Note that the sentence you quoted is rather quite vague (it almost seems deliberately phrased that way) as it says nothing other than "the money spent on alcoho

Note that the sentence you quoted is rather quite vague (it almost seems deliberately phrased that way) as it says nothing other than "the money spent on alcohol and cigarettes is upper-bounded by the proportion of other total expense". Well, it could certainly be worse, yes, but that doesn't make it great. It's kind of like saying "up to 90% off" in a store... a 10% price cut would certainly qualify under that description, so the description is pretty useless. Also, note that alcohol and cigarettes are only 2 of many such examples. My data is all the laws that exist (and are still constantly changing) to prevent some poor people from misusing the welfare money they get. Quite obviously, they wouldn't be there if this wasn't an actual problem. See, for example, the second page of this article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2012/07/26/who-gets-to-make-spending-decisions-for-the-poor/2/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2012/07/26/who-...), where it says: > In Massachusetts – and my own state of Pennsylvania – proposals are being floated to ban [...] There's a reason those proposals are there, and no, it's not that lawmakers are bored.