Electronic Benefits and Welfare Reform - Betz, Lightsey and Mazur

Heard an interesting piece on NPR recently about how a shift to a cashless economy might actually cut down on crime. Most robbery/assaults are committed by poor people on poor people, mainly due to the fact the middle- and upper- class citizens tend to carry credit/debit cards rather than large amounts of cash. The absence of banking opportunities for lower-income individuals means that they must carry cash pretty much at all times. This means that, if an addict is to get quick cash for a fix, he must ob a low-income person to get sufficient money. Some have proposed giving all welfare recipients electronic benefits in order to not only protect them from assault & robbery, but to control what their money is spent on. I'm of mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it might indeed help, both with inner-city crime and drug use. On the other, it layers more stifling control on welfare recipients, and I'm not sure what the effect of that might be. Here in Texas, food stamp recipients are given a "Lonestar" card, which they can use like any debit card at the grocery store. It will not pay for the usual things - alcohol, medicine, stuff like that, which means that there is less error on the part of cashiers. Some friends of mine that were on food stamps said they preferred using the card to those coupons, as it was harder for someone to tell they were using food stamps. I'm not sure of the exact figures, but this program has, from what I've heard, resulted in considerable savings for the state.

probably the direction of the future, and it will take off even more if some kind of inexpensive personal-physical id reader--palmprint, or retinal or voiceprint, etc, is developed for checkstand use

That's not so far off, from what I've heard. I think Sprint has a voiceprint analyzer for some phonecards, and palm/thumbprint technology is not too out there. Wonder what the lunatic right thinks of this idea?

666 for sure. just as long as we can still use cash and barter i believe there is a margin of safety but we are becoming public figures, each of us, whether we want to or not. maybe the appropriate response is to become like New Yorkers--on the offense all the time.

I'm with you on that - even if there is some crime attached to it, a black or grey market based on cash/barter allows the freedom of anonymity, which is becoming more important every single day. It is too easy to simply let the technology wander where it will, without attempting to provide some safeguards against its excesses. I am willing to trade _some_ measure of privacy in return for greater simplicity in other arenas, but there are some things that I just don't want anyone else to know I do, often or the sole purpose of keeping it private, rather than fear of arrest or embarrassment. It is vital, then, to strive to protect our privacy, and use the technology we have and will have to ensure that that happens.

pray for encryption.

have you been listening to the cfp98 link off the front page of thespring, really and excellent conference, and the link to all lectures only is at http://www.cfp98.org/schedule.html but terry has the pictures as well as the non-scheduled discussions. which are very interesting, but if you go over to the cfp98 site and listen to the crypto panels, it is worth doing, i think.