If there was any doubt left in your mind that the welfare system in the United States is fraud-ridden and corrupt, a new story out of New York should put that doubt to rest. As the NY Post reported, welfare recipients in the United States use food stamps to buy cheap food in New York and ship it to the Dominican Republic in blue plastic barrels and sold on the black market:

Food-stamp fraud in New York has turned into foreign aid — to black-market profiteers in the Dominican Republic.

Last week, The Post revealed how New Yorkers on welfare are buying food with their benefit cards and shipping it in blue barrels to poor relatives in the Caribbean.

But not everyone is giving the taxpayer-funded fare to starving children abroad. The Post last week found two people hawking barrels of American products for a profit on the streets of Santiago.

“It’s a really easy way to make money, and it doesn’t cost me anything,” a seller named Maria-Teresa said Friday.

You have to give these entrepreneurs credit, they saw an opportunity to exploit price differentials in different areas (what economists call geographic arbitrage) and are making the most of it. And it would be perfectly legal except for the fact that the initial investment cost is being paid for unwittingly by the American public through misguided welfare programs.