To be fair, government cheese (from what I understand) was actually created in order to save extra milk the government bought up as part of a price control effort. In other words, there was an abundance of milk (because the government subsidized it, causing more to be produced than the market needed).

Once it was already sitting around, it's been used to address citizens in the country not having enough resources. Which is kind of the same thing your semi-universal basic provisions would address.

Literally the exact opposite. Government cheese was created because due to subsidies, there was way too much milk that was going to be dumped into the nearest river until the Govt paid the farmers to convert it all to cheese and bought it and shoved it into storage to prop up cheese prices.

It is the definition of over-abundance, since all the farmers were going to have to shoot their dairy cows to actually afford to keep some around and continue producing milk