The social security net isn't paid for by the people it helps at the time they're receiving the benefits. It is designed on the principle that many of the benefits are temporary subsidies which some of the recipients are going to pay back in future out of higher taxes (or have already paid far more in their taxes for years). Obviously there's some net rich to poor transfer, but the main point is that both social security and UBI have direct costs to people who are actively buying making stuff, making stuff and investing in creating jobs in the American economy, which may or may not be greater than the economic gains from poorer people continuing to spend in downturn, not defaulting on their loans and being able to afford to sort out their health problems or relocate to somewhere with jobs, depending on how efficient the redistribution is. This, on the other hand, is just giving 6000 people money that local economy wouldn't have otherwise seen. Of course the community is likely to be better off overall, and even the rich people are going to think it's a totally brilliant idea because they're net gainers too.

Studying the effect of large scale outside cash injections into a community is not a remotely plausible proxy for studying the economic effects of a redistribution scheme.

The social safety net is eventually paid for by the people it helps through inflation of the prices of basic goods and services.

Perhaps partially. But their real income can be inferred from how many goods they consume, and I don't think anyone would dispute they get to consume more goods in the short and long run with food stamps than without them.

Eventually, they pay for it all, and the amount of goods they consume declines as well as productive capacity flees or is shuttered when taxes become punitive. The sovereign goes bankrupt because it has to spend more than it can get in revenue, leading to debt that can only be inflated away. The Soviet Union had bread lines at the end; we've seen this movie before.

Given the inevitable rise of autonomy and the move away from labour being necessary to produce goods and services, what would you have us do then? If we reach a point where we automate more jobs than can be replaced, we either face rampant poverty or we have to move to a system like UBI. It's certainly socialism adjacent, but I wouldn't consider it Soviet style communism.

If we live in a world where everything is free and no one has to work we are living in a zoo. This is one pole of the spectrum, a pole which you would have us move closer to. To avoid being mastered by someone or something else you need to be a necessary part of the world and provide for yourself. The human response to automation should be to augment ourselves with technology, not become dependent on technology. If we lose control over our own personal affairs eventually we will be enslaved.

As to your claim of rampant poverty, it is true. However if we surrender our welfare to automation, humans will all be in poverty compared to the control exerted over us by the machines, and what we could have achieved if we remained free. If we continue to strive for personal independence, some of us will remain free. If we give in to subsistence dependence, we as a species will be enslaved.

I could never subscribe to such a dystopian outlook of the future. Sure, we could augment ourselves with tech, but that will not ultimately stop things like automation in transport. Millions of jobs are set to be made redundant and there is no clear replacement for them. No amount of tech augmentation to ourselves is going to fix that. More importantly, we are still trying to understand what a majority of humans would do if their basic needs were cared for. That's the purpose of studies like this. Humanity has never truly broken free of its evolutionary bond to fighting for the resources it needs to survive, it just changed what resources it fights over. This is truly uncharted territory and UBI is currently the only viable idea on the table to deal with it.

My prediction of what most people will do if they receive a basic income and have no hope of getting a job is that they will do drugs all the time.

I expect a relatively small percentage would be interested in dangerous chemical highs if they aren't leading miserable lives they need to escape from. Myself, in that situation would likely spend my time socializing, playing games, consuming various media, and generating some amount of my own content.

On a larger scale, I expect that if half the population didn't/couldn't work, but was allowed to live comfortably anyway, there would be a considerable increase in experimental creativity and social functions. We'd all essentially go out and find things to do together and alone.

And yet, such studies as exist show that this does not, in fact, happen. Did you read the article?

Please elaborate on how you reached this conclusion.

So basically you think it is best (of likely options) that the majority of humans should not have basic needs met so that the remainder can reflect on how free and unenslaved they are. That is quite cynical.