackernews]

> But you can't really call them food stamps anyway as they have become their own form of currency and you can buy nearly anything with them.

That's not true at all: http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items

You might be confused, because some states provide other forms of benefits (SS or TANF) on the same debit cards as SNAP ("food stamps"), but the food stamps program only pays for food--and not even all kinds of food.

You wrote a lengthy post, and you seem to have strong opinions about this subject, but you are badly misinformed about the underlying facts.

[talmand]

If I'm misinformed on the food stamps being used to purchase nearly anything, blame the news because that's where I got my information from. I see you posted a link to the USDA, interesting that you are assuming that since the government dictates it, then that must be the way they are being used. I suppose no one has ever received something from the government and used it in a way it was not intended.

[ForHackernews]

Some people do sell their food stamps (at a discount) for cash: http://www.kpho.com/story/23509709/food-stamp-recipients-sel... But that's an illegal abuse of the program.

If anything, it's an argument in favor of replacing current welfare programs with unconditional cash transfers.

[talmand]

In other words; I was correct, not confused, and not badly misinformed.

Thank you.

If one can take your government provided food stamps and convert them to cash is an abuse, how will straight-out giving them cash supposed to help in that situation? They will be provided cash with stipulations so nothing would change according to the rules.

Although, I admit there is evidence out there that if you just give cash with no stipulations to people that need help instead of "stuff" distributed through a service of some sort, they tend to do better overall: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/23/214210692/the-char....