So, I'm going to have to chime in her on the theme,
The overwhelming majority of people will not work if basic essentials and very basic entertainment are supplied.
They
will vote for themselves to get more and larger subsidies. They
will riot for such things. They
will go out and
steal such things. Once an entitlement mentality is created, a person doesn't see themselves as lacking the things they want because they haven't earned it yet, they see themselves as lacking it because 'The Man' is keeping it from them, and it is
their right to take it back.
This is very basic human psychology.
As an additional element,
Yes, most people who are chronically homeless and/or in poverty today (in the USA) are there because of the bad decisions they have made and continue to make. Some people crash out because of just one or two bad decisions, some because life just screws them over. People do not
stay in poverty though, unless they keep making the decisions that got them there in the first place.
And one of the absolute leading elements there, is sex before marriage, children before you're ready before it, and single-parent homes.
Now...
You cannot possibly prove that bald-faced assertion, nor can you actually be sure.
Now granted I'm in the same boat in that the exact situation I'm describing hasn't been tried. However I can look at basic market forces. Humans want things, things beyond merely having the bare necessities covered. People in this very thread have mentioned wanting mansions. How do you get that? Working for it. Even if there's soup kitchens, you still need to work for a mansion.
Some people want mansions instead of apartments, steak instead of lentils, a vacation to Europe instead of walking to the neighborhood park. Those people will do work to get them because we see that happening today, many people work long hours and hard jobs to get a nicer house, better car, and flashier vacation than doing a bare minimum to get by. Those people will continue to do so even if they can pick up a bowl of stew at the local soup kitchen.
What will change is that people will not work horrible, soul-crushing jobs at low wages under an abusive boss because their baby daughter will starve if they don't. But y'know what? I prefer a society that doesn't force people to do horrible soul crushing things to avoid watching their children starve to death.
(Edit: Your most recent post since I responded to this makes it clear I misunderstood your position. I apologize for that, but it's clear to me that at least one or two other people think that free housing should be a thing, so I'll leave the argument up.)
You are failing to account for a number of things here.
'How hard am I willing to work for how much gain?' Even an efficiency apartment is not cheap to build, and has costs involved in its maintenance. Utilities cost money as well. If the government is paying for your basic housing and food with taxpayer money, you can sit on your ass and do nothing and keep what you already have, or you can work for
thousands of hours to get a better place. Let's go with the cost of a smallish house in a low-cost area, about 60 grand. If we assume an hourly wage of 15$/hour, that's going to take you 4,000 hours of work to be able to purchase. That's 100 weeks of work, or around two years of labor.
But wait, we haven't accounted for taxes. Even if we assume a low tax rate (
so unlikely as to be preposterous in a society where government provides everyone housing), then that's about 20% income tax. That changes it to 12 $ an hour, so now we're at 5,000 hours of work, or 125 weeks.
That is, assuming that this individual spends
none of their cash on short-term luxuries, and that they have
no responsibility
whatsoever for any of their needs at all. Do I need to explain to you how people with that level of restraint are so statistically rare, that as far as societal planning is concerned, they functionally do not exist? It is beyond foolish to try to plan your society over the one in a million.
So, a person has a choice. They can sit on what they have, or work 40 hour weeks for the next two and a half years to try to get what they want. If we assume a functioning banking sector (also hilariously improbable in this extremely socialized system), they can probably buy it and take a mortgage after six months to a year.
Or. They can sit on what they've got, and take odd jobs to provide themselves short term luxuries (tasty foods, video games, etc), and just stay there, living off of the taxpayer's dime.
I can
absolutely tell you which of these two things is going to happen more often. It's going to be the easier option. And once you create that societal divide, it can only end one of two ways. Either more and more people get frustrated with losing increasingly enormous percentages of their income to able-bodied people who refuse to contribute to society and quit to live on the dole, or the two parts of society become embittered to the point where they start trying to use force to exert dominance over each other.
This isn't just theorization or hypothesizing. This is observable in the patterns of living of the chronically poor.
Who are the primary buyers of lottery tickets? The poor, because it's easier to dream of winning it big and waste money than to save five or ten dollars here and there and gradually save for a better life.
Who are the primary victims of casinos, losing entire paychecks in single visits? The poor, for the same reasons as above.
Who are the most likely to blow all of their money on luxury goods, rather than save and invest for the future? The poor. It's part of
why they're 'the poor,' because of poor money management.
Who are the most likely to be alocholics? Not just regular drinkers, but 'I am never sober if I can help it' alocholics? The poor. Many beggars immediately blow the money they're given on alcohol, because they can go to charities for actual food and a place to sleep. Losing money to this is also a big part of why the poor are the poor.
Who are the most likely to be heavily addicted to hard drugs? The poor; see the above.
Who are the most likely to repeatedly lose jobs due to poor attendance, poor performance, and poor showings at job interviews? The poor. And while sometimes yes, this is because of bad bosses, there are also
plenty of jobs out there with okay or just mediocre bosses, that will let you get your foot in the door if you can hold that job down for six months.
I have
been the homeless person looking for a job. I have slept in a homeless shelter, I've slept on a park bench. I've spent months looking for jobs and gotten turned down again and again. When I finally did get a job, it was a
horrible place to work, with profanity and personal attacks all over the place, one of the people I worked under chewing me out for 45 minutes straight one day.
But I stayed at the damn job until I could get something better. Then I pushed at the kind of work I
wanted to do, and got a better job still.
And this pattern and tendency isn't just something from my own personal anecdote. Ask people who regularly work with the poor. Broken families, money blown on alcohol, drugs, video games instead of food or saving for a downpayment on a house or to move to a place with lower cost of living and better job prospects. See what things look like in places like Skid Row in LA.
Most people who are chronically poor or outright destitute, are there because
they refuse to make better decisions with their lives.
Yes, some people need psychiatric help. By all means move them to an asylum. Some are legitimately crippled. Provide them with support and care. Even those who keep making bad decisions, I am all for
charities voluntarily helping them. But you do
not give those people a legally-enforced ability to dip into the the pockets of those who have made good and wise decisions with their lives. That is called a perverse incentive, and
as has been proven since the Great Society was implemented half a century ago, all it will do is sustain and spread these problems.
You
cannot give people money until they are no longer in poverty. People whose lives are broken don't need another or a bigger check in their lives, they need
people who care in their lives. They need someone who will get personally involved and invested, and help them get their heads on straight.
A Bureaucracy cannot love you.
An individual can.
If you want to see the poor and destitute in society lifted out of their harsh circumstances? Go meet someone who is in those kinds of circumstances. Don't try to help a whole community, try to help
one person. Get to know them, their problems, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Show them Love. And not the 'love' of foolish gratuity, but measured gratuity and rebuking in kindness.
That's how you can try to help someone. I've been the person in need of that help, and I've been the person trying to help, and I can tell you, it's rough. Going into that means coming face to face with human brokenness, and that's
very difficult. It
hurts seeing people suffer like that, and that it's so difficult is a huge part of why people keep trying to just write a check, or make someone else write a check, and won't deal with it themselves.
If you're too afraid to confront that yourself, you're not going to be able to help much by trying to push societal reforms, especially if they're ones that have failed repeatedly in the past.
I know there are some people here on the Sietch (like Sunhawk) who
do get personally involved in helping people who are in a place of profound brokenness. If you already are one of them, great. If you aren't, please give putting your own hand in a try before you push for the nth-thousandth government program to try to solve the problem.