Put people to work under government programs similar to the Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps.

Which would need to be paid by government, which would need revenues to pay for it, but for which revenues will be reduced because fewer people are paying income tax (since they have no income).

Think about it...if all those people really become unnecessary you could round them all up and shoot them, and it would have negligible effect on the economy. They're, in effect, dead weight. How do we deal with that (since shooting them is probably a bad idea!). Raise taxes on all the productive people to pay for them? At some point the burden will be too much. Without some paradigm shift, such as going from agriculture to manufacturing - then manufacturing to technology, we're going to have a lot of really angry/disenfranchised/desperate people. That's not a recipe for anything good.

I'm all for helping someone who has stumbled. But perpetual support just isn't practical, and is not something you could sell to most people.

1poorguy