> For instance, if you're on foodstamps right now, and gas is not cheap, or it's very time-expensive to make it to the grocery store too often, then you're making single large trips. A continuous stream doesn't gel as well with that situation.
Sure it does. Just save up for the 3 days before you go or whatever. There's nothing forcing you to spend every cent as it comes in, and a financially stable and responsible BI recipient would do well to save up, buy in bulk, and have a rainy-day fund anyway. Making the income into a stream would just save you from being kicked out on the street hungry if something unexpected happens and you hit 0 at some point.
To solve many corner cases, you could maybe have a kind of voucher application at the grocery stores, gas stations, car mechanics, etc., which would provide a temporary advance (or just money from a designated separate emergency or unusual circumstance pool so that it isn't like a credit card) which would need various rules that would guarantee that the service provider would always see the money, but also ensure that the applicant would be registered and held legally liable for misuse of the voucher system.
Or at least, if you're going to do this, you'd have to be very careful to not overcorrect for the 1st of tha month problem.
Not to ding your overall idea, I like it, think it's very cool. Just, to implement it with current infrastructure it would require a lot of care.
(Actually also I think rent or other large payments are less of a problem in your solution than you think - for anything on contract like that, you could simply reduce the rate at which continuous income is obtained. If your basic income is 100 units per whatever, and your rent is 43% of your basic income, you just reduce the stream down to 57 units)