Moms can buy beer with grants
SASSA: IT’S ABOUT THE BIGGER QUESTIONS ...
There are risks to limiting people’s economic options.
Earlier this year, I was in a small town in the platteland. It was dry, dusty and hot. I needed beer. I found myself in the queue at the liquor store behind a woman who was buying two sixpacks of flavoured beer.
She also had a baby on her back. And she paid with her Sassa card.
My immediate reaction was indignation. After all, that was my tax money being spent to buy alcohol.
That was followed by disbelief. Was this really the best use of the child support grant meant to take care of this woman’s baby?
At R420 per month, the grant is already too meagre to fully cover a baby’s needs. At R150 for her two six packs, she had just spent more than a third of it on something that seemed entirely frivolous.
In those first moments, I considered what an indictment this was on South Africa’s grant system.
However, in the hours that followed, I realised there was far more to think about here. What I had just witnessed might not have been the best use of my taxes, but the alternatives are possibly far worse.
Even if you ignore that this woman might be an exception – that majority of grant recipients may in fact be using their grants to cover the basic needs for which they are intended – her decision to spend the money on beer raises important questions about economic choice.
If we want South Africa to be a free market country, where the state does not impose its will on every aspect of our lives, then is it appropriate to regulate what this woman does with her grant?
It may not be the best use of the money, but how do we stop her from exercising the choice to buy it without also accepting the risks in limiting anybody’s economic options?
Denying any grant recipient the ability to shop anywhere would also almost certainly introduce the law of unintended consequences. If somebody wants to buy beer, they will. If they can’t buy it from the liquor store, they will go somewhere else, and probably pay more. That would leave even less money for their child.
The state would also have to consider an entire list of where grant recipients could shop and where they couldn’t.
Perhaps an alternative answer is a stamp system that provided mothers with credits to buy nappies, formula, clothes and other essentials, rather than cash.
This might even have the benefit of making the money go further, since the state would now be the buyer and have enormous purchasing power that could force the prices of these goods down.
However, can the state really think of everything that a child support grant might be needed to cover – from every piece of stationery that a child might need for school, to medicines and educational toys?
The state cannot anticipate what needs a child might have. The person in the best position to make those decisions is the mother, or the child’s carer.
If we are going to empower people, then we have to give them the freedom to make those choices for themselves.
That does mean that, unfortunately, some people will make bad decisions. That is, however, a consequence of a free market economy.
If somebody wants to buy beer, they will