Thread: EBT Cards

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

I've stated many times in the past i dont buy into surveys as proof of anything and why.

Yes you have. That's fine. But I wonder if we're on the same page. When I say 'survey' here, I'm not talking about the thing where you get stopped in the mall and asked about your preference for scented soap or which prime-time tv shows you watch.

Originally Posted by CivilWars

So I tried looking at the link you posted for stats, and I am not smart enough to sort through their data. I did do a google search for EBT fraud and found many interesting links. Granted, on most of them they claim that the fraud rate is small, and I would agree in many cases it may be,

The PSID is a data set. They make that data available to researchers (where 'researcher' is anyone who asks). The researchers use the PSID (and other data) to answer a wide variety of questions. The people who put the PSID together do quite a lot of their own analysis, and they publish some very basic overviews of what they see going on in the data.

I've read enough of your posts here to know that you are smart enough to do at least some of this sort of work (maybe all of it), but you'd have to learn how. Some of it is pretty easy, but quite a bit of it is not. The people who do it worked very hard to learn how. They are professionals who take their work seriously.

You used to have to sign a contract to get direct access to the data. They'd send you the files, and you'd host them on your own hardware. If you were a research group with multiple ongoing projects, that made a lot of sense. You can now get very quick access to most of the data.

Panel Study of Income Dynamics - Data

Some of the data is restricted. That became an issue in the early 90s when they started to include geo-coded data. Each of the households in the survey was associated with its census tract. That enabled a whole new range of questions. Before, we'd know what sort of house/apt a household lived in, and how much it cost, or how much the mortgage was, etc. For any household, we'd know those things for every year they'd been in the survey. We'd know if they moved, but we wouldn't know where they'd been or where they moved to. When they added geo-codes identifying households with their census tract we could then know what was going on in their neighborhood. We know if property values were going up or down, or if crime was increasing or decreasing, or if they lived in an area of population that was getting older, or younger. That lets researchers ask questions about how the environment affects people.

This is the problem: the study goes back to 1968. The data is special in that it surveys the same families every year. It's not just a representative cross-section of the US population. It follows people through time. The survey these families answer (every year) is very detailed, and it's absolutely necessary to guarantee the anonymity of the participants. There is nothing making these people stay in the survey, and they have to be confident their trust will not be betrayed. When the geo-coded data was connected to the survey data, it became possible for someone with the complete data set to combine that with other public info and then specifically identify families and individuals in the survey. That's a problem.

When you run a model, you start by extracting the sub-set of the data you want. If your model needs a sub-set of the data which is sensitive, you send your model to the PSID and they run it for you. They'll send you back the results (after checking to make sure that none of what they're sending can compromise the people in their survey).

Were you curious about what is in the survey? Here's the survey from 2011:

ftp://ftp.isr.umich.edu/pub/src/psid...ires/q2011.pdf

It's 205 pages long.

Here's the 139 page document that further describes the questions and what types of answers are acceptable:

ftp://ftp.isr.umich.edu/pub/src/psid...ires/q2011.pdf

In 2011 there was a 126 page supplemental survey.

So this is the data that helps give a very good picture of who uses programs like SNAP and how they use them. This is how we know that the most common use-pattern for this sort of aid is short-term.

This is also how we tease out the various side effects. For example, access to food assistance cuts child diabetes rates by 16-17%. It also lowers the rates of late-payment and loan default (can't remember the figure for that one).

If the image in your head is of a family that suffers an income crisis and uses SNAP for a year, maybe two, then you have a decent sense of things. I think it's a mistake to try and sum-up the entirety of the experience with a single representative image, but if you had to do it that's not a bad choice. I know that since 2008 (the recession) more people have used SNAP. I don't know if durations have also gone up. If the image in your head is primarily of cheaters who abuse their assistance and derelicts who never try to improve their lives then you are very far out of touch with reality.

Examples of fraud absolutely do exist. My point here is that they are the exception. It would be great to cut down on that, partly because abuse is bad PR, but mostly because you want resources to go towards helping people.

The USDA's site claims that the trafficking rate (fraud) on SNAP was about 4 cents per dollar in 1993, and was about 1 cent in 2006-2008.

