I think this misses one of the social benefits of UBI, or maybe glosses over it in the umbrella of "addressing poverty and income inequality", which is that it

I think this misses one of the social benefits of UBI, or maybe glosses over it in the umbrella of "addressing poverty and income inequality", which is that it gives people on the margin the safety net to reboot their career/job into something more productive rather than destructive behavior they might otherwise fall into. I got this insight from the end chapters of the book "Ghettoside", where the author describes US social security payments to those who are "disabled" as the closest the US has today to a non-universal basic income. Coal miners who are no longer able to work because the coal mine shut down and they have no other skills get this "disability" income, and in Ghettoside the author describes former gang members also qualifying under the rationale that they are unsuited to the formal workforce and are therefore "disabled" as well. But what it can serve to do is break the cycle of criminal behavior: when the former drug dealer gets out of jail, absent other opportunities or a safety net source of funding to cover life's basics, they quickly fall into the path of least resistance and return to their criminal behavior. The social security disability payments give them another option to turn things around. Now, if they transform themselves into a legal entrepreneur or productive employee, they sure don't seem disabled any longer, which is part of the problem with this being a non-universal BI. It is akin to the downsides of a negative income tax: it gives only to some, and when you do that you have opportunities to abuse the system, and you have more process costs/friction and barriers to entry which keep some who should get it from getting it. Social security disability is an abused program, with attorneys advertising their ability to get you qualified, which is the irksome aspect of this being a non-universal basic income: it is only available to the savvy or those willing to engage an unscrupulous attorney to qualify. So it is a flawed comparison to UBI, but I think the social benefits described in Ghettoside deserve more attention.