Yet in Australia we seem to believe that if we simply hand out money, people won't work. Social Services Minister Christian Porter revealed on Friday that in the past year 3000 Newstart recipients had turned down offers of employment – that's 3000, out of roughly half a million. Even if we can accept that most people on benefits actually do want to work (either in paid employment or in equally valuable voluntary caring roles) many of us still seem to feel there's something morally wrong in delinking rewards from work.

Yet if we are honest, those of us with good jobs should probably admit that we have them largely through luck and the accident of where we were born. Much of our income isn't the result of our own efforts, it's a dividend from our society – a dividend we deny those without those jobs.

Switzerland just had a referendum on providing each of its adults with a basic income of $3450 per month. It failed. Finland, Canada and the Netherlands are about to run trials. In Australia, and New Zealand where the idea is being promoted heavily, the basic income might be $12,000 per year – not enough to live on, but a fallback that would enable hard-up jobseekers to turn down potentially dangerous or illegal jobs such as prostitution.

Yes, it would also go to the most well-off, Gina Rinehart and James Packer among them. But that's how it is with rights – they're universal. And we already hand those well-off Australians benefits such as tax-free thresholds. If a basic income replaced the tax-free threshold and was extended to all of us, Rinehart and Packer would be no better off and the payments wouldn't be too expensive.

The French poet Victor Hugo famously proclaimed there was "nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come". As automation steadily eliminates even the kind of well-paid jobs most of us have always wanted, that time may be approaching.