If you'd told me ten years ago I would ever support a basic income, I would have laughed. My thought would have been, "People getting paid without doing anything? Absurd!" But, in the past few years I've thoroughly changed my mind on this, and a number of other fronts. I now fully support a basic income (though I think a debate needs to happen about how much that basic income ought to be and how it ought to be funded…
> The increased cost for extending that type of benefit to everyone, while removing the bureaucracy of maintaining the existing programs (eligibility compliance and case workers, etc.), is actually not as dramatic as it first seems. You are missing one part, though. If you start giving cash for everyone, it's very likely this will result in raising prices for all commodities. And there you go for a another downward s…
If one takes a look at prices in each century, prices for each type of commodity vary a lot. For example, in the 1960 you could rent a house where I live for the same price you paid buying 5L milk. Since then the cheapest rents has gone up by factor of thousands, but milk has only gone up by factor of 8. During that time period, many reforms has happen including minimum wages, the strong middle class, and many efforts to reduces poverty.