Perhaps. It's hard to know what exactly the cultural repercussion of such a big change will be. Bu, one of the strong ideas behind basic income (or negative in

Perhaps. It's hard to know what exactly the cultural repercussion of such a big change will be. Bu, one of the strong ideas behind basic income (or negative income tax currently exists in some places including the US), is that it does allow people to receive it and still be incentivized to work. A person receiving social welfare (or worse, some sort of disability allowance) loses part or all of their benefits if they work. Social welfare works like a huge marginal tax rate (sometimes over 100%, effectively) on the first dollar earned. It's not impossible that unemployment actually goes down. What I expect you'd see less of is people working as long for low wages, the proverbial 3 job poverty. Say you make $6 per hour after tax (basic income would probably require income tax to kick in on the first dollar) and you start with $250 per week. The difference between working a 40 or a 60 hour week is $610-$490. But, this back of the envelop stuff only goes so far. There are a lot of side effects that are complicated in ways even economists will admit we don't understand.