Even in the best year (2008, $3269) this isn't remotely enough to live on. That's less than $9 a day, and that's an exceptionally high payout! In 2012 it was $2.40 a day. Maybe you could live on that in India or Vietnam, but not in the U.S.
I would disagree in that during my starving student years I occasionally submitted tax returns vaguely resembling those kind of figures. You need roommates and can't be too picky about food and entertainment, but its possible. Its certainly a lot easier to live on than $0 !
This does have certain implications where either it gets indexed to some kind of cost of living index, probably very corruptly, or it gets polarized into some kind of coastie/non-coastie or urban/rural issue.
I did not know about this program, thanks for sharing.
I see a glaring difference though. Instead of taxing everyone on their person income the government took a portion of the profits from the natural resources of the state and set it aside for an endowment of sorts. The fund itself is invested and the dividends are paid out. Most welfare plans do not operate this way, even if they started out with that intent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
maybe by entering the annual individual payout in 2012 was (fill in the blank) 878 or $878 or $878.00 or whatever.
Most posts against it usually have a tinge of "keep the government out of my medicare" about them.
"Somebody should try this" or "Its too dangerous to try" and all the like almost intentionally seem to ignore this actual implementation.