&gt; Money has gotta come from somewhere.<p>Well yes and no.  The issues are complex and my economic schooling is woefully limited (merely Bachelor&#x27;s level), but I recall the idea of a money multiplier [<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Money_multiplier" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Money_multiplier</a>] derived by MPC (Marginal Propensity to Consume) and MPS (Marginal Propensity to Save).<p>Take the following relatively contrived example.  You insert a $1 into a vending machine and get a soda.  The vending machine company takes that dollar and uses some to pay the soda company to replace the soda. The soda company uses the money to pay it&#x27;s factory workers to make more soda. The factory workers use that money to buy other goods.<p>So you can see that on a whole, the $1 dollar you chose to spend actually had an impact on the economy of more than a dollar.<p>You can also see that depending on each what the &quot;leakage&quot; is at every level (or how much each entity, vending company, soda company, etc. choose to save instead of pass on) can drastically reduce the money multiplier effect leading to undesirable market outcomes (such as stagflation).<p>Perhaps this professor does a better job illustrating: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;aces.nmsu.edu&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;_z&#x2F;Z108.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;aces.nmsu.edu&#x2F;pubs&#x2F;_z&#x2F;Z108.pdf</a><p>Bottom line (I think is), empowering the impoverished to be able to consume should drive market growth.  So the initial investment of a basic income should pay for itself many times over.<p>Anyway there is more to this obviously, and this same interaction has implications regarding income-inequality, but I&#x27;ll just leave this here as FFT.