Love all the "liberal" comments. It didn't work cause of this, it didn't work cause of that..." blah, blah...the fact is, government dependency never results in successful outcomes. Giving people money (like welfare) and telling them "good luck!" only makes them more dependent and less enthusiastic to work. There's generations of people in California who have depended on welfare and food stamps for their entire lives...because it's so easy to get, and if you can keep getting it, why work?
Would you stop working if the government gave you $500 a month? I sure as hell wouldn't. At no point in my life have I ever had so much money that I thought "yeah this is enough" and stopped trying to earn more.
So many people get held down by the system that they feel they can never do any better and settle with a shitty, meager living. Those people on welfare are not living 'easy' lives, far from it. If these people had a $500 payment every month it would lessen their financial burden and overall stress level where some of these people might have more mental capacity to think about doing something else with their life. When you live in constant fear of your finances and potentially losing the place you live, your mind tends to shift in another direction of "how can I survive" becuade of how absolutely exhausting that kind of life is. If I were in this situation, knowing I had an extra guaranteed $500 that I can rely on every month might actually ease some of my stress and chill me out enough where I feel like I can devote more time and energy to digging myself out of the hole rather than feeling nothing but despair and falling deeper in.