The cost of a system where you decide if someone should receive benefits or not is one thing - how to distribute the budget to those that most benefit. The extr

The cost of a system where you decide if someone should receive benefits or not is one thing - how to distribute the budget to those that most benefit. The extra cost in ensuring hose benefits are in specific vouchers for specific things tends not to be necessary from a saving money point of view. But government benefits for poor people are not about providing poor people with the ability to live, it's about controling them - be it company towns or church poor-houses which gave free housing but banned people from say drinking or dancing, to a healthcare system which bans people from leaving their job because they won't get healthcare. (Government benefits for rich people of course are completely different)