The perm ensures people avoid work. That’s intrinsically bad, AND means green jobs are left unfilled.

There's already an experiment getting under way in deeply troubled Stockton, Calif., once known as the nation's home-foreclosure capital. Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes kickstarted that city's program with a $1 million donation. But it will have no more success than other "experiments" with giving money to people not to work. Why are we so sure? It's already been tried elsewhere. Indeed, in April, impeccably progressive Finland decided to end its limited experiment with a UBI that paid 2,000 nonworking people roughly $685 a month. The idea was that it would free up people to look for work, or be creative. It didn't happen. "There is a problem with young people lacking secondary education, and reports of those guys not seeking work," said Heikki Hiilamo, a University of Helskinki professor of social policy. "There is a fear that with basic income they would just stay home and play computer games." Far closer to home, as we've noted before, the U.S. has already tested a closely-related idea, the so-called "negative income tax." Essentially, it's a guaranteed income by another name. And it failed abysmally. "In the 1970s, the government ran four random control experiments across six states to try the negative income tax, a similar policy proposal that was popular at the time," wrote Mimi Teixeira in The Daily Signal earlier this year. "In each text, the work disincentive effect was disastrous. For every $1,000 in added benefits to a family, there was an average reduction in $660 of wages from work." So people who got checks stopped working or worked far less. What a surprise. That's the socialist dynamic: Pay people to do nothing, and they'll do nothing. This doesn't require a Ph.D. in economics. It's simple common sense. Yet, this is the level of thinking among our nation's mostly far-left elites. In truth, they're not overly concerned with people working less. Those who get checks will soon depend on them. And they will reliably vote for those who give them money, the leftist political elites. It's one of the most cynical political ploys imaginable, but that's what it is. Conservatives who support such an idea naively think it will shrink the welfare state. But all it would take is one election with a Democratic president and Congress, and the welfare state would be even larger — taking more money from those who work and giving it to those who choose not to. It's hard to imagine a more anti-work policy. Rather than empowering the poor, it turns them into wards of the state. And work is important to people, part of creating a meaningful life, a bedrock of civilization. A universal basic income would destroy any incentive people have for bettering themselves through further education, training, relocating to a better area to find a job, or even just getting up from the couch to look for work down the street. Why bother? Check's in the mail.