A public good is a technical term in economics. One useful way of categorizing goods is to place them along two axes - excludability and rivalry. Public goods are categorized non-excludable and non-rival. Non-excludable means you can&#x27;t stop people who don&#x27;t pay for the good from consuming it - like clean air. Non-rival means that one person&#x27;s consumption of a good does not affect another person&#x27;s. Digital goods are typically non-rival.<p>A cash transfer doesn&#x27;t really meet these conditions - it&#x27;s excludable, in that you can restrict access to citizens or to whomever. And it&#x27;s rival - there are only so many dollars to go around.<p>That said, I think inflation is a very real concern for any basic income scheme.