As a practical matter, the EBT cards won’t ever read zero – at least not so long as the government can still print money. Sure, the balances reflected would be largely worthless, but that’s a different matter.
I doubt EBT cards will ever stop working while regular ATM cards do. And I doubt most suburban households have more food on hand than people on welfare. In fact, from the quantity of food I have seen snap card users bring home at once, they may have more. Especially if they also frequent food banks, which give out mostly canned food that probably doesn't get eaten.
Yep. The whole ATM system is remarkably fragile. I'm thinking it'll be a tossup whether the ATM machines run out before the stock on the store shelves does, neither to be replenished without significant security changes in delivery. Fernando "FerFAL" Aguirre described the process as he watched Argentina break down. The ATMs were among the first things to go.
>>I doubt EBT cards will ever stop working while regular ATM cards do. <<
Never underestimate hackers and their ability to do significant mischief. I am in IT and can come up with about 20 hacks to disable only government EBTs.
I don’t know the underlying hacks themselves, but if I had the right hacker I could guide him/her in a pretty precise way.