anyone on for instance the american foodstamps debit card able to explain how this is administered. where its not meant to be allowed to 'cash out' and only meant to used to buy 'healthy foods'.?
do the social security office penalise foodstamp recipients by knowing whats bought. or is it up to the retailer to refuse service if someone using these unemployment debit cards if asked for alcohol and cigarettes using the card
i only ask as an example of a dystopian future where in a cashless society if alcohol prohibition was to return. how it would be stopped or worked around.
i already seen news of america not allowing deadbeat dads to renew their car licence/registration if they are flagged as not paying child maintenance.
It's probably controlled by the retailer by law, probably.
There is a similar scheme where I live, where you can only buy food and groceries with these food tickets. Now of course they were tickets before but they are now rolling out debit cards for it.
So how it works, is that you go into a supermarket and the cashier guy can only count the food products for that ticket (no beverage and no tobacco of course), for example:
You buy 5 beers for 10 euro, 1 kilogram of apple for 3 euro and 1 frying pan for 15 euro, in total you pay 28 euro, and if you have a 10 euro ticket, you can only deduct 3 euros and the rest you have to pay with currency, and then you are forced to buy another 7 euros worth of food, since the other items are not deductable, and you cant get the rest in cash, its not allowed.
So you cant swap the tickets for cash, nor you can buy alcohol , tobacco, and other prohibited consumable goods for it.
Now of course most people dont give a fuck and they regularly swap the tickets for cash, but it's just that the supermarkets are not allowed to do.
However after they roll out the debit cards, and probably make it mandatory, it's game over, now the rule is enforced 100%, because the bank will just simply not allow those products to be bought. Maybe the bank database will be linked with the merchant database ,and the bank will filter out prohibited items by product code.
I suspect it works like this in the USA as too, it's a similar scheme.