It's interesting that you mention that particular welfare structure, since that's actually already used in a huge way in the United States, in the form of the "

It's interesting that you mention that particular welfare structure, since that's actually already used in a huge way in the United States, in the form of the "Earned Income Tax Credit"[0], which while I don't hear it talked about publicly very often, is a huge program that sounds like it does a lot of good. To quote Wikipedia: At a cost of $56 billion in 2013, the EITC is the third-largest social welfare program in the United States after Medicaid ($275 billion federal and $127 billion state expenditures) and food stamps ($78 billion). And this is an example, also taken from Wikipedia, of the way the EITC might work in the real world: For example, a married couple with two qualifying children and yearly income of seven thousand dollars will receive EITC of $2,810 (going up the hill). At fifteen thousand dollars, this couple will receive EITC of $5,036 (plateau). And at twenty-five and thirty-five thousand dollars, this same couple with their two children will receive EITC of $4,285 and $2,179, respectively. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#Households.27_average_taxes_and_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#House...