Ok, so welfare as an ideal is enough to cover the life-altering disasters that afflict us all, some more than others. Cover as in ensure they can be dealt with, and life return to normal productive one in reasonable amount of time.
That is the theory - in practise we have many muddled implementations of this - and I don't see a guaranteed minimum income as automatically bad. It will have market distorting effects but then the market has not historically been fast enough moving to help relieve people who have suddenly lost a job / limb. In fact a more laissez-faire period produced workhouses.
So ideally welfare is a short term provision. The current implementations are all a bit crap and I see no major reason why minimum incomes would be automatically worse.
That is the theory - in practise we have many muddled implementations of this - and I don't see a guaranteed minimum income as automatically bad. It will have market distorting effects but then the market has not historically been fast enough moving to help relieve people who have suddenly lost a job / limb. In fact a more laissez-faire period produced workhouses.
So ideally welfare is a short term provision. The current implementations are all a bit crap and I see no major reason why minimum incomes would be automatically worse.