THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

daz378

have guys read about india where they have invalidated 86 % of their currency wiping people savings out overnight ostensibly to fight corruption but as hit a lot of innocent citizens scary.......over a bilion angry people ouch

moneyistooshorttomention

jk0 wrote: »

Have you guys been reading Zerohedge today about Australian currency? Someone put a link to this page:

https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/enablers/cashless-debit-card

I can see why they would not wish benefit recipients to spend it on booze or gambling. However, sounds like the thin edge of the wedge to me.

As in one way to start easing us all (not just benefit recipients) in the direction of a cashless society? Not good...(apart from the obvious benefit of a cashless society of getting rid of the Black Economy of course...).

Of course practical difficulties even for perfectly responsible benefit claimants. One doesnt have to be a boozer per se to buy alcohol - what about someone just needing to buy a bottle of wine to take to a party with them for instance? Or are benefit claimants not deemed to be allowed to go to parties?

EDIT; One article I read re those Indian banknotes said that the new ones to be introduced will have a GPS tracking feature in them! I guess (with these notes being large denomination ones - in their terms - that would be the equivalent of putting a tracking feature into our £20 notes - eek!). I can't quite figure how a tracking feature would work out for their benefit?

GreyQueen

Morning all.

jk0, I believe the US 'food stamps' - which is something called an EBT card these days, has similar proscriptions.

In some ways, this may be of use to certain people in receipt of welfare benefits. I can think of two such chaps living only a few doors away from me. One is a mentally-ill chronic gambler and another is an alcoholic.

Both barely eat, and any money they get is ending up in the hands of the betting shop/ the pub or the supermarket's alcohol sales. When one of these chaps was moved from JSA to ESA * (this he told me himself) he got a back payment of several hundred pounds. He didn't use it to pay down his rent arrears, or put credit on his electricity meter, or buy food. He went on a multi-day drunken bender which squandered it all and saw him end up nearly dead in the hospital. I've often thought that you cannot resolve either of these men's problems by applying more money as it will just enable them to get into more and more trouble and, in the case of the alcoholic, kill himself the faster.

However, I still dislike the sound of this. Cash is very useful. If you have cash you can stop off at a jumble or garage sale or boot fair and top up your clothing or household goods or even buy some cheap veggies from a roadside stall. Try doing that with your welfare debit card. Plus, I'd hate to be the one using this and getting 'the look' from a cashier or other customers, you can just imagine the stigma, can't you?

I can see major finanacial interests (the sellers of booze, fags, scratchcards) and the betting businesses, leaning on governments pretty hard to stop it happening. There's a lot of money to be made from people's addictions and they wouldn't want to lose out on that.

* translation for mila; JSA means job-seeker's allowance (the dole) and ESA is employment support allowance, for unemployed working-age people who are considered to be too ill to work. The latter has two strands, one for those whose condition is not going to improve, and one for those who, with support and/ or time to recover, may be able to get back into the workforce. ESA is considerably higher than JSA.

culpepper

daz378 wrote: »

have guys read about india where they have invalidated 86 % of their currency wiping people savings out overnight ostensibly to fight corruption but as hit a lot of innocent citizens scary.......over a bilion angry people ouch

I am sure I read that the Indian Notes could still be exchanged at the banks for a while,its just not useful to buy things anymore . It is to stop counterfeiting which they have suffered greatly so I guess the bank tellers have a method of checking each note. Some people would still be unlucky though and discover some of their notes are fakes.

mardatha

Read the Zerohedge article about it culpepper, it's chaos.

milasavesmoney

Very helpful GQ. Thanks.

Items prohibited for our SNAP program---http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items

The US program transfers money to issued EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards that are scanned just like debit or credit cards and no one knows the difference. This program is managed by the state where the recipient resides.

In the US our welfare system has several programs within the basic welfare program, but the basic criteria for all the programs is that recipients agree to work on getting out of the program within a specific time frame. Welfare programs include cash assistance, food stamps, child support, medical assistance and utility assistance.

People who cannot work apply for disability, which is hard to get clearance for because the medical requirements are strict. Alcoholism, different additions etc are not covered.

moneyistooshorttomention

Mila

When you say "specific time frame" - is there a limit to how long one can get unemployment benefit for if made redundant from a job? If so - what happens when that time limit expires if the person still hasn't got a job? What do they do for alternative source of income?

maryb

Mila
I remember reading that back in the days when they were actual food stamps, certain unscrupulous shopkeepers would exchange the food stamps of the desperate for cash at a usurious discount and then the recipients would spend the cash on their addictions. Has the move to EBT cards stopped that or does it still happen? Unless people can only use their cards in big stores with all the IT to check their actual purchases it's hard to see how you could stop a dodgy shopkeeper putting a purchase through as food and giving out cash

GreyQueen

Evening all.

Very interesting, mila, thank you.

The so-called high denomination notes being withdrawn are the equivalent of our tenners and twenties, and worth about £7 and £14 respectively. As such, they are the workaday currency of Everyman.

From what I've read, the decision was made and enacted so quickly as to force the population to bank their cash or end up with a lot of toilet paper. And, by banking it, they would have to declare how they got it, as the Indian government wants to drag their substantial black economy out into the open and make it pay its taxes.

As always, there are unintended consequences. One of them is a pal of mine here in the UK holding a few dozen of these blasted notes and presently rather p'd off. The most serious consequences is this;

The Indian government has just taught over a billion people not to trust its currency. A billion people who have historically been rather attached to holding wealth, particularly inter-generational wealth, in gold.

The smart money will stash spare cash in the yellow metal, despite having to pay more for it than the rest of the world. The government will try to further ban and restrict gold buying and gold ownership. This will be unlikely to be well-received and people will probably double-down on their efforts to get their excess income into shiny yellow stuff.

milasavesmoney

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Mila

When you say "specific time frame" - is there a limit to how long one can get unemployment benefit for if made redundant from a job? If so - what happens when that time limit expires if the person still hasn't got a job? What do they do for alternative source of income?

That's a different program here. It's called unemployment insurance benefits and lasts for a 54 weeks.
The 2008 housing bubble crash caused Congress to extend some programs and that was one that was extended but I think that extension ran out.
There is another tier if your benefits have run out after the year but I don't really know any thing about that one.

People here sometimes sell their EBT cards for cash and say they have lost it. I do think it's probably harder to keep that underhandedness up because the agency would get suspicious if you lost it every month. The cards are reloaded and I gues you could make arrangement with the person you sold it to whereby they gave you cash monthly for continued use and could continue to use it.
Here's the latest report I could find.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/pressrelease/2013/fns-001213
It does look like small retail stores are the biggest problem.