Universal Allowance.

This is an idea I've been thinking about since reading it in a Robert Heinlein novel.

The scheme is simply that everybody in the world receives a basic allowance, whether they have a job or not - that allows them to pay for food, and perhaps some accommodation. The scheme is paid for through existence tax arrangements. People then go on and get jobs to allow them to purchase luxury consumables, or to invest with.

The main rationale for the scheme relates to the fundamental premise of capitalist economics, that every actor is free, self interested, rational actor. I argue the the necessity to eat impinges on people's rationality and free decision making.

If people did not need to eat, the market arrangements the capitalist system comes to, would be far closer to the true efficient arrangement. For example, in the case of a factory worker work negotiating a wage with the factory owner: if the factory worker does not work - he starves, if the factory owner does not hire the worker - the product is isn't made, and the owner makes a loss. It seems obvious here, that the factory owner has far more wiggle room when it comes to negotiating - the owner can go for far more time without making a profit, than the worker can without eating. The natural result then, is that the worker will cave in before the owner will, so the agreed on wage will be lower than the true market wage.

The universal allowance then - allows the worker to hold out for the true market wage, which in turn produces further market efficiencies, ie distribution of resources to where they are truely valued, rather than concentration on resources at the natural advantage.