In my very limited experience of these matters, there is rarely a clear line between 'bad but acceptable parenting' and 'culpable neglect'. In the UK, a recent report suggested that child services spend so much of their time chasing the former, that the latter cases (which are much more serious) don't get the attention they need. As a result, children die in horrible circumstances.

So the question is a good one, and can't be answered with 'tough shit' quite that easily.

> In my very limited experience of these matters, there is rarely a clear line between 'bad but acceptable parenting' and 'culpable neglect'.

With a mature UBI, there's still certainly room for cases where there is ambiguity over whether culpability of the form represented by a criminal prosecution for abuse/neglect exists, but a lot less room for ambiguity (at least, compared to now) over whether there is a sufficient failure of basic parental duty to justify intervention to ensure the material adequacy of care for children.

> In the UK, a recent report suggested that child services spend so much of their time chasing the former, that the latter cases (which are much more serious) don't get the attention they need.

That's definitely true in the US as well. I don't disagree that these services need to be reformed and reprioritized, independently of the nature of the public benefit system.

But the problem with beneficiaries (parents or otherwise) blowing or trading their benefits without meeting their and/or dependents material needs exists independently of the nature of the public benefit system -- its quite clearly a feature of the status quo system -- so its not really an argument for or against any particular public benefit structure.

You're taking on a whole new rat's nest of complex problems if you propose to push a much larger set of children into "the system."

> You're taking on a whole new rat's nest of complex problems if you propose to push a much larger set of children into "the system."

I don't propose that, both because I think the size of the problem that would be addressed this way is no larger under a mature UBI than it is today (even if UBI makes the responsibilities more clear), and because I think a mature UBI would reduce other sources of children entering the system (both by reducing the social problems which result in children ending up in the system, and making it more likely that alternate, extended-family placements which are generally preferred could be found to keep children experiencing the kinds of problems which could result in them entering the system out of the system.)

And a whole world more if one way to increase your household UBI is to foster a child...