it would cause a significant decrease in the motivation to work among citizens , with unforeseen consequences for the national economyBased on what logic ? People will still want to work to afford things beyond essentials . That said , advances in automation technology are coming and unemployment is going to rise . Either we stagnate or accept that the unemployed simply need to be cared for while this happens . it would require a complete restructuring of the taxation , social insurance and pension systems , which will cost a significant amount of moneyOne of the primary reasons for a basic income is to drop all of the other welfare systems to save money on administrative costs . Taxes will need to be adjusted , yes . the current system of social help in Germany is regarded more effective because it ' s more personalized . Personalization is expensive . for some socially vulnerable groups the basic income could be not sufficientWhy do you say that ? The whole point of a basic income is that everyone gets the baseline amount of money they would need to afford necessities . it would cause a vast increase in immigrationThat ' s an immigration issue , not a basic income issue . Of course it would be great if every country would develop a similar system so people didn ' t feel the need to emigrate to a country with better social programs . it would cause a rise of the shadow economyExplain ? the corresponding rise of taxes would cause more inequalityThat depends entirely on how the tax rates are stratified . Unless you are increasing taxes on the poor for some strange reason , the poor would certainly be better off with the income even if prices went up slightly on everyday products . This is the same bad argument often used against raising minimum wage . If prices go up 12 % on everyday goods , but the poorest people have 20 % more income to spend , they will be better off . Speak of minimum wage , that is something else that would be replaced by a basic income . I could add another reason . That ' s petty logic . Citizen # 2 gets additional income from working , regardless of if Citizen # 1 and # 3 work . They would not stop working if they wanted additional income . It would make no sense to quit just because someone else decided to live without it . The only logical reason that a basic income could not work in a given country is if they do not have the resources available to feedclothehouse each of their citizens . Basic income is just a way of efficiently distributing those things by utilizing the existing economic and tax system . It seems to me obvious that this should be done . To be against it , as far as I see it , means that you do not agree everyone should have access to these things even if there is enough available resources to do so .