I have two concerns: the first is basically the one you identified: welfare and similar programs are less about helping people and more about keeping a large voting block in a state of dependency. I'm not sure the alternative of basic income changes that, it might actually increase it since more people would be getting basic income than are currently getting welfare and other forms of assistance.
Any program which encourages people to be dependent on government rather than themselves is problematic in my view (obviously with exceptions for those with disabilites that make this impossible).
My other concern is that it's simply inflationary. Giving every adult a $34,000 basic income (the amount proposed here) would mean a married couple would be bringing in $68,000 a year doing NOTHING AT ALL productive. There's no getting around economics: money is an abstraction of productivity. To the extent you introduce money into the economy that was not created by productivity, you simply reduce its value. So what would happen is that the basic income would become the new zero line. It represents the value of zero productive work. Wages and prices would simply inflate so that a person having only basic income would be as impoverished as someone having zero income is today.
$34,000 is foolish when you can do a pilot program for $12K per year, or even $6 K per year to simply see what happens.
There's no other way around it. You need to give people money in a more automatized world.
wages and prices may increase, but money will still be more evenly distributed than it was before. As in the person that had nothing will now be able to get something even if prices increase. That is what's important. We simply can't leave these people behind because a robot will eventually do what they can do 24 hours per day without getting tired and more accurately than any human on earth.
To the extent you introduce money into the economy that was not created by productivity
I think the idea is that the money would be transferred using taxes, not printed.
So what would happen is that the basic income would become the new zero line.
How? Even if you did print the money, you'd devalue all of it, not just the new amount. If a dollar from the basic income is worth $0, then all dollars are worth $0, unless it was somehow printed in non-fungible currency.
Of course, the inflation would probably affect some prices more than others, but I don't see how could it ever turn the basic income into zero income.
How much inflation would be necessary to make $68000 worthless? If obviously can't be reduced to the buying power of $0 in today's dollars, because that would require infinite inflation.
Let's break it down: $68000 annually is $5667/month or $186/day. Let's say 20% is intended to go to food: $37/day. That's a reasonable amount: for a couple they'd have to shop and prepare most of their own meals and wouldn't eat extravagantly, but they wouldn't be eating rice and beans for every meal either.
For $37/day to become essentially worthless for the purposes of feeding a couple, I think it's buying power would need to drop 66% to 75%. The latter gets you down to $9.25/day, which is rice and beans territory. It's still survivable, but you can't survive well on it.
This couple would still have the equivalent of $17000/year, which is about what one person working full-time at minimum wage would earn. So, if one of them gets a minimum wage job, they'd be earning as much as two people working minimum wage, while one stays home (perhaps to care for children and avoid the costs of child care.) That's already better than the system we have today, where both of them would have to work to earn that much and any children are left to fend for themselves much of the time.
If they both get minimum wage jobs, they're now earning as much as three minimum wage workers instead of two. Again, much better than today. This keeps one of their teenage children in school instead of joining the minimum wage workforce to help support the family.
All this is assuming that the entire economy is hammered by enough inflation to cause a 75% reduction in the earning value of a dollar. Historically, it takes decades for that to happen under normal circumstances, and I don't think that changing the way the government spends money that it's already spending anyway is likely to cause hyperinflation.
Any program which encourages people to be dependent on government rather than themselves is problematic in my view (obviously with exceptions for those with disabilites that make this impossible).
My other concern is that it's simply inflationary. Giving every adult a $34,000 basic income (the amount proposed here) would mean a married couple would be bringing in $68,000 a year doing NOTHING AT ALL productive. There's no getting around economics: money is an abstraction of productivity. To the extent you introduce money into the economy that was not created by productivity, you simply reduce its value. So what would happen is that the basic income would become the new zero line. It represents the value of zero productive work. Wages and prices would simply inflate so that a person having only basic income would be as impoverished as someone having zero income is today.