Wes's idea was that the card would simply be denied if it was used to purchase certain things, or used at certain places.

I'm not sure if that is actually feasible, however. Does your credit card know what you purchase as soon as you purchase it? Probably not.

The other problem that I thought of, but forgot to mention in my previous post is that this does reduce jobs. Which is not exactly what we want to be doing in our country, I don't think… We need more jobs, and less that pay $300,000.

I like the employment idea, too…. You know, once upon a time, we built an incredible system of interstate roads… I've been wondering how that could be repeated (perhaps using the same land, or at least the island between the opposing directions that usually accompanies interstates) to build a massive public transit system.

I suppose the money for that would have to be supported by a legislative decision. And with the corporate personhood that is becoming more prevalent (and endorsed by our Supreme Court), that doesn't seem likely to happen… But Rooseveldt also did that "New Deal" thing… If that coudl be repeated… Giving people a job, paying them in food, for building the most impressive mass-transit system in the world…

Ah! Wishful thinking.

I recently attended an "Activists Training" in Denver and met a guy named Wes.

Wes is an 81 year old man who is still actively involved in his community and his new passion is the homeless and the poor and how to help them.

He came up with an interesting idea.

His daughter recently got herself a "ward" whom she has given a credit card to with a small weekly limit. Her ward can now spend his small limit on whatever he desires… But because she gets the bank statement, she will know what he has bought. And because it is small, he doesn't have an incentive to waste it and because it's flexible, he can spend it wisely. She has had some success with her ward and that success got Wes thinking that all the poor and homeless could be supplied with such a card.

The system would be a little like "food-stamps", a little like "hotel-stamps", a little like the food-bank, and a little like work-programs. A computer database could be set up and everyone in the plan issued a debit-card like ID. One whole side would be almost entirely a picture so that the card would be fairly hard to just steal; and it would serve as identification in case the user doesn't have another form of idea or whatever. The user would be given the responsibility of using the card in a responsible way, and the flexibility of using the card how they wish. But they would have to know that their purchasing decisions were completely available to anyone who wished to look it up.

The transparency is what would, theoretically, make the card work.

It would eliminate the need for food banks, because card-holders could simply go to the grocery story or what-have-you to buy their food. Therefore, you wouldn't have a lot of money lost in overhead or employees of the food bank who made 300k a year (he was pretty put out about that figure…)

The card would also take care of donations. It could run almost entirely on donation. Instead of giving to the food-bank or whatever, the money is deposited into this transparent (and group) account. Also, if a business offers service (say a hotel allows rebated rooms) that could be considered a donation to the system and immediately tax-deductible.

Could be a rather good system, eh?

I do see some problems with this system. First of all, that food that Kroger donates to the Food Bank is donated because they don't want to sell it. It's going bad (is likely to go bad before anyone buys it) and shoved on those less fortunate. But, if those less fortunate are buying that food, then Kroger will order more. They will still have the same level of waste and no where to donate it so it'll just go into the land-fill.

The second issue I am unsure about is the suggestion that the account be a joint account and everyone simply pulled from it. With a unique ID, you would know who spent what and all, but… It' would be difficult to actually hold anyone accountable if for no other reason than the sheer volume of people who would use the system. If you are talking about replacing the Food Bank with this system, then that's hundreds of thousands of people!

Any who, I thought I'd post it up here and see what people thought of the idea.