Honestly, I don't understand how basic income would ever work. It all has to do with cost - who the heck if funding this massive program? I follow a few economists on twitter and one in particular has really good points about how basic income is just not feasible due to cost restraints:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repor...ticle27723204/
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The Finnish example is typical of the fiscal folly. The Finns propose a monthly transfer of €800 ($1,200) a person, which sounds nice until you do the math and figure out this would require a doubling of existing taxes to fund the program. This transfer would barely replace what low-income Finns already get under their existing social support system, so the bloated scheme would simply pay out big cheques to those who don’t need them, doing little to help those who are struggling. Not only would this plan be unimaginably expensive, but it’s hard to see why there would be any social gain that would begin to offset the costs.
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In Canadian terms, an equivalent transfer of $1,200 a month would cost the treasury more than $500-billion a year. Of course, you might then be able to cancel existing social assistance, child benefits, employment insurance and Old Age Security – but that would only add up to about $100-billion in savings, leaving you $400-billion short. As a reference point, current Canadian federal revenues are about $300-billion a year, so we’d need to more than double our current taxes to pay for it. In the Canadian political world, new programs costing $1-billion or $2-billion generate intense political heat, so a Finnish-style basic income proposal costing in the hundreds of billions is simply a non-starter for Canada.
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The article I linked argues on the basis that everyone gets basic income (which is really a true "basic income"), which is different from the "phase-out" pilot running right now, but that still doesn't change the fact that the overall math doesn't seem to work out when considering how the program is to be funded.