As the Republican candidate for governor in Massachusetts toddles on off to whatever graveyard will welcome him, he will perhaps best be remembered for the state’s Debit Cards from Hell.
It was rather late in the campaign game when Charles Baker apparently discovered that the electronic welfare payment cards could be used for such essentials as cigarettes and lottery tickets and Evil Demon Rum.
He blamed Deval Patrick for allowing a welfare system that provided not only crusts of bread and blankets for shivering infants, but also disposable income that could be used to gamble on high-yield bonds or lottery tickets.
The image of the welfare mom living high on the hog has, of course, been around for decades. The ancient among us will remember the images long ago of supposed welfare chicks draped in mink, or, in more recent times, when Ronald Reagan labeled the syndrome “welfare Cadillac.”
A researcher at the conservative Heritage Foundation public policy think tank spent many years crunching Census Bureau numbers to illustrate what percentage of the poor among us had color televisions and cars and other accoutrements of struggling newspaper columnists.
But the vein of discontent (What did Bill Clinton promise? No more “welfare as we know it”?) that raises the traditional economic issue of whether welfare at a too-generous level creates an incentive to remain pitiful, has been supplanted by a more practical question – the question raised somewhat indirectly by Charles Baker.
At whatever level of benefit provided to welfare clients, how much freedom and flexibility do they have to spend the money?
In some cases, the answer is fairly clear: Section 8 housing vouchers are for “housing”; “food stamps” are for “food.” But when the check comes in the mail for those who are portrayed as living check-to-check, how does choice stand as a priority, if the personal choice is between baby formula and a pack of Marlboros?
This has been a source of queasy debate among some conservative types, who have championed a free choice/voucher crazy world in which government vouchers are sprinkled among the less fortunate among us, who then stagger amid the fruits of the marketplace, looking for food and housing and health care and education and, of course, liquor and cigarettes and lottery tickets.
The scenario works well at Libertarian summer camp, but when the rubber hits the road, we find Miss Welfare Mom using her government checks to make more bad choices.
Healthy Debate
The New York state health commissioner, along with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, wants the feds to allow them to bar food stamp recipients from using their government largesse to buy sugary drinks.
Is this the rise of despotism, a reasonable “public health” initiative, or simply a not-very-subtle way of suggesting to the poor folks that they should take the Coke and Pepsi money and invest in a Fidelity bond fund?
At a much more “micro” level, we have all experienced the anguish of “allowance” for our kids, who are either allowed to, in the name of “freedom” and “responsibility,” run free and buy a tattoo for their butts; or provide funding with strings attached – limited to such recreational pleasures as subscribing to Banker & Tradesman.
If the Libertarian-flavored Republican subculture steals the political momentum, topples ObamaCare and sends the poor and middle class among us “healthcare vouchers,” will the network be limited to the likes of Mass. General – or will we be free to cash in our chips at a faith-healing clinic or a Wiccan revival?
At the heart of all this is the reality that when we “give away” money, we have a certain expectation of how we would like it to be spent. One needs a computer chip in the brain, implanted by a wild-eyed economist of the Austrian school, to be completely comfortable with the bliss of the marketplace that offers us the benefit of choosing cigars for dinner, rather than lettuce and fresh fruit, as God intended.
The notion of politicians deciding what we can eat and drink is unsettling; perhaps a glass of Scotch will calm our nerves. If we can afford it. Or, if we have a Massachusetts welfare card.
