Guaranteed basic income emerges as top policy priority for Liberal MPs amid COVID-19 “This comes up now because people are looking for some form of support and this idea, which was kicked around for decades, seems like, ‘Hey this could work.’ The fact that I get a guaranteed income is really attractive in bad times and then when you have to pay for it in the good times, all of the sudden say, ‘Maybe I don’t like this idea so much,'” Concordia University economics professor Moshe Lander said.Lander says while a basic income could work, it would be challenging to get it right.“The government can’t keep running $350 billion deficits year after year.