> There's still no answer to questions like "what if it starts to entrench a permanent underclass and make inter-generational wealth worse, as people who stop working bear a generation of people who have never worked, and they bear children, etc".

Why would reducing disincentives to work, as compared to means-tested welfare, rationally be expected to have anything like that effect?

The main incentive to work is that you need to work to make a living. If the government hands you everything you need without working that is a massive disincentive to work

> The main incentive to work is that you need to work to make a living.

No. The main incentive to work is to have something meaningful to do with your time. Every experiment with UBI has shown that — given guaranteed support income — people are generally happier (or less stressed) and have a greater incentive to find work because the disincentive of reporting job-searching efforts is removed.

In addition, under a UBI everyone who has a paying job will have more disposable income than people who don't have a paying job. So while UBI will cover rent and food, if you want a nicer house or other trappings of luxury you'll need a paying job to find the extra money.

Nobody is going to be setting up a real estate empire or discovering the cure for cancer on UBI.

Another thing UBI will achieve is allowing people to move jobs without fear of being trapped in poverty. They won't settle for a low satisfaction, low pay job and will move to optimise their personal benefit.

Finally: UBI is not about "handing you everything you need." Universal Basic Income is there to provide for the basics: food & shelter. That's it. It's not supposed to replace an average wage, it's supposed to provide the minimum cost of living.

> The main incentive to work is to have something meaningful to do with your time.

Not sure about this. Only short-term experiments have been conducted. Who knows what might happen if we have people who are raised on the idea that a living will come to them no matter what?

I think there's also an assumption that everyone loves what they do. Many of us do, so it's easy to think. However, the people who arguably need support the most often have the worst, least-likeable jobs.

> They won't settle for a low satisfaction, low pay job

Somebody has to do the work. Garbagemen will never be worth $15/hr. Many jobs that aren't will simply end up outsourced.

> Universal Basic Income is there to provide for the basics: food & shelter.

Then why would it be administered to everyone, on a national level, regardless of other factors? Food & shelter cost orders of magnitude more in San Francisco, California then in San Francisco, Texas. Why would it make since to give two hypothetical people, one living in each, the same amount of money to cover the "basics"?

> Somebody has to do the work. Garbagemen will never be worth $15/hr. Many jobs that aren't will simply end up outsourced.

Testing out UBI is predicated on the assumption most of those jobs "nobody wants" will be automated, and thus not available anyway.

> The main incentive to work is that you need to work to make a living.

With means-tested social benefits, that is not the case, and, in fact, you lose some (or in some particularly perverse, but unfortunately not all that uncommon cases when multiple means-tested programs are involved, more than all) of the additional money gained by adding work to reduced benefits.

That is the disincentive UBI removes (or, more accurately, reduces and/or pushes to a higher income level, because you run into it—though not the more perverse form unless marginal tax rates are above 100%—in the taxes to pay for benefits.)

> people who stop working bear a generation of people who have never worked, and they bear children

Discourage bearing of children by pushing contraception and providing the poor and unemployed with free internet access, with streaming and online gaming, in order to occupy their time. Birthrates are already going down in the West, and probably a further push can be made here and there so that people are even less interested in children. Then, that underclass status won’t be passed on to another generation, it will stop with the first generation.

Whoa, this is starting to sound kinda disturbing. Serious Brave New World stuff here. Let me guess, the government should encourage and provide freely sterilization? And every woman should wear a Malthusian belt?

This kind of population control is rarely, if ever, a good idea. What happens if a racist decides to push stuff that targets blacks to try to shrink their numbers? You don't know that we won't get some awful person in charge of that.

Be really, really careful what you wish for and what you argue for.

Yes. The white Irish in Boston are the stock example of this (speaking as someone who has part of my family from there). I have heard story after story from people who really do live and die reliant on this. I would also say that the poor having many children is somewhat of a problem. Not sure how it's fixable, but it doesn't make since for the people who can afford children least to bear the most. Especially since the burden of said children tends to fall to one parent more often in such cases.