One wonders which humans you surround yourself with to consider that "basic human behavior".

Trying to maximize earnings is basic human behavior, sorry to break it to you. Welfare scams occur regularly, and that's before UBI.

And you're dodging the bigger question: I'm on UBI and my money runs out, can't afford to feed the kids. Multiply that by at least several thousand people every month. Now what?

How can maximising earnings be basic human behaviour when 'earnings' have only existed for a few thousand years, a tiny fraction of the history of our species?

Food banks exist already, why would UBI change that.

Same as now. You don't get more food stamps just because you ran out.

The difference is it's earmarked money today. There's no potential to spend your food money on a phone and then claim you can't buy food at the end of the month.

Most countries just give cash to people without income, they don't bother with a separate food program. That seems to work fine.

It's not really a ridiculous leftist fantasy, it was originally a conservative idea as an alternative to the welfare state. And as for what to do when people say they can't afford X, you raise the payouts so they can (if they really can't afford it).

> I just don't see how that's possible, because inevitably there are going to be a lot of people with real or self-imposed crises crying about how they don't have enough money to pay rent or buy food, and what is the government going to do, tell them "tough shit, you should've managed your UBI better"?

In the UK, many welfare payments go directly to the person, so this wouldn't be a new issue.

Many of them are designed really just to ensure a floor people don't drop below, but combined with exceptionally high marginal tax rates and odd conditions. The marginal tax rate in many cases is 100%, and can be above this.

> In the UK, many welfare payments go directly to the person, so this wouldn't be a new issue.

Not sure what you mean by this. The issue is that currently welfare payments are earmarked: this money can only be used for rent, this money can only be used for food, etc. By eliminating our existing welfare programs, as is the case with every UBI proposal, we would instead be giving a single check and saying "manage this money wisely and pay your expenses." The problem is that when the money isn't earmarked for a specific purpose you can't be sure that the basic necessities are actually paid for before the money runs out. Just ignoring the fraud angle (spend all the money and claim an emergency makes you unable to pay for rent), how do you deal with someone having a _real_ emergency, having to spend all their UBI, and then being unable to pay for rent? Tell them tough shit? That's not what's going to happen.

> Not sure what you mean by this. The issue is that currently welfare payments are earmarked: this money can only be used for rent, this money can only be used for food, etc.

I mean this is often not the case in the UK. We don't have food stamps and housing benefit is afaik generally paid directly to the person, not the landlord.

> Tell them tough shit? That's not what's going to happen.

That's what happens now, whether the person gets money from a job or from any kind of benefits. Why should it change? It's called 'Basic Income', not 'Basic Relax All Your Needs Will Be Met'.

And the right's fantasy? Everyone has a right to a gun, but we can't trust them with money.