HH3 wrote:... The spending on food and neccessities could be worked out in partnership with a local supermarket chain eg Foodland. Give people a card with a certain amount of money on it each fortnight that can only be used at that business. Foodland dont have a liquar chain I am aware of, unlike Coles with Liquarland, so there cant be much danger of buying alcohol with the cards...
There are drawbacks to tying such cards to one retail chain.
In the "Great Depression" of the 1930s a relatively few providers sold food for the coupons issued to the poor and unemployed by the government, and the government paid the retailers for the coupons.
Presumably the government wanted value for money, and put pressure on the vendors to be cheap, but as those vendors had the monopoly they could respond (or just exploit the situation) by passing off poor quality and stale food to those tied to them by the coupons. That's what gave the original "Dole" a bad name, and the Unions and charities fought to replace the coupons with money that the poor could spend at other outlets instead.
So, I'd say a card usable at any, or at least several supermarket chains, would make more sense.
How to make sure that it can only be used for food rather than booze or gambling is then the issue.
(After all Woolworths are big in booze and gambling interests.)
