When I first looked at the issue of “basic income,” back in 2013, my gut reaction was deep skepticism.
That’s because I feared many people would drop out of the labor force if they could live off government handouts (as illustrated by this Wizard-of-Id parody).
It’s true that the current amalgamation of welfare programs also discourages work and creates dependency, but a government-provided basic income could make a bad situation worse.
Especially if politicians didn’t get rid of other redistribution programs (a very realistic concern).
That being said, what’s the evidence, either pro or con?
There was an experiment in Finland, which poured cold water on the concept.
And now we have some U.S.-focused research. Four economists from the University of Chicago (Mikhail Golosov, Michael Graber, Magne Mogstad, and David Novgorodsky) investigated this topic in a new study from the National Bureau of Economic…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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