For the same reason $100 cash is worth more than $100 gift card to the Olive Garden.

In general, I think people can more efficiently allocate their money than a central government planning group can. If an aid recipient wants to buy cigarettes or a drink with it, that’s not what I’d choose, but if they’re going to, I want them to do so as efficiently as possible.

>I think people can more efficiently allocate their money than a central government planning group can

Let's look at it this way: Government just provides the essentials (what essentials consist of is to debate but still can be setup by an expert committee) and people can get whatever they want once they get a job (and thus reducing the aid they need).

This criticism is a little weird to type as someone typically pretty far left. But that just encourages dependency on government and it strips people of autonomy, robbing them of developing the skills they need to not only survive, but to really thrive.

Because some things won't be deemed essential. And now someone has to arbitrate that. And so the government is now making decisions about where you are allowed to live. What constitutes essential housing? Are you allowed to live in non-essential housing and "top up" or do you get stuck with what the expert committee has decided?

We have government-owned public housing in my country, and it has many flaws, in practice. Long wait-lists to get an apartment, no choice of where your apartment is, and little in the way of power to act should you need to move or have something fixed.

If they were given cash equivalent to the value of that housing on the market (a program we've been shifting towards but which lacks funding) then they can rent a house where they need it. Got a job? Move. Landlord is neglectful? Well, at the very least you can probably move.

There's a middle ground, of course. In the case of housing in particular, it might be reasonable to mandate a proportion of social assistance cash payments be spent on rent, should a person end up interacting with homelessness services. (But this is of course assuming you actually can rent anything with that... sometimes not.)

> If they were given cash equivalent to the value of that housing on the market

One issue we see here in Ireland is that there seems to be no path to create laws that force land developers to allocate sufficient space to affordable (they read "affordable" as "less profitable") housing. Since they have pockets deep enough to help their friends get elected, there is not much surprise such things tend to not happen. Ireland's ranked voting system is great for weeding out extremism, but doesn't work as well for preventing regulatory capture.

We are captive to the same problem in most of urban Canada. Everything is zoned detached residential. Homeowners have no interest in voting in municipal governments that would re-zone. The result is that supply is basically fixed in a city like Vancouver despite a growing population. (There are also many other factors in the housing shortage, of course.)

> Give food/clothing coupons so it's more difficult to purchase alchohol/cigarettes with it. For sure it's still possible but we can add additional measures to increase the difficulties.

These feel like sadistic ways to punish people for being poor.

> These feel like sadistic ways to punish people for being poor.

I think I read that we estimate about 1% (and that's at the upper range) of foodstamps/SNAP/EBT/etc are used for fraud. It's a pretty small number but I think a lot of people think it's much higher. We tend to over index on these things and forget to consider the 99% that are being used probably as intended.

What do you mean by saying punishing them? Poor people needs food, clothing, housing and education, these are essentials. You give them the essentials and they should be able to figure out the others when they manage to get a job.

It's everyone's best interest to make sure that they get on board of a better life as quickly as possible. You spread the money on multiple fronts, it just slows down and wastes the money.

For sure we can debate what's "essential" but I really don't think cigarettes and alchohols are among them, unless stapled by a medical doctor.

> What do you mean by saying punishing them?

Taking agency away from them, by forbidding behavior you deem inappropriate.

The most effective programs are the conditional cash transfer ones and they are extremely successful in bootstrapping families out of poverty even in the poorest places of the poorest countries, right? For the Brazilian one I am most familiar with, it was estimated that for every dollar invested in it, 2.5 would return to the government as taxes in 10 years.

Nobody is forbidding behavior they deem inappropriate, they're refusing to finance behavior they deem inappropriate, big difference. And by "deem inappropriate" we don't just mean "dislike it", we mean "not within the scope of the stated reason you requested this money in the first place." "You can't buy lottery tickets with food stamps" is not the same as "you're not allowed to play lottery if you're on food stamps" and it's not the same as disallowing e.g sex out of wedlock while on food stamps.

Though I don’t find myself in agreement with this position, this is a particularly clear and well-articulated statement of the position. Upvoted for clarity of thinking and communication.

