A blogger called Newsmachete tells us about it at Americanthinker.com in Foodstamps for able bodied childless adults down 80% in Maine following 6 hr/week work requirement.
The article is actually a Fisking of a bleeding heart New York Times article about how the food pantries in Maine are overrun because of a harsh law limiting food stamp availability to able-bodied adults without minor dependents (abawds). Here's the kicker. They don't get the food stamps "unless they work 20 hours per week, take state job-training courses or volunteer for about six hours per week."
No one likes to work for free, and as someone who actually does volunteer work, I can say that sometimes it is a little bit frustrating. So maybe we can throw in a little free market to mix it up a bit. Allow real volunteers to sell their volunteer hours to the abawds. Problem solved.
What if the abawds don't have money to buy volunteer hours? Well, let them work if off, say mow a lawn for three hours in exchange for three hours of volunteer credits. Wait. We're right back where we started. Never mind.
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