Trust Kansas to find a new way to screw the poor

Is Kansas screwing over the poor this way just a measure of lawmakers’ distrust and hatred of poor people, or yet another handout to banks:

For these reasons, cash is one of the most valuable resources a poor person in the United States can possess. Yet legislators in Kansas, not trusting the poor to use their money wisely, have voted to limit how much cash that welfare beneficiaries can receive, effectively reducing their overall benefits, as well.

The legislature placed a daily cap of $25 on cash withdrawals beginning July 1, which will force beneficiaries to make more frequent trips to the ATM to withdraw money from the debit cards used to pay public assistance benefits.

Since there’s a fee for every withdrawal, the limit means that some families will get substantially less money.

Could be both. One of the dirty little secrets of late capitalism is how much it depends on an endless supply of poor people nickled and dimed out of their money through tricks like this. Being poor is so often so much more expensive than being middle class and the reason is there’s good money to be made off off keeping people in poverty.

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