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At what point do we stop? Current safety nets aren't enough, so let's try basic income, but some people will mismanage their money, so let's do their shopping f

• ncallaway 10y ago
  The way I see it there will always be some percentage of people that mismanage whatever capital they have (be it earned or given), and have financial hardship that leads to a lack of food and housing. With current safety nets, we have perhaps 15% [1] of Americans that for whatever reason lack the capital to have an adequate supply of food. With Basic Income, perhaps we reduce that number down to 1%, but we still need to take care of that 1%. With the government services program that I suggested (and there are many other models, and I'd be happy to discuss other models), maybe you get that number down to 0.3%. Yet, as a country, we still need to take care of those people. Personally, when it comes to feeding and housing people, my answer to "At what point do we stop" is: Never. [1] 48.1 million Americans lived in Food Insecure Households (http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hunger/hunger-and-poverty/hunger-and-poverty-fact-sheet.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/); http://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/impact-of-hu... 317.3 million Americans in 2014 (http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2013/12/31/us-population-2014-317-million-and-71-billion-in-the-world http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2013/...) = 15.1%