100% in favor of guaranteed minimum income. I think its doable. All the research seems to say that people make poor decisions when in dire straits. It seems like a great optimization.
I've never seen the numbers worked out. Also, you'd certainly need to adjust birthrate globally to keep ahead of Malthusian pressures. I'll remain sceptical until I see an actionable proposal. Have a link?
There have been a few pilot programs in places like Namibia, India, etc. There's a couple of reasons to take early reports with a grain of salt: These programs are implemented with varying degrees of completeness (i.e. they're only regional, or they're only a partial basic income), and it's still early and on a relatively small scale.
That being said, early reports have been extremely positive: Variously, crime rates have plummeted, education has risen sharply, child malnutrition has dropped, new startups have skyrocketed, community income has risen by a substantial amount more than the grant amount, etc.
Given that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of economics understands that a basic income is at least _theoretically_ sound, the (few and flawed) data points that we have so far are slightly encouraging.
