&gt; 1. Basic income would need to be more than welfare, if people can&#x27;t live completely off welfare easily.<p>Who says you need to be able to live completely off of it?<p>&gt; 2. Many people oppose welfare that doesn&#x27;t require a job precisely because of the societal costs to the disincentive to work.<p>So we&#x27;re getting rid of all the programs that don&#x27;t then? Requiring someone to work to receive benefits is unbelievably easy to scam anyway because two people can just hire each other to watch television and have the payments cancel.<p>It is possible to make the argument that there should be no social assistance at all. But that isn&#x27;t the status quo, and the argument cannot be made that the status quo is better than a basic income.