This was written by my friend Deb in Missouri.  I am putting it here because (1) Deb tells a good story, and (2) there is no way to be funny about this.

Kansas has found the ultimate way to punish the poor

Work with me on this one…..

Kansas gives poor folk getting public assistance a debit card, as a part of “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,” a small program that, unlike food stamps or housing assistance, provides parents and children funds they can use for all kinds of purchases. A single mother with two children is a typical beneficiary, and a family of three in Kansas received an average of $354 in 2012. Current estimates indicate the average beneficiary receives approximately $400 a month.

The Kansas legislature placed a daily cap of $25 on cash withdrawals from the debit card, since most banking machines are stocked only with $20 bills, the $25 limit is effectively a $20 limit.

In Kansas’s system, every withdrawal incurs a $1 fee, and if the beneficiary doesn’t have a bank account, they will have to pay the ATM fee, too. ATM fees (US NEWS indicates that the average fee to use an ATM in the US was $4.52 as of October 2015.

Add to this the fact that the card issued by the state of Kansas isn’t like a debit card from an ordinary bank. Ordinary debit cards allow their holders to make purchases for free in stores. In Kansas however, beneficiaries only get two free purchases a month. After that, they pay 40 cents every time they use the card to buy something.

So I’m trying to do the math here, since the research indicates most poor folks don’t have checking accounts and as such they pay their bills in cash or through postal money orders (Postal money orders for amounts up to $500 are available for a $1.25 fee) how big a hit could a poor Kansan take as a result of this?

Worst case scenario: 20 $20 ATM withdrawals, minus a $1 per withdraw a fee, minus the $4.52 ATM withdrawal fee ($5.52 X 20 = $110.40) equates to approximately a 25% reduction in benefits ($400-$110.40 leaving you with roughly $289.60). So once again the banks get richer and the poor get screwed!

Thanks to Deb.