EBT Glitch Highlights Fallacy of Centralization
At about 9 am Saturday, reports started rolling in that the nationwide EBT (Electronic Benefits Transfer) system wasn’t working. A computer upgrade resulted in connectivity issues for government assistance recipients in 17 states including Ohio and Michigan. All states using Xerox to administer the program experienced outages.
Twitter was all ablaze with tweets about chaos at Wal-Mart, threats of riots, and comparisons to Obamacare.
Meanwhile there were no reported outages of food banks and soup kitchens operated by local charities and churches.
Furthermore, those charitable organizations were able to deliver food to the people who needed it most and were most willing to seek it out with much less overhead than a nationally run EBT system.
UPDATE:
Looks like one Wal-Mart took a different approach. Instead of telling people they couldn’t shop, they allowed them too. The cards showed no limit and the card holders acted accordingly. THEY CLEARED OUT THE STORE!
Welfare recipients either knowingly used cards above their limits, which is theft, or they they think the government is in the business of giving away free stuff, which is ignorant.