What If We Just Gave Poor People a Basic Income for Life? That’s What We’re About to Test.

[hunter]

238. There are not so many able-bodied couch potatos as people imagine...

... and those few who exist have unknown problems. In a suitable environment they might blossom, or at least be somewhat functional.

Someone like Paul Erdos was a dysfunctional human being with a talent for math so our society allowed him to comfortably exist. But a talent doesn't have to be great, rare, or special. Some other person might have a talent for picking up litter, maybe not so much as a "professional" on-the-clock litter-picker-upper would, but enough that they are satisfied harmlessly wandering around picking up some litter every day. There's no reason a person like that should have to suffer, no reason unemployment and unemployability to be punished.

The homeless people who live down by the creek near my home are unemployed and unemployable for many reasons. None of them are lazy. Being poor and homeless is hard work.

But even when you clean them up, get them sober and/or taking their crazy-meds (I can say crazy-meds because I take crazy-meds...) most are still unemployable in modern society, at least in any conventional manner. You do not want them picking your strawberries; not as a farmer, not as a consumer of strawberries.

Healthy people of all abilities really do want to be part of a working community, even if it's a community of dysfunctional or rejected people like themselves. That's why unemployed and under-educated young people join gangs, that's why addicts and mentally ill people end up congregating on skid row. Humans are social creatures.