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Comment by shadowmint | Hacker News Reader

I think the problem is more complex than you're bothering to give it credit.

For example, food stamps may go to a family, where they are dealt with responsibly, in a way that money, which is very easy to grab and walk out to buy cigarettes with when things go badly, is not.

Obviously, it's not a full solution, and a cynical recipient could sell them, true... but we're not talking about individuals acting in isolation for purely selfish reasons; that's a contrived subset of the problem.

What's the alternative you're proposing?

Just hand out cash?

The research shows that people suffer severe difficulty in managing fiscal matters when under financial stress. It's the old 'why do people who are poor buy so many lottery tickets?'?

Money isn't the correct solution; and maybe food stamps aren't either... but they're a better solution, and don't think that's even in doubt.

...but if you have a different one, I'm happy to hear it.

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"why do people who are poor buy so many lottery tickets?"

Answer, all people buy lottery tickets at the same rate for tickets which might materially change their life. If you are rich, spending 20 bucks for a 1 in a million chance to win 10k is not going seem worthwhile.

The problem food stamps are solving is to keep a lid on the brow beating from taxpayers toward the poor. It is a mild form of punishment masquerading as help. It would be cheaper, easier, and more effective to just give cash (and because it would be cheaper, you could give more).

The main issue poor people have in managing money, is simply that they do not have enough.

And that they'll do things like spend their last penny to get the latest iPhone, or on buy $400 sneakers.

Or if they inherit 50k, immediately go to Vegas and lose it all.

These are all real examples I've known personally.

The people you're describing exist but it's hard to imagine someone who is great with money staying poor for years and years, considering almost everyone in America moves between income quintiles during their life and most spend time at the top.

If free food is punishment please sign me up to be punished.

Also, I'm interested in the source for your lottery ticket info. It sounds fairly absurd in a world where many jackpots are over 5 million, which is enough to change almost anyone's life. I've never even heard of a lottery for 10k.

I think maybe you missed my point. Everyone is bad with money (mostly), it is just rich people have more. And perhaps they have had more time to form good habits with ever increasing amounts to ride over the rough patches. I have known way more rich people bad with money than poor, it just didn't have the same effect.

That is because you don't buy them I guess. Scratch tickets, poker machines, plus lots of small state lotteries that start at 5-10k and top out at maybe half a mill.

Yeah, just hand out cash, and make it very easy for people with medical problems like addiction to get help without getting arrested or going bankrupt.

I don't know very much about this topic and I'd love to see the research you're talking about. Are poor people worse at managing finances? Intuitively that sounds wrong to me, but intuition is usually useless in economics. Do food stamps result in better health outcomes than cash?

> Just hand out cash?

That's what we do in most (all? I can only find a handful of dated references to a program in the UK) parts of Europe. Seems to work fine.

Most European countries have things like free medical care and maternity leave that we lack in the US.

It isn't really a comparable situation. Acting like it is doesn't do anything constructive for American problems.

Of course you can draw comparisons regarding access to food for the poor between those two continents.

Looking more at other countries is imho benelovant for the states.

I guess I can see that if say, you have a person with an addiction, if they don't have access to free healthcare to treat that addiction, giving them straight-up cash might be a poor idea.

Of course that's just another reason to implement universal healthcare, not to shame poor people with food stamps.

I was a military wife for a lot of years. Trying to talk about the differences in compensation and lifestyle between the American military and American civilian jobs is quite challenging. If you want to talk about what works in Europe, you need to talk about all the factors that make it work.

People in this discussion are saying "If you give cash to an addict, they will spend it on drugs." Well, most poor Americans have serious health issues. It is one of the things that makes them poor.

If you need medical care and you have to pay for it and it's very expensive, giving such a person money won't go to food. It will go to medical bills.

If you want to give Americans cash instead if food stamps, first you need to give them free medical care. We really need universal basic health care in the US.

If you need medicine more than you need food, why is it bad that the money is going to medicine? How is it better to give someone medicine + [cost of food] than to give them [cost of medicine + code of food] and then let them buy medicine and food as needed? It's the same number of tax dollars in benefits and fewer in overhead. And more value to the recipient because they get to decide if it's worth $5000 to have a marginally effective surgery or use the money for something else, instead of having a bureaucracy decide they can't have it when they want it or they can have it but not the cash equivalent if they need something else more.

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