SUMMARY: This article argues that basic income is bad for the poor and for the economy in general. The author writes, “I have already pointed out how the guaranteed income plan, if adopted in the form that its advocates propose, would lead to wholesale idleness and pauperization among nearly all those earning less than the minimum guarantee, and among many earning just a little more. But in addition to the erosion of the incentive to work, there would be just as serious an erosion of the incentive to save. … It is not merely the effect of guaranteed-income proposals in undermining the incentives of those earning less than the guarantee that we need to be concerned about, but the effect of such proposals in undermining the incentives of those much further up in the income scale.”

Henry Hazlitt, “Incentives, Income, and Welfare.” Mises Economics Blog. February 7th, 2014.