There are times when who supports an idea that you support means that you've got to reconsider your support for that idea. At the risk of Godwinning, that Adolf liked dogs is not a reason to either like or beat up dogs. But his support for anti-smoking is a reason to look askance at certain of the anti-smoking zealots. For his views on this were that smoking deprived the State of that valuable resource of men fit to fight and there's very definitely more than a whiff among today's zealots of people not being allowed to do things they wish to do because of the cost to the State of their doing so.

Which is what makes me cringe slightly over my support for the idea of a basic citizens' income. It's the sort of thing that The Guardian seems to be supporting:

The society our politicians are shaping is defined by the idea of "something for something". What would happen if, instead, we were given something for nothing? A new campaign for a "citizen's income" asks exactly that. Replacing the costly, complex benefits system, a citizen's income is an unconditional payment granted to every individual as a right of citizenship. It's not a high figure – barely enough to survive on alone, and below the minimum wage – but it is designed to prevent all of us from falling into poverty traps. Compellingly, it removes the stigma from state support. There is no difference between a student, a person managing life with a disability, a pensioner and someone struggling to find stable employment if we all share the same basic starting point.

Further supporters can be found here and here. That I support an idea supported by the Leader of the Green Party, by a professor from SOAS, by the usual list of concerned Europeans, yes, this does give me pause for thought. Given that all are usually staggeringly wrong about everything am I wrong to be supporting this idea?

And, having re-examined the idea I come to the conclusion that I'm not wrong in supporting it after all. For one very simple reason.

Their support is all about justice, equity, redefining the relationship between work and leisure and yadda yadda down the list of progressively desirable goals. My support is grounded in that good old idea of economic efficiency, you know, that thing that progressives never actually bother to consider.

My starting point is that whatever else happens in this world there is going to continue to be some version of the welfare state. People are going to continue to be taxed in order to provide handouts to that mixture of the incompetent, unlucky and lazy that make up the current list of recipients. There simply isn't going to be a Randian revolution where the entire idea gets chucked onto the ideological scrapheap. Given this I'd prefer to have a welfare state that was economically efficient. And the greatest inefficiency (quite apart from the incompetence with which the money is actually doled out) is the way in which benefit withdrawal rates and the taxes charged to the lowly paid lead to vast marginal tax rates on those lowly paid earning a little more money.

There are millions who face marginal rates of 60% and up, still hundreds of thousands looking at 80% and even some unfortunates with marginal rates over 100%. And yes, I do indeed believe in the Laffer Curve argument, it's just that I believe that it applies to all of us, not just the highly paid. Who in heck would bother to work another 10 hours a week if their disposable income would fall (something seriously possible in our current system)?

So, it's for this reason that I support the cbi. Simply because it would be staggeringly better than the current monstrosity of a welfare state that we have.

Which means that I'll just have to hold my nose and put up with those who also support the idea I suppose. I mean, seriously, me agreeing with a prof from SOAS? Did anyone think that a universe with such a distortion in it could continue to exist?