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As someone who writes frequently about universal basic income — the idea of giving everyone enough money to live on, no strings attached — the most common argument I hear against the proposal has nothing to do with its cost, or the potential that it’ll discourage people from working, an attack that former Vice President Joe Biden used this week.

The most common criticism I hear, rather, is that basic income would cause massive inflation.

Luckily, new research on a program in Mexico gives us a real-world test case for this idea. And it strongly suggests that giving out cash doesn’t cause inflation — or if it does, the effects are very, very mild.

By far, the most common concern in regards to my first article on Medium about the idea of an unconditional basic income was that all prices would inevitably go up as a result, immediately reducing the value of each dollar and essentially creating a new zero. Let’s call it the “New Zero Argument” against basic income.

The New Zero Argument: Although a noble idea to give money to those in need, no one would actually be better off as a result of basic income due to everything costing more — especially rent — and therefore the policy idea is entirely pointless because the only thing it would attain is a new zero.

In economic terms, this concern is the fear of inflation or even hyperinflation, and it is possibly the most common reflex to the notion of just transferring more money to the lower and middle classes. So how grounded in reality is this concern?

Some of the largest counties in the U.S. are joining forces to provide guaranteed income to residents in need.

County leaders from Los Angeles County, Chicago's Cook County, Houston's Harris County and more help make up Counties for Guaranteed Income, a coalition of local leaders hoping to collect research to try to expand no-strings-attached cash assistance programs nationwide.

Research suggests that guaranteed income can provide a path to financial stability and address poverty as well as racial, wealth or income inequalities.

"It's not just the morally right thing to do. It's actually pragmatic and economically a smart strategy as well," Will Jawando, a Montgomery County, Maryland, councilmember at-large, told ABC News. "We saw with the child tax credit, we saw with the stimulus."