Matt makes some good points. One caveat is that the nature of politicians has not changed. Therefore any guaranteed income will NOT, I repeat NOT, replace our system of welfare. Oh it will at the start, but the very next session of Congress will see it come back, a little at first and a little more with each session of Congress. It’s the way politicians buy votes, by redistributing taxpayer money.

So at first a person with a job and a guaranteed income will have more income than a person with only the guaranteed income. But I guarantee you that will not last long.

Off topic, but I had to laugh at the line “If someone knows they have a job guaranteed, what’s the motivation of doing a good job, if they essentially can’t get fired?” That is the perfect description of government employees. They can watch porn all day, they can misplace VA patients until they die, they can go years without paying their income taxes, they can even steal from the government, but they are almost, not quite but almost, immune from being fired. Which is exactly why the government is so totally incompetent at what it does. We can’t get rid of the incompetent employees.