You don't to convince me capitalism is the best thing ever - I already agree with you.
But I am not interested in getting the most out of every dollar in aid - I am interested in getting people of the aid ASAP, and I don't think the best why to do that is to make their lives as good as possible right now. A place to sleep, clothing and food are the necessities of life (technically you could run around naked. In practice you would freeze to death in most of the places you could go) and this form of basic income would allow people to survive, but force them to work (or somehow produce) for anything above survival. In addition any little thing they did would bring immediate rewards to them.
In the case your person who already has a bed, he would certainly be welcome to just eat the meal and with his basic needs taken care of a mimimum wage job would enable him to save for the text-books or whatever.
I am assuming for the sake of this that people are lazy and will do no work that does not benefit them, that if free money is available people will take them, and that most would not use that money to do long term life improvement (certainly some would, but if you look at the number of people in the US who are overweight you will note that most aren't will to take pain for for pleasure later). If they have earned the money at a job it is theirs to do with as they please, if they get it from the government it comes out of their neighbors pockets. It seems only fair then that their neighbors should decide how it is used.
But I am not interested in getting the most out of every dollar in aid - I am interested in getting people of the aid ASAP, and I don't think the best why to do that is to make their lives as good as possible right now. A place to sleep, clothing and food are the necessities of life (technically you could run around naked. In practice you would freeze to death in most of the places you could go) and this form of basic income would allow people to survive, but force them to work (or somehow produce) for anything above survival. In addition any little thing they did would bring immediate rewards to them.
In the case your person who already has a bed, he would certainly be welcome to just eat the meal and with his basic needs taken care of a mimimum wage job would enable him to save for the text-books or whatever.
I am assuming for the sake of this that people are lazy and will do no work that does not benefit them, that if free money is available people will take them, and that most would not use that money to do long term life improvement (certainly some would, but if you look at the number of people in the US who are overweight you will note that most aren't will to take pain for for pleasure later). If they have earned the money at a job it is theirs to do with as they please, if they get it from the government it comes out of their neighbors pockets. It seems only fair then that their neighbors should decide how it is used.