Well, in the US, sure. And I don't see anyone here proposing doing a UBI program globally... There are a number of problems with the current system. One is the

Well, in the US, sure. And I don't see anyone here proposing doing a UBI program globally... There are a number of problems with the current system. One is the "welfare cliff" that severely demotivates someone who can take (or not take) the option of signing up for a marginal wage job. We all know that ladders start at the bottom, but we keep removing rungs. If someone is getting benefits, I'd also like him to get a job or training to slowly work up to not needing those benefits - not go backwards. Not many people will choose to go backwards. Another one (to me, because I tend minarchy), is the obscene bureaucratic overhead. Of course this is because of our complex array of rules and means-testing. But, if we could eliminate the disincentives to work that come from the way that welfare programs are constructed today, do we really need to means test? I'd rather Bill Gates gets a free two thousand dollar check than hire someone to make sure he doesn't. At some point, I suspect this can only be resolved by some sort of limited behavioral experiment. While I like to think that most Americans, given a choice, wouldn't choose to sit around and watch Jerry Springer - our current system's construction has given me little confidence that this is necessarily true.