Some of the democrats running for President support some form of Universal Basic Income. But it would bankrupt us and likely cause inflation. And those are just some of the reasons it's a bad idea.
Texas economist Dr. Ray Perryman says it sounds like a compassionate thing to do, but it won't end poverty.
"If you wanna solve the poverty problem you've got to attack it at the source and simply giving people money doesn't do this."
There's a lot of concern robots will take a lot of jobs and idle millions of workers. Dr. Perryman says technology creates jobs.
"The wheel displaced 7.5 million of the ten million people who were there at the time in terms of jobs in the world, but think of how many jobs the wheel has created since then."
Dr. Perryman says the solution to poverty is hard work and requires a lot of different solutions.
"It's going to take job training, it's going to take some cultural change, it's going to take a number of things -- it's a multi-generational problem and we definitely need to be attacking it but this is not the way; this will likely be counter-productive."
Dr. Perryman says a UBI of say, a thousand a month as at least one democratic hopeful has proposed, would likely lead to inflation because prices would rise.