Ah, yes and no.<p>First you need to ask the question: &quot;why was a basic income instituted?&quot;<p>It was instituted to buy votes, of course. But why were people&#x27;s votes for sale so cheaply?<p>During Rome&#x27;s ascendancy, the citizen-soldier institution sent hundreds of thousands of Roman men out into the world on military campaigns. As their successes grew, so did their terms of military service.<p>In turn, this lead to the collapse of the farms that these men used to work in order to provide for themselves and their family. These farms were purchased by the patrician class, and worked by slaves.<p>Within a few generations, wealth inequality in Rome was so bad that most of the households that had previously been small landholders were reduced to urban poverty.<p>Some Roman politicians did attempt to address this stifling inequality (such as the Gracchi brothers). After the Senate repeatedly murdered such &quot;class traitors&quot;, the compromise of bread and circuses became the Senatorial (and later, Imperial) solution to the problems that the Senatorial classes had themselves caused.<p>Universal income in Rome was a symptom of a completely dysfunctional society. Rome collapsed because its working classes ceased to work, but its working classes ceased to work because its ruling classes ceased to rule for the benefit of the many. Rome was brought down by its wealthy elite.<p>If modern Western societies really are analogous to Rome (which they probably aren&#x27;t), then universal income may herald the collapse. However, if it does, then this collapse will have been ultimately precipitated by the aggregation of power in the hands of the wealthy.<p>In any case, pointing the finger at the Roman poor is a historical trend that was conjured by Rome&#x27;s ruling classes to justify their own positions (think of all the howling about the &quot;welfare poor&quot; by the well-off in North American society today) and later by conservative British historians to justify the lopsided distribution of wealth and power in their own society. Rome&#x27;s poor built the Roman Empire.