The attempts to stigmatize the poor continue apace. I wrote earlier about the move to give welfare recipients their allocation via orange debit cards so that everyone would know they were on welfare. Now a Michigan legislator wants to ban foster children from using that state’s $80 per year clothing allowance to buy any new clothing item. Instead the clothing vouchers could only be redeemed at second hand stores.

There is nothing intrinsically bad about buying used clothes or any other item. I would guess that almost all people have done so. It is the idea of forcing poor people to have only that option, that new things are too good for them and they do not deserve them, that makes me find such stories revolting. What kinds of people spend their time thinking up such things? Maybe they will next give poor people permits that allow them to get their food from dumpsters.