The important part of my comment about gradual reduction was that people should never be put in a situation where if they make $N, they get additional $500 from the government, but if they make $N+0.01, they get nothing.

Regardless of how big is the $N, and how specifically they received the $0.01. Even if they received the $N using tax-exempt forms and the $0.01 using taxable forms. Or if $N is the limit for the tax-exempt form, and the $0.01 is the first cent above the limit.

Otherwise we get various kinds of crazy situations where people are punished for doing something that would otherwise be rewarded. Especially with poor people these kinds of situations are known to often lead to bad outcomes, both individually and socially.

...and the relevant part for this debate is that if this gradual reduction is implemented, the outcome is more similar psychologically to basic income than to unemployment benefits, because there is not a sharp dividing line between "not working" and "having a low-paying job".

(A hypothetical example of a gradual reduction of government support which still does not lead to giving money to everyone would be giving people max(0, $500 - 0.2 X) money if they made $X otherwise. Which means that an unemployed person would get $500; a person who made 0.01 from adsense would get $499.99 regardless of whether adsense income belongs to some bureaucratic category or not; a person getting $200 from their job would get $460, which would make their total income $660; a person getting $2500 or more from their job would get nothing; etc.)

Back from my Thanksgiving break. Delighted to see another turkey.

Because they would be in serious troubles if they quit and don't have another form of income.

So what you're saying is that your "unemployed-only" solution will make the words "We'll quit" into a more credible threat, and employers will meet their demands because employers are too stupid to call their bluff? You do recognize there are benefits to being employed other than the wage, right? Health care, networking, friends, knowledge, experience, etc? And, as I suggested before, what if the employees are paid well above your "unemployed-only" solution but wish to strike for shorter hours or a safer workplace?

My great-grandfather was on the receiving end of a strike in 1940, and he lasted for two months without blinking an eye. If you tried your simple threat of "We'll quit and go live off the benefits" on him, it would have come across like this scene from Cable Guy.

they would be getting unemployment benefits if they existed

One of my contentions is that basic income has a much better chance of coming into existence than your solution, although I'll hedge this notion with Milton Friedman's Negative Income Tax discussed below.

Nope. Cash from unemployment benefit is indistinguishable from cash from another form of income, unlike food stamps which automatically signal you as "poor" any time you use them to buy something.

Nope. We're not talking about signalling "I'm poor" to the cashier at the supermarket. We're talking at the level of policy. You know, Washington D.C. and all that. By the way, maybe you should have looked at a SNAP card before going all scarlet letter on me. Look at this mountain of shame. And here's a film about the people who carry such cards. Maybe the film will help you stop calling them "filthy poor and social parasites." Even Tyler Cowen praises SNAP.

Not any more than basic income does.

Randomized control trials (here's one for example) indicate that basic income encourages work. RCTs often inspire hipster cynics to complain: "Oh, they continued working just because they knew the RCT would end. If you guaranteed them basic income for life, they would quit their jobs." Of course, such complaints are merely handwaving, unlike the empirical evidence just presented.

Are there any RCTs for your idea? If no, why? As it turns out, the Negative Income Tax RCTs decades ago were probably the closest to your idea, since it tapers off as you earn more (similar to Viliam_Bur's suggestion in this thread). The results inspired mixed reactions, with many critics claiming a drop in labor. This paper tries to sort out the mess.

Jodie T. Allen of the Nixon administration dealt with the NIT RCTs firsthand, and she immediately noticed some practical problems. For example, just like the EITC today mistakenly gives out billions of dollars to technically ineligible recipients, the NIT will probably mistakenly give out many billions more and turn the IRS into an even bigger bureaucracy as it deals with millions of ever-changing recipients. You seem quite naive to such administrative issues, per your professed belief to Viliam_Bur:

The bureaucratic hassles could be reduced to virtually zero if the government keeps track of who is employed and who isn't. Yes, there is a risk of fraud: people could work without declaring it (with the complicity of their employers if any) and earn both their wage and the benefits. The judicial system can deal with that. I have no idea what I'm talking about.

As I've stated before, basic income has its implementation problems. But it's nowhere near the level of complexity of your idea, which you insist is not that complex, because you haven't spent much time actually thinking about it. This brings me to my main complaint against you.

Off topic. You are not helping to keep the level of this discussion high.

On topic, because I'm actually the one keeping the level of this discussion high, just like in past encounters. See, when I pointed you to this article last year, I discovered that you didn't actually read it, and you went right back to ridiculing cryonics advocates. Then when you gave this half-assed one-liner above, I realized you probably do this with every subject. Just to double-check, I provided more links. As far as I can tell, the only ones you click on are the ones you judge to be an assault to your character, because those links are easier to process. So tell me: why should I continue to provide links if all you're going to do is respond with half-assed one-liners? The only link you've provided thus far is an off-topic Wikipedia entry.

I understand you may be pressed for time, so instead of inefficiently talking past each other, let's just exchange some links to books of our respective ideas. I'll go first: here's a huge anthology of Basic Income research. Your turn.