What is SNAP Fraud? | Food and Nutrition Service
What is FNS Doing to Fight SNAP Fraud | Food and Nutrition Service

Do I believe those figures? No. I don't have reason to doubt them either. A quick search didn't turn up their methodology. But those figures don't contradict what I knew to be the case back when I did this sort of thing. If I wanted a serious answer to this question I'd start by talking to someone who currently works in the field.

So yesterday afternoon I called up someone I know who is currently a researcher in social welfare and income dynamics.

The first thing they said is that their work is not investigating fraud, so they couldn't quote me sources or methods from personal experience. But since it's their field, they read the work of others. They had two things to say. First was that they'd never seen any estimates or evidence of fraud rates that came close to justifying major additional expenses on investigation or enforcement.

Second was that if they were going to start looking for recent work, they'd start here:

http://www.irp.wisc.edu/index.htm
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/jo...urnal/ssr.html

and probably hit scholar.google.com to see what casting a wide net brought in.

That sort of sucks, because most of the really good stuff - the high-grade un-cut research-crack - is behind a paywall for most of us. I have contacts. If you run across something you really want to read but also really don't want to pay $14 for, let me know.

[the privatization of knowledge via the 'academic journal' system is scandalous, and would make a good Drama thread]

I did find this overview:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/7-23-10fa.pdf (10 pages)

Originally Posted by CivilWars

but here is the part where I tend to agree with DG.

I-Team: Millions Of Dollars In Mass. Welfare Benefits Spent Out Of State « CBS Boston

In this story they talk about MA benefits being used all over the US. They report on $4.5M used in FLORIDA alone. I have no clue what the total benefits were that were paid out during this timeframe, so it may indeed be a very small percentage, but here is my favorite part. Before this investigation the state had not cancelled any benefits for out of state usage, but since they have cancelled over 3,000. That tells me that you don't really know how big the problem is until someone else takes the time to point it out to you. Do we really believe there were no issues prior to this investigation?

First, why is it a bad thing to spend your benefits outside your home state?

The story says that it's not illegal to spend your benefits outside your state. If they detect a surge of spending in one single far-away place, then maybe that's a red flag to investigate. Which (apparently) they did, and found some abuse. Someone brought it to their attention and they did something about it. Isn't this a good thing?

Second, $4.5 million?!? Are you fucking kidding me? Is that a lot of money? When I compare it to my own personal food budget, yeah. I could buy a lot of sushi with that. But go read:

http://www.cbpp.org/files/7-23-10fa.pdf

... and then get back to me. SNAP fraud is in the 1-2% range. The IRS reports that non-compliance in 2006 was 17%. Unreported business income in '06 cost the federal government $122 billion (that's 5 orders of magnitude more than 4.5mil). Where do you want to put your enforcement money?

I saw a cable tv 'news' show where they were pissing on and on about how poor people could use their EBT card at a farmer's market. The 'reporters' were outraged that poor people were buying organic vegetables for their kids. In the same week I heard someone else bitching about how poor people bought junk food (potato chips) with their food stamps. WTF? The only explanation I can come up with is that we're a nation of Eric Cartmans who simply hate on poor people.

But it's July 4th. There's hope for us yet. Go eat a hotdog (or a tan tube of organic soy protein) and enjoy our traditional method of celebration: launching explosives into the air.

God Bless America

Cheers,


AetheLove

I am not claiming that abuse is a large percentage, if we could even agree on what a large percentage is. I am claiming that I call bullshit when someone claims they know with certainty what the abuse rate is. The story I linked is but one example of the people who claim there isn't a problem not having a clue what the problem is. Using your benefits temporarily outside of your home state is no big deal, but, as the state agreed, when you use your benefits for 60+ days straight outside of your home state, and not one single time in your home state, and on top of that in a state thousands of miles away I agree that is a problem. The bigger problem is if you had asked those in charge prior to this investigation I am sure they would have also claimed there wasn't a problem, but lo and behold it was. Much the same I am sure there other types of abuse that just haven't been discovered, such as the reports of people using their cards at ATMs at casinos. Now maybe that was the closest ATM to the grocery store, or maybe they used it to go play slots. I can choose to believe those who say "don't worry, it's only a small problem at most" or I can believe logic that says if there are this many issues we are aware of then how many are there that we have no clue about?

