Here is why I think a basic income is a bad idea. By way of introduction, basic income is very similar to welfare or negative income taxation. Welfare already

Here is why I think a basic income is a bad idea. By way of introduction, basic income is very similar to welfare or negative income taxation. Welfare already exists, and can be made completely unconditional on everything but income should governments choose. All of these methods can be thought of as a map from pre-govt-intervention earnings, to post-govt-intervention earnings, i.e. after_tax(income) = income - tax(income) + welfare(income) + basic income = income - effective_tax(income) The problem with basic income is that it is a barrier to thinking holistically about the above equation. For example, a claimed benefit of basic income, is that unlike welfare, it does not decrease when you start to earn money (i.e. it is not conditional on income), and therefore does not provide a disincentive to work. In terms of the above formula, the derivative of effective_tax at 0 is close to 0. However, the cost of this is that the derivative of effective_tax must be higher at some other points. So while the poor have more incentive to work, the middle class and rich have less. The perfect system would be a balancing act between these forces, and the idea of basic income confuses the issue by suggesting there is something special about what is essential an arbitrary effective tax rate. Another issue is that welfare can be targeted to certain groups, and have strings attached. I personally am not a big fan of targeting welfare towards particular groups, with the exception of the disabled and certain ethnic minorities. However attaching strings to welfare is a complex political, social and economic question for which there are no easy answers. I don't believe that "no strings attached" is the optimal solution. Therefore I think that while making welfare more streamlined, less conditional on things other than income, and not dropping off too fast with income, are all ideas that need further investigation (and all of these are well studied by economists), advocating a basic income has a negative effect on both the political debate, and our conceptual understanding of the issues.