> it would be nice if...you could sponsor homeless people with enough money to find accomodation and medical/psychological assistance You're presuming that our

> it would be nice if...you could sponsor homeless people with enough money to find accomodation and medical/psychological assistance You're presuming that our society and economy isn't designed to purposefully try to get a certain percentage of people into this situation. If someone theoretically entertains the possibility that this is the case ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_army_of_labour ), then that would be like building sand castles on the shore during low tide. Actually you don't have to go back to the 19th century to read about this. Read what mainstream economists openly say about NAIRU, or what Business Week and the Wall Street Journal were openly saying when the unemployment rate went below 4% in early 2000. They were pretty much calling for higher unemployment rates - as much as you can get away with in this society any way.