Food Stamps

[Redalgo]

Food stamps are one of many examples of a liberal welfare regime fouling up anti-poverty efforts. And as Hatman mentioned, it gives the poor a special currency to use in a public space identifying them for all to see. To indulge in a little hyperbole, it symbolically hollers, "Look there everyone! That bloke is a failure to their family, disgrace to their country, and is probably into some pretty shady stuff. They are so dysfunctional that they cannot even get food without a handout. Hey you there, go get a job you ****ing parasite." And so on and so forth. Poor folk have enough to be stressed out about as it is without measures that shame them and treat them as totally untrustworthy being institutionalized.

I also agree with Snowstalker and TNF here. Give everyone a lump of money. Make it a universal system that is not structured in a way that drives wedges between people of different classes. Everyone pays in and then everyone receives benefits back. That way we are all interdependent with everyone contributing under an agreeable understanding that the scheme exists to help each of us equally.

[Redalgo]

Food stamps are an EBT system that use what looks and functions exactly like a debit card. You swipe it at the terminal, enter a PIN and the payment goes through.

Could of sworn I'd seen a paper form of payment used before. I'm honestly pretty surprised.