When I went through Financial Peace University, a nice 13-lesson series on personal finance taught by Dave Ramsey, he talked about how if you do poor people things, you will be poor and that if you do rich people things, you will be rich. To highlight his example, he talked about how you don’t see rich people lining up to get lottery tickets. This is not because they already have lots of money, as most rich people are like the rest of us in that they are never satisfied with the wealth they have, but because they know they are better off investing their money and time in other things.
Seems a bit idealistic, right? Well, the New York Post just published an article highlighting this simple truth:
Welfare recipients took out cash at bars, liquor stores, X-rated video shops, hookah parlors and even strip clubs — where they presumably spent their taxpayer money on lap dances rather than diapers, a Post investigation found.
A database of 200 million Electronic Benefit Transfer records from January 2011 to July 2012, obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information request, showed welfare recipients using their EBT cards to make dozens of cash withdrawals at ATMs inside Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn; the Blue Door Video porn shop in the East Village; The Anchor, a sleek SoHo lounge; the Patriot Saloon in TriBeCa; and Drinks Galore, a liquor distributor in The Bronx.
The state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA), which oversees the “cash assistance program,” even lists some of these welfare-ready ATMs on its Web site.
One EBT machine is stationed inside Club Eleven, an infamous Hunts Point jiggle joint known as much for its violent history as its girls in pink thongs.
Cops have been cracking down on the Bronx club since 2009 and shut it down temporarily in 2010. In July, five men were stabbed and two others shot outside after bouncers broke up a 4 a.m. brawl with pepper spray. The club appeared to be shuttered when The Post visited Thursday.
It is high time that many Americans force our public officials to acknowledge that being poor is not necessarily a problem of a lack of income, but a lack of character and common sense. Of course stupid people will take free money and spend it on sleaze.
Meanwhile, the producers of society, the hard-working Americans who pay the taxes, are stuck with seeing the idiots in DC argue about 9 billion is spending cuts and for some reason they can’t seem to find anything in the Federal budget to cut.