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Cashless Australia
coppice:
--- Quote from: Halcyon on March 11, 2021, 06:43:38 pm ---Welfare is by far the biggest expense when it comes to where tax dollars go
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What are you classing as welfare? Are you including things like pensions, that people have paid into? Most country's biggest state spending area is either the military, health care, or education.
Echo88:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_States#/media/File:2018_Total_US_Government_Spending_Breakdown.png
vad:
--- Quote from: james_s on March 11, 2021, 06:47:34 pm ---Is it? In the US by far the biggest expense is military, it absolutely dwarfs everything else. I don't know how much we spend on welfare but I think it's essentially a drop in the bucket.
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Not according to this (a bit outdated though - fiscal year 2011):
“83 overlapping federal welfare programs that together represented the single largest budget item in 2011—more than the nation spends on Social Security, Medicare, or national defense. The total amount spent on these 80-plus federal welfare programs amounts to roughly $1.03 trillion. Importantly, these figures solely refer to means-tested welfare benefits. They exclude entitlement programs to which people contribute (e.g., Social Security and Medicare).”
And this is only federal level programs.
https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CRS%20Report%20-%20Welfare%20Spending%20The%20Largest%20Item%20In%20The%20Federal%20Budget.pdf
Nusa:
Re: U.S. Economic Stimulus Payments, first one came in check form, second one came in cash card form. Both could be, and were, deposited to my bank account.
Cash is still perfectly viable for day-to-day stuff in the US almost everywhere. One example where cash is clearly still king is under emergency conditions. When a significant chunk of Texas was without power, even the more essential places (e.g. grocery stores) could only operate on a cash-only basis. Plastic was worthless even if the store had a generator, since the underlying infrastructure was down as well.
Stray Electron:
--- Quote from: james_s on March 11, 2021, 06:45:30 pm ---
In my case two different Covid "stimulus" payments were deposited directly in my bank account, I didn't even realize I had gotten them until I happened to check my account at some point. Apparently I earned just below the cutoff in 2019 and that qualified me for a payment. Didn't really make much sense to me, I earned more in 2020 than I ever have before but I wasn't going to complain about getting "free" money.
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The problem with "Free" money is that someone eventually has to pay for it! Maybe our children or maybe our great grandchildren but sooner or later it has to be paid for. With interest! I still haven't touched the money that I got from the first Covid payment last year so, to me, getting the payment and then having to pay for it in the future is like taking out an expensive loan when I didn't need it and just sitting on the money but having to eventually pay a good deal of interest on the loan.
My understanding of the Covid payments is that the US Gov send out the payments the same way that people received their tax refunds and/or other payments from the Gov. If you have your tax refund or Social Security direct deposited then they sent the Covid payment the same way. But if you don't have a bank account and you receive EBT or other government assistance then they sent the payment via a debit card to your last known address. I think that that's why so many didn't receive their Covid payments as soon as they wanted to and are now howling. They didn't have a bank account so their payments couldn't be DD'd and they also probably didn't get EBT or other payments so they hadn't keep their current address on file with the USG so their payments took a while to get to them.
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