4 ms·

That's a bizarre take, although perhaps it is true. That WIC system is bloated and cost more because welfare opponents want it to be bloated? Is that anything

That's a bizarre take, although perhaps it is true. That WIC system is bloated and cost more because welfare opponents want it to be bloated? Is that anything more than a talking point -- I mean is there real evidence that anti-welfare people are voting in meaningful way to make the WIC program cost more? Personally I am against violence imposed welfare (taxation based). But I see cash remuneration as a win-win because we could say give $0.50 more out in welfare for every $1.00 of overhead eliminated, and both recipients and the taxpayers would be better off.

runako 4y ago
> That WIC system is bloated and cost more because welfare opponents want it to be bloated? This is a very common tactic used by opponents of the US social safety net. Basically, the idea is to transform something that is broadly sympathetic to voters, like "giving money to poor moms so they can buy food for their kids, who otherwise will suffer from malnutrition" into something with no constituency, like "another Big Government Bureaucracy wasting your tax dollars." You can then attack the Big Government Bureaucracy without talking about the fact that you're effectively advocating for poor kids to go hungry. The basic flow is you start with objections that sound reasonable to a set of middle-class voters: "we need to drug test the residents of public housing," or "we need to make sure they aren't buying sodas with Food Stamps," or "we need to have enforcers make in-person visits to ensure that they are as poor as they say" or whatever. You add in a bunch of those requirements over time. Eventually, you have created a bloated system that costs more while doing less for poor people (obviously, the money spent on the overhead is not available to buy food for hungry kids). And that bloated system is ripe for calls to be dismantled altogether.

runako 4y ago

> That WIC system is bloated and cost more because welfare opponents want it to be bloated? This is a very common tactic used by opponents of the US social safety net. Basically, the idea is to transform something that is broadly sympathetic to voters, like "giving money to poor moms so they can buy food for their kids, who otherwise will suffer from malnutrition" into something with no constituency, like "another Big Government Bureaucracy wasting your tax dollars." You can then attack the Big Government Bureaucracy without talking about the fact that you're effectively advocating for poor kids to go hungry. The basic flow is you start with objections that sound reasonable to a set of middle-class voters: "we need to drug test the residents of public housing," or "we need to make sure they aren't buying sodas with Food Stamps," or "we need to have enforcers make in-person visits to ensure that they are as poor as they say" or whatever. You add in a bunch of those requirements over time. Eventually, you have created a bloated system that costs more while doing less for poor people (obviously, the money spent on the overhead is not available to buy food for hungry kids). And that bloated system is ripe for calls to be dismantled altogether.