Well, for one, it treats poor people like criminals who need to be punished for being poor. Granted, we do that to a large degree in the US now implicitly, bu

Well, for one, it treats poor people like criminals who need to be punished for being poor. Granted, we do that to a large degree in the US now implicitly, but this would be very explicit -- and, I feel, tremendously mean-spirited. More practically, it removes the poor as a voice in their own governance by using what amounts to a bribe. And in practice, it would probably remove most poor people from the voting rolls, because short-term, taking the 10k or whatever to make ends meet is the rational decision over pulling a lever that may or may not have any affect on your particular situation. I think my main objection here is that there is no real guarantee that the extra money, generally, will push people out of poverty and back into enfranchisement -- and if it doesn't work, what you've done is institutionalize bribery and legitimize an explicit oligarchy of the rich.