[eyeamok]

Here is a novel idea, why don’t we ISSUE FOOD COUPONS instead of DEBIT CARDS??? seems to me that it would solve almost ALL of the WELFARE MONEY being spent on the Lottery.

[Graybeard58]

I don’t know a lot about welfare but I thought that people who live off of tax payers got a monthly check, in addition to food stamps. If so, it would be difficult, if not impossible to keep them from spending it any way they wanted to.

[Chad N. Freud]

“proposal to ban people on welfare from buying lottery tickets.”
- common sense.

“drop “Education” from “N.C. Education Lottery” ads because profits fund many government expenses unrelated to education.”
- common sense.

“ISSUE FOOD COUPONS instead of DEBIT CARDS”
- common sense.

Nothing is more surely written in the book of fate, than that such common-sense measures will never be supported by an entitlement-addled electorate.

[supercat]

Here is a novel idea, why don’t we ISSUE FOOD COUPONS instead of DEBIT CARDS???

If someone who would rather have $5 of "non-approved" stuff than $10 worth of groceries knows another person who would rather have that $10 worth of groceries than $5 cash, requiring that the $10 be used to buy groceries simply means that instead of giving the first person $10, one instead gives the first person $5 and gives the second person a $5 discount on $10 worth of groceries.

A much more fundamental problem is that the mechanisms used to means-test welfare effectively prohibit welfare recipients from doing things which would allow them to get off welfare. Someone who is given a certain amount to spend on groceries, but is allowed to bank anything that isn't spent, will miraculously be able to get by on a far smaller grocery allowance than someone who is given an allowance that they must either use or forfeit. If someone can live on less money than he receives as a welfare allowance, saving the balance might seem like it would make more sense than spending it on lottery tickets, but welfare rules won't allow someone to slowly build a bank balance. The only way to get $5,000 cash is to win it all in one go.

To be sure, even if welfare recipients were allowed to save money, many would still blow it on lottery tickets. That doesn't mean, however, that the system should encourage them to do so.