[pjc50]

What's the alternative to "letting" people stay at home? Jail?

Yes, feelings of uselessness are harmful to people. But the current approach of cutting off people's food, heat and accomodation in an effort to force them to find work somehow is worse. It's possible that "workfare" might be better - but in practice it ends up almost instantly corrupted into a system for giving free or below-minimum-wage labour to businesses while still not providing enough to live on, and usually failing to accomodate the needs of people with disabilities and mental health conditions.

(MH issues are a very strong predictor of unemployment, addiction and suicide, by the way)

And we've also not considered the question of single parents who can often find that employment has marginal or negative returns after childcare and commuting costs.

[rogerdpack]

I don't know what the right answer is. I'm just really afraid that if you toss "some people" 1.5K/month, that they don't have to earn, they may use it to buy drugs and then where are we?