As a side note, it is in part money that is spent effectively ... it achieves a number of ends, from reducing the disincentives to work caused by unemployment-tested income and means-tested income support, through reducing the inefficiency of European inter-regional transfer payments, to eliminating the fiscal drag from mixed Green/Revenue taxes by converting them into pure Green taxes.

But primarily, if we elect to pretend that it is funded by a neutral tax, then as a system is transfer from the high income to the low income. And since the high income are great net beneficiaries of the common social inheritence of knowledge, technology and established infrastructure, this is not taking, but simply a payment to the Commonwealth for services rendered, distributed as a universal social dividend.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.