Currently we have the Earned Income Tax Credit which can greatly change the amount of money that a family takes home in a year. Milton Friedman was one of the earliest proponents of this system, at the time called the Negative Income Tax, but wanted it to be a minimum guaranteed income. In the current program, essentially, you get paid to live in the United States instead of paying taxes in the normal system.
Surprising to most, a lot more people get this amount of money than one would think, and the IRS site for 2014 taxes recommended that earners of up to 52,000+ check to see if they were eligible.
Combined with the EITC low-income families often qualify for SNAP which are usually called Food Stamps, and other forms of welfare and safety net programs which include unemployment, Medicare, CHIP, and Social Security. The latter few programs literally account for nearly 50% of government spending.
My question is, do you think it would better to just guarantee that there will be a small income for all people (in the United States for example) in order to unify and streamline these programs, and to better provide for the common welfare?