That's too simplistic: How do you handle someone who has a low-paid job that earns $10,000 a year? Make them quit their job? Part of the benefit of this approa

That's too simplistic: How do you handle someone who has a low-paid job that earns $10,000 a year? Make them quit their job? Part of the benefit of this approach versus a minimum wage is that it can make low-paid jobs viable. With your suggestion it wouldn't make sense for any job to pay less than $20,000 a year. How about people that simply can't work, due to long-term illness, disability, or age? Another benefit to this approach is that it simplifies administration of welfare/benefits so that you don't need to prove illness/disability to get the money. This also helps to remove stigma associated with disability, which is a Good Thing for society. What if there's no need for your government labour where you live, but there is elsewhere? Do you create busy work for people - which will incur capital/material costs and management costs - or do you start forcing people to relocate? Pretty much the entire point of this way of handling welfare is that you do pay people without receiving anything directly in return or enforcing how the money is spent. That way people can gain the freedom to decide how to spend it themselves and will largely make good choices. (And even when they make bad choices, the state is no worse off than under the current system.)