Kansas has just passed a law limiting ATM withdrawals from public assistance benefits accounts to $25 a day.
Since most ATMS only stock $20 bills, that’s really a limit of $20 a day, and out of that $20 customers will likely have to pay ATM fees, too. Kansas lawmakers are, in effect, making it more expensive for poor residents who can’t afford to keep a minimum balance in a regular checking account to do things like pay rent and utility bills. Paying a $100 electric bill, for example, would require five trips to an ATM, and, depending on the ATM fees charged, could cost the benefit recipient $15 or more. Oh, by the way, those ATM fees benefit the banks.
Despicable? Yes. But it could never happen here, right? That’d be too low a blow even for Florida legislators to inflict, wouldn’t it?
Not really.
According to a recent Federal Reserve analysis, Florida is miles ahead of Kansas in undermining efforts to narrow the gap between rich and poor.
The report focuses on federal tax policies that try to level the playing field across incomes and state policies that negate those federal efforts.
From Washington Post writer Christopher Ingraham, who mapped each state’s efforts — or lack thereof — at creating economic equality:
When it comes to taxes, some states build on federal efforts to reduce inequality and take steps to further decrease the gap between rich and poor. But plenty of others actually undermine the federal government’s anti-inequality measures.
In essence, they take from the poor and give that money to the rich.
Florida has essentially said screw you to the poor in other ways, too.
There was the failed attempt to drug test all welfare recipients, which a court struck down as unconstitutional. And, when a seemingly innocuous bill making 64-ounce growlers legal passed earlier this year, it expressly barred electronic benefits transfer cards from being used to buy alcoholic beverages, even though that’s already illegal. Then there’s that whole huge battle between the House and Senate over whether to expand Medicaid or let people who are poor and sick rot in the streets because they were born without bootstraps.
This article appears in May 21-27, 2015.
