Here's a thought. Why can't we as a society ensure that everyone is paid a living wage according to their need.
It may take a while, but I believe this will be the only way that we can hold this society* together.
* Deep irony here, speaking as one of 'Thatcher's children'.
Not really; there's a fair amount of support for a basic income from conservatives and libertarians, for good reason. We've decided that we aren't going to let people starve in the streets if they can't find a job. Given that, it makes much more sense to just give people money than to have a huge bureaucracy with dozens of programs trying to alleviate individual aspects of the problem of not having money.
1. Unreasonably expensive 2. A net negative for the social problem they're supposed to solve
The underlying problem isn't poverty or lack of education. It's a complete collapse of public moral leadership since the 80s - not in the sexual sense, but in the business sense of "Fuck everyone in the world, because money."
Politics and business have always been corrupt. But from the 30s to 60s you could still find good people trying to do good things.
Now they're institutionally corrupt, and politics and business - especially finance, which is the de facto government in the US - have become industrial asshole factories.
This is barbarism, and it can only lead to more barbarism.
Many people simply don't have the skills or ability to contribute real value to the modern economy. 50 years ago simple physical labour was a valuable economic contribution and remunerated accordingly; today there's a constantly shrinking pool of minimum-wage jobs.
The problem is a shrinking amount of money to pay for these work that needs to be done, as its all being filtered into CEO's pockets rather than corporations paying taxes.