There have been a few pilot programs in places like Namibia, India, etc. There's a couple of reasons to take early reports with a grain of salt: These program

There have been a few pilot programs in places like Namibia, India, etc. There's a couple of reasons to take early reports with a grain of salt: These programs are implemented with varying degrees of completeness (i.e. they're only regional, or they're only a partial basic income), and it's still early and on a relatively small scale. That being said, early reports have been extremely positive: Variously, crime rates have plummeted, education has risen sharply, child malnutrition has dropped, new startups have skyrocketed, community income has risen by a substantial amount more than the grant amount, etc. Given that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of economics understands that a basic income is at least _theoretically_ sound, the (few and flawed) data points that we have so far are slightly encouraging. EDIT for source link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Examples_of_implementation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Examples_of_implem...