It seems counter-intuitive; it sounds downright crazy, but it's an idea more and more economists think may help solve the problems of the changing labour market and the high cost of welfare admin.

The idea is to give everyone money.

Enough money to live, with no strings attached. It's called 'the universal basic income', or 'citizen's income', and it's actually legit, not just some thought experiment.

In 2017, Finland - Finland - will be the first country to pilot the policy. It will give 2000 Finns a wage of 560 euros a month for two years.

If the trial is successful, it could be rolled out across the country.

... no strings attached?

None.

Won't everyone ... stop working?

Some people might, but it might also encourage some others to work more.

With welfare right now, there's a disincentive to work. For example, say you're an Australian student on Youth Allowance, you can earn $433 a fortnight before your payment starts to reduce. You could work more and earn more, but then you'd get paid less welfare.

This is called welfare tapering.

The same is true for any kind of welfare that is means-tested.

"The idea of universal basic income is to have enough to live on, and the lifters - those who go out and set up a market stall - are able to keep the extra income," says Curtin University senior lecturer in social policy, Dr Mark Liddiard.

"The leaners don't starve but are tangibly less well off."

Sounds expensive ....

According to Dr Liddiard, it's estimated universal basic income in Australia it would cost around $15-50 billion per year, or about 1-3 per cent of GDP.

Some of this money would be redirected from the existing welfare budget, and some would come from the money saved as a result of removing means-testing. It currently costs about $3 billion to administer Centrelink.

But whichever way you dice it, it's expensive.

When Switzerland looked at introducing universal basic income, it calculated introducing universal basic income of AU$3360 per month would cost about a third of the country's GDP - a fair bit more than the 20 per cent of GDP it was then spending on welfare.

Finland, by contrast, already spends more than 30 per cent of its GDP on social welfare. It's calculated a basic income would actually cut welfare costs.

Australia is more like Switzerland - it spends almost exactly the same proportion of its GDP on social welfare fare. So basic income would probably be more expensive.

Given all this, it's surprising the idea has supporters on the right.

It has supporters on the right?

Lots of them.

The idea has been around for a while. The economist Milton Friedman, who became one of the architects of Reaganomics and Thatcherism, which we now loosely call neoliberalism, proposed a guaranteed minimum income way back in 1962.

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The uber-conservative political scientist Charles Murray calculated giving US$13,000 to every US citizen every year would actually cost less than the current welfare system.

"For those on the left and the right who support the idea, the key driver is about the disincentive to work," says Dr Liddiard.

"We know in Australia and in other states, welfare tapers - the loss of welfare for each dollar earned in the labour market - are sometimes so steep that work doesn't pay, or work pays so little extra it's a disincentive to seek work and employment."

If you don't believe us, here's an opinion piece written by a millionaire venture capitalist, published in the Australian (paywall).

Or here's the US conservative case for a basic income.

And here's a UK Independence Party supporter in a powerful striped business shirt making the same argument in Forbes (who make lists of rich people).

Still it would never get up ... right?

In Australia, probably not. Or not anytime soon.

In Switzerland, it went to a referendum in June, and was overwhelmingly rejected - about 77 per cent voted against an unconditional monthly income. One popular concern was that giving away free money might draw too many immigrants.

It has supporters in Germany, though in 2013 a commission of the German parliament concluded it was "unrealisable". It gave a list of reasons for its decision, and it's pretty damning:

People would lost the motivation to work

It would require the restructuring of taxation and welfare systems

For socially vulnerable groups the basic income could not be sufficient

It would cause a vast increase in immigration

It would cost too much

But even if it turned out basic income was more affordable and led to a better standard of living for everyone, it would still be a very hard sell politically.

"One of the challenges is the idea that, both in life and with welfare benefits, you don't get something for nothing," Dr Liddiard says.

"The idea is if you're unemployed the state will assist with you but in return you're expected to do certain things to qualify for that assistance."

In policy circles, this idea is known as conditionality.

It's the idea that welfare comes with conditions. The idea is pervasive and grounded in a sense of what is decent and moral. Earlier this year, in May, when low-paid single father Duncan Storrar appeared on Q&A and said he didn't have enough money to his kids to the movies, he was attacked by some parts of the media, who presented his reliance on welfare as a kind of moral failing.

You also see this in frontpage headlines attacking "welfare cheats" and the way we talk about "lifters and leaners" or the UK talks about "skivers and strivers".

"At the moment I can't really see how readily this could be sold," Dr Liddiard says.

"But we live in very interesting times, and everything we took for granted even 10 years ago is increasingly up for grabs."

We need a basic income because of ... robots

Around the world, there are big changes in labour markets. One change is the automation of work, (like those self-checkout machines at the supermarket), and another change is the rise of the digital economy, creating 'flexible' labour markets of freelancers and 'zero-hour contracts'.

Without secure work, there's no secure income. For governments, a basic income as a way of helping its citizens to get through the lean times when there's no work.

It would also provide an economic stimulus, a bit like the wad of cash Kevin Rudd gave everyone during the Global Financial Crisis.

This is exactly the opposite of the austerity Europe and the UK have been preaching since the GFC, but then these policies haven't worked that well; there hasn't been a recovery.

Europe is now concerned about deflation - when the price of things actually goes down over time. Some think governments need to spend to avoid this situation.

"What we're looking at is a paradigm shift away from neoliberalism, which has been a key driver of social policy since the 1970s" says Dr Liddiard.

"We've seen this playing out in UK with the rise of [Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn - and also in the US with Bernie Sanders."

"It's a move back to Keynesian social policies - post-1945 that was how Europe was rebuilt. It gives people a job and then what they then do is spend the money and if they have a job you can tax them and that's how you generate economic growth.

"Many of us interested in social policy are very conscience we're on the edge of a paradigm shift."