A Dutch city is giving money away to test the basic income theory
The basic income concept is intriguing to me (because it simplifies things) but I do not think it will work for this reason:  Who administers the basic income?  The government and by extension politicians. Once they have every single person who breathes on the dole, this will give them unbelievable leverage against the people. 
If the government is giving everyone a check, how hard is it to argue that the check should be more?  Not hard. How hard is it to reduce the amount of the check.  Almost impossible.<p>It will eventually devolve into a problem like Greece has now.  Too many people receiving money, not enough people paying in.<p>Besides that, asking any government to take money from the people, run it through the giant bureaucracy machine, and magically produce a net benefit to the people is both logically impossible and naturally never going to happen.<p>I'm sure it will be attempted in America at some point and the "public servants" are licking their chops.