If you’re a recent startup founder, chances are you’ve taken a
huge paycut. Well guess what - America was built on innovators
like yourself and there are government assistance programs
designed to help you while you sacrifice to grow your
business. mRelief helps a user determine whether they qualify
for Illinois government assistance programs like Food Stamps.
Chicagoan here. The amount of fraud in welfare here is astounding. I regularly go to the grocery store and see people with nicer cars than me using their link card to pay for "groceries." By groceries I mean high-end items like lobster and steak, which they are clearly cashing out the card on and not shopping for food like everyone else. I don't know how they qualify for this, but imagine via some creative accounting that mRelief, I'm sure, is also willing to share.
I don't think people outside of the city realize how bad things are here. The corruption, handout mentality, patronage, politics, public sector unions, etc are probably the worst in the nation and it only seems to be getting worse. The various attempts to build a SV-like environment in Chicago will continue to fail until this corruption is cleaned up. I don't see a lot of incentive to invest in startups here, especially if we factor in our very high tax load and the little public value we get from it.
Welfare fraud is one of those things that people seem to think is rampant, and politicians often encourage that idea, but when measured turns out to be pretty infrequent.
None of your links are local to Chicago. Yes, diluted nationwide I'm sure its an acceptable loss, but locally things are different. Politics are local and dismissing my experience with nationwide links makes you look especially disingenuous here. This is like saying Detroit is very safe to live in if you look at nationwide crime stats.
The only thing local here is the Reagan welfare queen comment from almost 40 years ago, which is far from timely. Nor was I making that argument. I don't think there are welfare queens of any type, but I do see, almost daily, casual abuse of the system designed to help the poor. With little political motivation to fix this broken system, if we consider the patronage from the aldermen, there's actually disincentives to fix this system. Considering our high tax rates, its a shame our leadership can't make this a priority.
This article doesn't support the argument upthread:
Illinois’ error rate, from either overspending on food stamps or not spending enough, is 1.74 percent, according to Januari Smith, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Human Services.
So (a) it's a tiny fraction, (b) it's an error metric, meaning some of it is money we didn't spend, and (c) nowhere is any of it categorized as "fraud".
I've picked up groceries from Jewel for my brother who is quadriplegic. Just because I'm in a 1000 dollar suit, doesn't mean I defrauding the government.
I worked at a Jewel as a cashier for 3 years:
"By groceries I mean high-end items like lobster and steak, which they are clearly cashing out the card on and not shopping for food like everyone else. "
Is mostly an uban legend.
There is some fraud going on, but it mostly lazy people who get disability diagnosises and just live on $1000 a month. Sucks for us tax payers, but they aren't living high on the hog.
Why would you assume someone with an expensive car is wealthy?
Statistics show time and again that the majority of wealthy people (millionaires or greater) drive used cars[1]
It seems that the people buying brand new Audi, BMW, Lexus etc are people with little regard for personal finance, and are more often than not overextending their credit to afford such a purchase. Any surprise should be aimed at lending institutions who provide low income homes with loans for luxury cars.
