So I called the number this morning to activate my food stamps card, then I went to the grocery store.
On the way home, I heard NPR mention the reason why the guy on the phone had that accent: he's in India, making $3.00/hr. Replaced a guy in Wisconsin making $12.00/hr.
Sounds like saving $9.00 per hour, but I calculate that the food stamps for the guy who used to make $12.00 per hour come to about $5.00 per hour, so, assuming no overhead (yeah, right) we are down to saving about $4.00. Between burocratic overhead and a nice profit (gotta pay back those campaign contributions somehow) for the privatization company and paying the guy in India to answer the phone for the guy whose job he took, I'm thinking that half the money going to who it's intended for is optimistic. And at that rate, the $5.00 to the guy who used to answer the phone costs about $10.00, for a net loss of $1.00. Not counting every other program the guy who used to answer the phone is on, and counting the intangible but considerable benefits of working for a living as having a value of 0.
Privatization often makes sense. Here, it just adds a layer of motivations so that the purpose of the entire exercise is opposed to the interests of the organization doing it.
The guy behind this particular nifty arrangement (at least the Wisconsin version) is now handling this kind of thing on a Fed level.