I commented in reply also above. Giving money to people who are reasonably well equipped to spend it on things that there are mature and reasonably efficient m

I commented in reply also above. Giving money to people who are reasonably well equipped to spend it on things that there are mature and reasonably efficient markets for is fine. No one has trouble finding groceries and standard items needed for living with their SS checks. When you give money to people to spend on say, childcare, and there is not the built up social / labor infrastructure to do it, private enterprise often will just exploit the infusion of money to jack up prices and not actually provide more of the service desired. Come to think of it, if you go back to the Social Security example, giving people more money because they can't afford housing is not going to magically create housing on its own. It will just produce more expensive housing as people try to outbid each other. We've all seen how that plays out.