An unconditional basic income is a form of social security system in which all citizens or residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, __in addition to any income received from elsewhere__. [1]
So, right now you only receive unemployment benefits when you are unemployed. This means you are effectively rewarded for not doing any work, which means that you also need people who check that you are really not doing any work (which would not be fair towards those that do work). And that is a schizophrenic situation, because you usually want people to work.
Also, it means you can't employ people for an income below or around these unemployment benefits, because why would they work for this small increase in income compared to not working?
Therefore: unconditional basic income. Whatever you do, whoever you are, you get this fixed income. So you receive it, even if you work! If you want to have an income higher than this (and you do), you'll have to work for it. But whatever you earn extra, will be extra.
It effectively eliminates income poverty and the unemployment trap. It makes lowly paid jobs more attractive, at the cost of higher paid jobs (who will need to pay more taxes). However, from a labor point of view, it incentivizes every single member of society to work, which means that as a society we will be able to produce more and offer better services as a whole.
It however might disincentivize people to go work for their money, if they feel their income for not working is high enough.
