But if you want more from life than sitting at home and watching TV all day, you have to take some initiative.
2. Someone in the family history had to be a diligent/industrious/successful. And that person probably tried to pass those values down to their children and so on and so on.
If you give people wealth, no such ideals will be passed down to their children.
Money doesn't dry up, it increases thanks to investment and hedge funds. You just need to ensure you never dip it below net-positive+base inflation rate.
Suppose you have a billion dollars invested, and you're only receiving 0.1%/year on top of the base inflation rate. 0.1% of $1 billion is $1million, so you have a perfectly sustainable stable $1 million per year. That's more than enough to spend forever dicking around.
Actually, drop that down to $100 million. At 0.1% above, you get sustainable $100k/year.
Now, perhaps that doesn't seem too lavish, but consider that you could afford to take way more than 0.1% off your interest every year, and you'll find that that money isn't going anywhere.
1. That wealthy people's money can dry up.
2. That wealthy people know this and it provides an impetus to spend.
3. that that impetus to spend is constructive.
4. That poor people, promised basic income, will differ markedly from wealthy people in this respect.
I can't speak to all of these but I can speak to some of them.
1. Certainly wealthy people may lose their wealth. But most don't.
https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/05/19/the-wealthy-in-fl...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/18/poor-...
Also see this swedish study which indicates that wealthy kids save less then their parents but still tend to be wealthy, and that this is true for both adopted as well as natural born children, indicating that it's not some sort of genetic advantage http://www.nber.org/papers/w21409
as for 4, I think you have this idea that poor people are poor because of intrinsic characteristics. This is a more common belief among conservatives (http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/1-23-14%20Pover...).
Here's some evidence that it's not an intrinsic quality.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward...
There's also evidence from things like free meals and early childhood education. Links are probably easy to search for if you google free lunch benefit and HeadStart benefit. Basically giving kids proper nutrition and free preschool make a big difference.
There aren't a lot of studies on giving adults help to get out of poverty though. People like helping kids and young adults, but once you are grown up you are kinda out of luck. I think there is some micro loan data out there though. That said there was canadian basic income, which showed only modest decreases in hours worked, and better health outcomes overall.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
But even if basic income only effects children of poor people and not the poor people themselves, it seems like it could provide a marked difference in a generation.
Only the most short-sighted of the wealthy do not realize that there are many ways in which their wealth could dry up. This provides an impetus to use the money constructively while you have it, because it might not be around forever.
Basic income does not give the same drive. You can watch TV all day, doing nothing to better yourself, doing nothing to manage your money, and you know that there will always be more where that came from.