This is hardly sadism. If you can buy alcohol with food coupons you are not bettering disenfranchised people’s lives.

> not bettering disenfranchised people’s lives

I personally find that even at a high income relative to the general populations a few drinks at the end of the day can absolutely better my life. If I was disenfranchised I can only imagine this would be even more true.

I would hope that if someone was giving money to disadvantaged people on my behalf that would also include the ability to buy themselves a drink or a joint in states where that's allowed.

Why not just offer the money for a drink yourself? There's no need to involve others, especially at gunpoint of the IRS man, in your dream to pay the disenfranchised to get high and drink.

You mean poor people should have no right to have a glass of wine at the end of a stressful day, or to use wine for cooking a nice meal, or use a beer for a stew (it'll soften the meat)? There is a lot of judgement going on here and I wonder if it's not something that comes from a puritanical mindset where pleasure should be denied to those deemed unworthy.

Beggars can't be choosers. If they want a glass of wine, then they can earn more money to pay for it. Otherwise they can enjoy the free food generously given. They are not "unworthy", but they are also not entitled to anything they want for free.

They don't even have to do that, just buy yeast and some juice/grains, let it sit in a jug you got from some foodproduct on stamps whatever. Tobacco you can grow from seed gathered from a field. It requires work, not money.

Of course they should be allowed to, if they can afford it.

Alternatively: give the poor coupons instead of cash so that their landlord can't just take it from them.

So they will be well fed and clothed on the street?

I don't know what part of Canada you live in, but in my province you just get a monthly lump sum to live on. Out of that you have to pay your rent, hydro, gas, food, clothing, and everything else. There is another branch of government that runs subsidized housing, and it can offer you rent-geared-to-income (which encompasses the working poor as well as those on assistance). Sometimes when an assistance recipient is found to be spending on things outside of basic survival and fails to make the regular payments, a "direct pay" gets set up to creditors but that is an exception requiring case review and evidence, not the rule.

I know this because it has been explained to me in detail by my wife, who is a case worker at the county welfare office.

Such a simplistic view.

Here's something to consider: Nicotine alleviates the symptoms of schizophrenia which affects 1% of the population. https://www.brainfacts.org/archives/2008/smoking-and-schizop...

So put yourself in their shoes. They need financial aid because their mind is broken. One of the few things that calms the screaming voices is a cigarette. Nicotine acts on the brain in various ways and it literally alleviates the symptoms of a severe disease.

So yes they need financial aid but it's really arrogant that you're so sure you know better than them on how to spend it. You're also not giving them a learning experience. Remember that the goal is for them to dig themselves out of their hole. By not allowing them to succeed or fail you aren't setting them up for the day they are financially independent.

There are many less harmful ways of ingesting nicotine.

Yep they're transitioning to e-cigarettes these days. Despite that being way better (less tar) there's still community outrage whenever a homeless person is seen using any form of nicotine. "Why are they spending their money on that if they don't have a home!". It's a very naive viewpoint once you realize that their priorities are perfectly reasonable given their condition.

are nicotine lozenges, gum, patches etc not options?

Once a medical doctor approves, for sure they can get it.

Putting aside the difficulties of those in need seeing a doctor and affording a prescription... Unfortunately we're at the early stages of understanding nicotines role in brain chemistry. Scizophrenics have been chain smoking since the start. But medicine is only just catching on and understanding why the majority of those with Scizophrenia chain smoke.

With this in mind you can look back at all the judgements made on the mentally ill. It's common for people to think "Why are they buying cigarettes if they don't have a home!".

Turns out that viewpoint was wrong all along. The ability to think at all is indeed a top priority, perhaps higher than housing or food. It turns out that the crazy person using money they receive to buy smokes wasn't making poor choices after all. They were doing the one thing that gave them a chance at clarity of thought. Understandable. Yet we were judging the way they spent their money the whole time. We were wrong and we should take that lesson and continue calling out overly simplistic viewpoints along the lines of what you said above.

While I'm with you on your main point throughout this thread, I do think making doctors bureaucratic gatekeepers is a very bad idea.