The "cost" and "work" arguments really need to be combined together (this is also why economists prefer models to verbal arguments - it forces some amount of in

The "cost" and "work" arguments really need to be combined together (this is also why economists prefer models to verbal arguments - it forces some amount of internal consistency and avoids endless arguments about definitions). The primary difference between conventional welfare and basic income, is that you can have extremely high effective marginal tax rates for people on welfare. E.g. in Australia your effective marginal tax rate while on welfare is around 50%. For each dollar you earn, you get $0.50 less welfare (and pay a small amount of tax too). Usually high marginal tax rates are associate with a disincentive to work. However since when you are on welfare, the government makes you report your job-seeking activity, you are forced to try to look for work even though without this monitoring there would be little financial incentive to work. So having strings attached to welfare allows a higher effective marginal tax rate for people on welfare, and is therefore "cheaper" in some sense.