If you're going to make that argument you have to correct for the fact that many welfare state programs implicitly encourage people to slack off. If you're 'caught' going to school or taking courses, working part time or trying start your own business you can, in many cases, end up kicked off of welfare. Earning an extra dollar while on UBI will leave you with an extra dollar to spend. Earning an extra dollar while on welfare can in many cases leave you a lot worse off.

Also many welfare programs require you to jump through regular bureaucratic hoops that will eat up a lot of your time and energy. We don't really know what will happen if we remove those restrictions.

Edit: added "still"

Some welfare (aka workfare) does indeed require the unemployed person taking a full-time job, for which they are paid their jobseeker's allowance and no more, and if they refuse they get nothing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workfare_in_the_United_Kingdom

I am not working in a menial job I hate or at a company that treats me like a human drone.

Further is not really about giving up your job, basic income is for people that will simply be phased out of the employment system due to automation, and other factors that simply will make them unemployable. They have no skills, not education, and often times will be unable to trained to do other more high skilled jobs

It is a complete fallacy that everyone can simply be retrained as a computer programmer when all the Driving Jobs, Fast Food Jobs, and Retail jobs are replaced by Robots

Maybe a future where nobody has to do those things isn't a bad goal. We don't have ten year olds breaking coal in the mines any more, nor do we have a peasant/slave class whose masters can beat them with impunity.

"It is a complete fallacy that everyone can simply be retrained as a computer programmer when all the Driving Jobs, Fast Food Jobs, and Retail jobs are replaced by Robots"

Yes. So what do you propose we do about those people?

I think that is what we "do about those people"

I completely agree it will be a good day where you do not have people burning out their bodies in 40 years from working on the factory line then having to work another 25 years in pain because they can not afford to retire due to the low pay...

The problem is, today we just simply tell these people "get a job you loser" and assume anyone that can find said job is simply too lazy to work

With no basic income, and very limited welfare we have a massive problem today, that will grow exponentially in the coming decades unless we do something like Basic Income

The purpose of Basic Income is to allow people to survive while they don't have work, and to increase their incentive to find work or at least do something productive, without having to worry about losing their benefits -- not to leave a small elite in work while the rest are reduced to idleness.

I am aware, my comment on retraining is that most times when I am involved in a conversation about Job Displacement enviably people respond by claiming everyone can just be retrained as a programmer.

As a programmer and sysadmin myself I am fully aware of the current state of the Job market for IT workers both on the operations side and the development side. I also know right now if a programmer can not find work it is often because they are unwilling to relocate to a market where the jobs are, and I am not just talking Silicon Valley which IMO is about the worst place to look for a job as a Dev right now.

>>>The purpose of Basic Income is to allow people to survive while they don't have work, and to increase their incentive to find work or at least do something productive, without having to worry about losing their benefits

The purpose of Basic Income is to provide people a basic income to cover the necessities of life including Food, Shelter, etc. Allowing them freedom to persue other economic opportunities that will provide them with a higher standard of living,and to take some economic risk including possible starting small business or working for higher risk employers with out having to worry about their rent or if they will eat that day.

Because it's already happening

Most people don't have the skills to get a better job neither they have the will

Look at the numbers of hartz IV in Germany

The choice is a basic income or a shitty job with no basic income

And they are almost forcing people to work in what they call "mini jobs" to lower the number of unoccupied people, but it's not really working

If they could all have a basic income, regardless of working or not, they would not work, but have more children and more income for the family

I use to be a proponent of UBI, but now I genuinely fear what it would do to society at large.

I knew that it couldn't last forever, that I needed an education / skill and a career. UBI changes that and IMO, incentivizes failure to launch.

Ultimately, I think UBI is both a launchpad for high performers and a cage for those not so talented. I think our focus should be on building employment opportunities for everyone, instead of giving up prematurely and creating such a bright lined class system.

If people want to live on the bare minimum and hunt and fish with the rest of their time, more power to them. They value their time doing those activities more than the money they can trade for it. But when they get tired of it or want something more they'll have the freedom to pull themselves out. There might be a bright line, but it will be easy for anyone that wants to step over whenever they feel like it.

The vast majority of people are already living a fulfilling basic existence

It's the minority of people from big cities and great ambitions that maybe would not like it

1. If people can get a lot of money just by working hard, why don't they already have a lot of money, but rely on the UBI?

2. For people that's really poor and can only live on UBI, well, more money is never a bad thing, but they can live without the money. That's what they had been doing all this time after all.

1) Because, right now, there is a huge market distortion that is difficult to see because we've been living with it since we've invented agriculture and specialization -- people must earn money to live. This is a market singularity with a rapid drop off. If you need water within the next hour or you will die, you will pay anything to get it from whomever has it. If you will be homeless in three weeks unless you come up with rent it loses a bit of urgency but you might find yourself selling your time for less than it is worth under conditions that aren't so existentially dire. If that horizon is pushed out to three months then it might be remote enough that it only occurs to you every once in a while how important it is to keep a steady income.

Those that are continually on the brink of disaster constantly have to worry about a very short time horizon until their existence, or, at the very least, living without pain, is threatened. It is like a weight on the other side of the scale for them. And worse, the people and entities negotiating on that side of the scale know it. So, they offer just enough to keep them alive and struggling. It is not in their best interest to offer more. So these people on the brink remain on the brink, selling what little they have (time , usually) for less than it would be worth without that distorting weight on the other side of the scale.

This is very difficult for people who have not been in that situation or who have not been in that situation or who have outside support structures to keep them from that state to understand. If they don't think about the full context of the decision and the invisible but very real cost of the alternative to a negotiated agreement then it is very easy to think that everyone is making the same choices with the same freedoms. Most need to work to eat, after all, right? But they discount the time horizon, the urgency, and the expectations of future income that they might enjoy compared to someone else.

2: Anyone can live without money much money as long as basic needs are met. Some might enjoy their free time so much that no matter how much they can make if they give some up they would refuse. But, for the reason of the distortion I described above, a huge swath of the poor and working poor aren't being offered enough to get ahead, just enough to keep afloat. So now the choice is 'work your ass off and barely stay afloat or have lots of free time and barely stay afloat'. I know which I'd choose.

But you can't if you have to go to work in the city

In general, women already prefer even amateur musicians, athletes, etc. over couch potatoes.