An unconditional basic income, basic income, basic income guarantee, universal basic income, universal demogrant, or citizen’s income.

"An unconditional basic income (also called basic income, basic income guarantee, universal basic income, universal demogrant,^[1] or citizen’s income) is a proposed system^[2] of social security in which all citizens or residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, either from a government or some other public institution, in addition to any income received from elsewhere.

A basic income is typically intended to be only enough for a person to survive on, to encourage people to engage in economic activity. A basic income of any amount less than the social minimum is sometimes referred to as a "partial basic income".

Basic income systems financed on returns to publicly owned enterprises are major components in many proposals for market socialism. Basic income schemes have also been promoted within the context of capitalist systems, which would be financed through taxation or a negative income tax.^[3]

Similar proposals for "capital grants provided at the age of majority" date to Thomas Paine's Agrarian Justice of 1795, there paired with asset-based egalitarianism. The phrase "social dividend" was commonly used as a synonym for basic income in the English-speaking world before 1986, after which the phrase "basic income" gained widespread currency.^[4] Prominent advocates of the concept include Philippe Van Parijs, Ailsa McKay,^[5] André Gorz, and Guy Standing.

"Work incentives and disincentives[edit]

One property of basic income is that it does not create a certain disincentive to work that some benefits do. In some cases where basic income is not present, people on benefits who begin work lose benefits at around the same rate that their income rises (a form of poverty trap where the marginal tax rate is 100%). This does not happen with basic income, as the rate of increase is positive at all incomes.^[7]

A frequent objection to basic income is the lack of reciprocity, since the basic income is unconditional.^[8] Thus, one critical view of basic income theorizes that it would have a negative effect on work incentive^[9][10] and labor supply. It might be expected that the degree of the disincentive would depend on how generous the basic income were to be. Many basic incomes are proposed to be set at a level that would only just be liveable, so that people would want to supplement it.^[11]

In one study, even when the benefits are not permanent, the hours worked—by the recipients of the benefit—are observed to decline by 5%, a decrease of 2 hours in a typical 40 hour work week:

While experiments have been conducted in the United States and Canada, those participating knew that their benefits were not permanent and, consequently, they were not likely to change their behaviour as much or in the same manner had the GAI been ongoing. As a result, total hours worked fell by about five percent on average. The work reduction was largest for second earners in two-earner households and weakest for the main earner. Further, the negative work effect was higher the more generous the benefit level.^[9]"

Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income