TL;DR: basic income might be a pipe dream in developed nations but in development countries it could be a huge social changer<p>I'm not arguing this would work or not in Switzerland with that huge basic income (to my Brazilian standards) but basic income might be an interesting concept for developing countries where hunger is still a problem. Well, exactly like in Brazil.<p>I don't believe we'd have the Australian problem -- that someone else mentioned in here -- of rents going up and the basic income of people being diluted in the economy making general prices higher. It has been proposed before a basic income of between 50-75 USD per month and I believe currently there's only a single city in the whole country where it's effectively in use; that's never been approved in country-level, that's why.<p>That may seem an extremely low income but when you're starving that's a LOT of money, specially in the country side, and it's enough to make a huge impact in the economy and the development of the country in the long term. I don't think anyone who makes 20x more money than that monthly would worry about it, so no evil landlords to mess with the plan... in theory. Also, because that would apply for ANYONE who lives in the country (even foreigners), there wouldn't be this "they get it, I don't" feeling that could generate hatred between classes. And honestly, to the middle-class 50-75 bucks is nearly nothing.<p>PS: there's a country-level law in Brazil that institutes some social security for poor families (the so called "Bolsa-Família"), but it's not treated nor seen as a basic income law by all means<p>PPS: sorry for the lack of supportive links, but Google is your friend as this subject is pretty popular in the Brazilian media. Search for news mentioning the former senator Eduardo Suplicy, the first to propose all that