As for the 4.5M it is from ONE state for ONE small type of abuse. If that was the only abuse in the whole national system then maybe your outrage at my outrage would be valid. My main point is we have no realistic clue what the order of magnitude is because if we truly knew who the cheaters were then they would be eliminated from the system for cheating and the abuse rate would be 0.

So how many of the roughly 3500 people that had their cards revoked were assumed to be "cheaters" prior to this investigation? I would guess none, yet in a very short time with very little effort they were all discovered. Maybe it's not 40%, but what if it is 10%? First, that is quite a bit of money, but more importantly that puts a pretty big black eye on the system for those who truly need it, and use it responsibly. And in regards to your comparison I agree the IRS is a joke as well, and I am sure we could point out plenty of other government run organizations that we could both agree are a joke. This also feeds into the skepticism I, and I bet many others, have.

Originally Posted by AetheLove

I would also guess none of them, or as close to 'none' as makes no sense to argue.

I also think that state police agencies and traffic engineers could give you amazingly accurate estimates of speeding - the complete profile too; all the ranges, and percentage of the population in each range, and frequencies, etc. They look at, and statistically sample, traffic all day every day. But they don't know the names of the people they describe. It's only when you catch someone and give them a ticket that there is a public record of a specific instance. You might decide to spend more time and money on enforcement, and it would take very little time or money to "discover" speed cheaters.

If you're a little old lady who lives on an out-of-the-way road where kids go to drive fast, and you call the Sheriff, you might see a bunch of new violators. That's nice for the old lady, and some speed cheaters might learn a lesson, but that might not have a big effect on the broader problem.

You might also take the licenses away from a bunch of kids who (when they're not haulin' ass on country roads) now can't take their own grandmothers to the store.

Unless you believe in a surveillance society where everything everyone does is tracked and registered with the government, this sort of enforcement is a judgement call.

... and now, no kidding, I have to go to the store and buy more hotdogs.

Cheers,


AetheLove

What's your poison in terms of hotdogs? I'm looking for something I can get at a grocery store. There are some good hotdogs at local hotdog joints, but the best I've found that's widely available would be Hebrew Nationals. They aren't overly impressive though.

Brats > hot dogs

Well, the only time my mother lets brats in the house is for...well, I haven't had any at home in a while. "Too fatty," she says. Hotdogs are considered healthy enough. -______- So, I work with what I can work with. (If I buy too much of my own food, I get yelled at.)

Just tell her hot dogs are made of lips and assholes, then you can enjoy some brats.

Originally Posted by DJ Mr. White

What's your poison in terms of hotdogs? I'm looking for something I can get at a grocery store. There are some good hotdogs at local hotdog joints, but the best I've found that's widely available would be Hebrew Nationals. They aren't overly impressive though.

I still honour the hotdogs of my ancestral homeland.

Hofmann Sausage
Premium Quality Meat Products - Sahlen's
Hot Dogs, Sausage, and Specialty Meat Products | Zweigle's | Rochester NY

These are available in lots of places that aren't upstate NY. I could get Hoffman's outside DC. Sahlen's was the premium dog at Charlotte Knight's baseball games. I know a NY ex-pat who used to order large quantities of Hoffman's shipped to Houston for him and his pals (I don't know if he's still there, that was 4 years ago).

Also:

New York > Locations > Ted's Hot Dogs

... which I recently discovered has a location in Tempe, Az. Don't know if you can get a Loganberry soda in AZ.

Ted&#39s Hot Dogs Grillin&#39 Pack

As a kid, my fave was Hoffman's Snappy Griller (pork and veal).

These days I'm much more likely to get an all-pork brat from a butcher.

You can order shipments from any of them. Don't know if you can use EBT for it.

Edit: some people like Sabrett, and it's possible you'll have better luck finding that in a supermarket where you are. Their barbeque onion sauce is what's "special" about Sabrett. I mention it because I know people hwo like it, but for me, Sabrett, Hebrew National, and the like, are just the best of the blah - a half-step up from Oscar Meyer or Hormell.

Cheers,


AetheLove