I don’t think most people in poverty will work their way out of it. It’s a mindset and a lifestyle, in addition to a reality. UBI probably won’t change that.

It’s an interesting thought experiment: can you have a society without impoverished people?

Not starving, though, is something that can be directly impacted with UBI.

I'm less afraid of poverty now. More able to take risks. Less afraid of "losing what I worked so hard to get".

I think what you're talking about is "the underclass" - people who have no experience of earning a wage and have lived off government benefits for multiple generations. They definitely have a different attitude to life.

The way "it's a mindset and a lifestyle" reads is very harsh and diminishes the complexity of why poor people stay poor.

The relevant analogy is people telling those struggling with depression and anxiety to just stop being depressed and anxious. It doesn't work that way. There are other problems and barriers in the chemical imbalances in the brain that lead to these disorders. Yes, people with these conditions can have mindsets and make decisions, caused by both the disorders and potentially their natural psychology, that are not conducive to getting out or that got them in in the first place, but those are not the cause. The thinking and mindset is more of a multiplier or a catalyst to the underlying cause of chemical imbalances.

The same thing goes for those in poverty and in the lower class. Yes, mindset and decisions can lead to worse off poverty or a situation where you can't climb out of it. But those are not the primary causes in the general case. (Of course there are always exceptions and edge cases.) What are the causes? In my opinion, it's rampant consumerism (buyers don't just make the choices independent of other influences, they are heavily influenced and emotionally hacked to make the choices they do), a poor educational system, a poor support structure such as the problems with health insurance, racism and many other -isms, general socioeconomic inequalities and segregation, monopolies, capitalism, the credit system, city infrastructure and the requirement to own cars, the movement of jobs into cities, etc. And all of these have secondary effects that all feed into each other. It isn't clear how UBI solves these and doesn't just shift things around. I get the idea of UBI, but it seems to place all the blame on poor people.

So like I said, the situation is complex and can't be summarized by "poor people are poor because of their mindset and lifestyle choices".

I’m not saying all or even a majority, but I believe it’s a substantial subset and understanding the likely effects of UBI on a substantial subset of the targeted population seems wise.

Regarding UBI, I currently can't understand its potential effectiveness when more comprehensive reforms seem to be also missing. People are not being educated, employed, fed, given healthcare, etc., and I almost feel that UBI is going to blossom into this excuse to forget about those problems and thus the people facing those problems while minimally giving them chips to still play and lose at the table.

There absolutely are people who can't currently, or may never be able to, steer their life in a useful direction.

But most people? I'd say instead that most people are stuck in a poverty cycle because society is constructed that way.

When people are given enough money to be able to afford helpful choices, as opposed to scraping along at subsistence level, lots of people find their way to better, more stable, healthier, less stressed lives.

It's only a mindset when you don't have the means to climb out of it.