WELFARE is what you get when you don't.
Guaranteed income is welfare. How motivated, productive and industrious is one going to be when his 'income' is guaranteed? Duh.
Under the current system, those who do not work receive from the government (and in some cases even net) more than those who do. If someone deserves to receive some amount of money from the government for not working(*), is there any reason they should deserve any less if they work?
(*)Or, more to the point, if liberals are going to ensure that people get a certain amount for not working...
Presently, the welfare system in this country is an absolute abomination. Unfortunately, it is sufficiently deeply entrenched as to be impossible to remove. I would suggest that it would be far less harmful if it removed the rules that disqualify anyone who tries to get ahead in life.
Under today's rules, if someone on welfare gets a part time job that pays $200/month and they report that income, they'll be lucky (unless they 'cheat' the system) to end up with even $50 more in their pocket at the end of the month than if they hadn't taken the job. With that sort of payout, why bother?
The approach I would favor would be to replace the welfare system and tax system with a flat per-person credit and a flat tax rate imposed from Dollar One. If your taxes exceed the credit, you pay the government; if they're less, the government pays you. But every dollar you earn, whether it's your first or your billionth, will put an extra $0.70 (or whatever) in your pocket.
Suppose you put the payout at $500/month and the tax rate at 30%. Someone who sits on their butt all day will get a total of $6,000/year in government payout. If they decide to get a part-time job that pays $69/week, they'll keep about $2,500/year of that so they'll end up with $8,500/year to spend (of which about $4,925 will come from the government). If they get a promotion and decide they like having more spending money so they go for more hours next year, earning $138/week, that'll be another $2,500/year in their pocket (their yearly total will thus be $11,000 of which $3,850 will come from the government). If they eventually move up to a job that pays $24,000 they'll break even on taxes, and if they earn more than that they'll pay into the government.
I would suggest that once people start earning money--ANYTHING--and are allowed to keep most of it, they'll decide they want to earn more and will thus work to move themselves up the ladder. Even if they never earn enough to be net taxpayers, they'll still take far less from the system than they would have if they'd remained non-working leeches.
Further, I would suspect that if everyone is taxed at the same marginal rate, people are going to be much less eager to see that rate go up than if it only affects the "obscenely wealthy". If someone who earns $10,000/year is given a choice between keeping $5,000 and being given $8,000, or keeping $7,000 and being given $6,000, they'd prefer the latter, since they'd recognize that even if it was all the same this year, the former would bite them when they moved up the ladder.
Finally, I would suggest that the 'guaranteed income' would be far less destructive to the economy than a minimum wage. Under the present system, someone on welfare who decides to take up a full-time minimum wage job will end netting very little more than they would have if they hadn't bothered. Which is better: