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I mean, it is theoretically possible if you have the rare case of a guy who was fired from his job for no fault of his own and needs some money for food and shelter until he gets another job. In that hypothetical you are preserving the theoretical productivity of a person just long enough until they return to productivity.
In practice even unemployment insurance as implemented is not even this. Last I checked, most users of UI are repeat users. The rest of the redistribution programs fail even harder. The problem with giving money to people to keep them alive is it doesn't wean them off. Its just a self licking ice cream cone in social program form. That is, unfortunately, the Achilles heel of EA as currently styled as well. You have to account for future expenses as well.
You're considering redistributive programs in a vacuum, but I contend that that's not the best way to understand my proposal. My position is that the best way to perform welfare is unconditional wealth transfers, and to various degrees UI, SS, and even GiveDirectly are all conditional. That naturally leads to problems, like your mention of the "repeat users" thing, but that's proof of the conditionality being the problem, not the nature of transferring cash. Consider if, alternatively, these programs were administered as deliveries of particular baskets of goods. Think of how much more room there would be for corruption and inefficiency. Cash is better than food stamps is better than a council of politicians getting bribed by ag lobbyists to buy specifically high fructose corn syrup and distribute it. Anti-welfare people look at poor people choosing to buy inefficient luxuries and claim that that's proof that programs should be reformed to give politicians more control over program administration... but the alternative isn't poor people getting a healthier diet, the alternative is financially motivated politicians forcing poor people to buy even more inefficient luxuries.
And yes, "giving people money to stay alive" does result in dependency, for the uncontreversial reason that if you pay someone to do something, they will keep doing it. If you only provide wealth transfers to poor people, they will remain poor. But if you pay people independent of their actions, their incentive is to put the money to the most personally productive use possible. And given that capitalism provides a network of incentives to align personal greed to societal benefit, that in turn funnels money toward what's better for society.
But to give everyone money you either have to tax at such exorbitant rates that you are going to cripple the economy, or you are going to be giving out so little that it doesn't help anyone but the very poor anyways.
So unless you are the first politician in centuries to figure out a way to tax the underclass to give some extra money to private sector upper middle class families, your redistribution program is going to be bad for society.
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