Basic income idea always resambles me a lot Lex Frumentaria introduced in ancient Rome by Gaius Gracchus. The idea was exactly the same - give people "basic inc

Basic income idea always resambles me a lot Lex Frumentaria introduced in ancient Rome by Gaius Gracchus. The idea was exactly the same - give people "basic income", that is alomost free grain. Was Gracchus successful? Not really, he died in a rather miserable way. In addition Rome was weakened by that law. First of all even if budget could not afford free grain, there was no way to put end to that law (Rome was a democracy, croud wanted free grain). The other unwanted effect was migration of people from villages to the city (hey, there is free food there, so what's the point working hard). I encourage every supporter of basic income to learn more about that Roman law and how it affected Rome. When we start giving money we need to think about a number of issues: 1. Someone needs to earn these money, someone will have to be taxed and that someone will not be happy. Rich people tend to know how to avoid taxes. So it may turn out that in a few years it will be hard to provide money for basic income, unless a given country has sufficient natural resources to finance basic income. 2. How basic income will affect inflation (if it is going to increase it, it may happen that basic income becomes worthless shortly) 3. How basic income will affect democracy - I can imagine a party which main program point will be "increase basic income" (Gaius Gracchus was outbid by his competitors) - a croud might vote for a random wacko without thinking about further consequences. 4. And, at the and, as there is a question if basic income is ethical. We take money from X to give that to Y, this does not sound good when we think about things like ownership, justice - obviously that depends on ethical system one prefers. If it turn out that basic income caused economical problems in a given country (higher inflation, high taxes, capital escape, budget deficit) then who will have to pay for that failed experiment? It may happen that potential beneficiaries of free income (economically weaker, poorer people) will have to pay for it much more then they got.