In Spain it's similar, we already have de facto basic income, just much more complicated than it should be. When you lose your job you have unemployment payment

In Spain it's similar, we already have de facto basic income, just much more complicated than it should be. When you lose your job you have unemployment payments, when it expires there is a "long-term unemployment aid" that in theory was a temporary measure for the 2008 crisis, but every government has kept extending and no one has dared to remove, even when the right had an absolute majority. And then there are regional aids for "social reinsertion". So basically everyone is covered by a safety net and can obtain some income except for people who actively refuse to do so. Still, actual UBI here is an unpopular idea with most of the population, who say that people need to work for a living, that it's a "handout" for lazy people, it will make people stop working, etc. Funny when the two largest problems of our society are probably unemployment (lack of work for people who do want one) and lack of children. And both are problems that ask for less total hours worked, not more. To me, it's a purely moralistic issue (and based on quite outdated morals). If we are already putting in the money to ensure that people have some basic needs covered, from a rational point of view I don't see the problem with turning it into an automatic right instead of something that people need to apply for and that we pretend is "temporary" (but not even the political right will remove it, no one wants the streets full of people with nothing to lose). And as a side effect, we could get rid of a lot of bureaucratic overhead in the process, plus no longer needing minimum wage and making the job market more dynamic. I guess logic will triumph in the end, although it's difficult because there is a lot of purely irrational thinking. For example, most of the people who furiously oppose an UBI because in theory everyone should have to make an effort and earn a living for themselves are also the people who furiously oppose taxing large inheritances...