🚀 go-pugleaf

 The current welfare reform package aside, it can well be imagined
 that as money gets tighter and tighter, there will eventually be
 a substantial number of people out there with no means of support
 at all.  Food banks (which are IMHO an abomination in the first
 place, a cold and cynical dumping of their responsibilities by
 the government on to the generosity of the citizens) are having
 trouble now, and can't be expected to keep up.
 
 So what happens when starving people start turning up at hospital
 emergency wards?  The hospitals will have to treat them, IVing
 them at very high cost back from the hard edge of malnutrition
 and dealing with malnutrition's little complications such as
 opportunistic infections.  The net cost to the community will end
 up far higher than if some mininal safety net had been kept in
 operation.
 
 Workfare and training-program-fare, ok; but civilized societies
 don't let any of their citizens starve in the absence of food
 shortages.