UBI makes most sense as a targeted way to increase wages by removing some people from the workforce. It would be very good for society, for example, if we paid

UBI makes most sense as a targeted way to increase wages by removing some people from the workforce. It would be very good for society, for example, if we paid parents to stay home with the kids instead of sending the kids to day care and to homeschool their kids instead of sending the kids to school. We'd also benefit by paying creatives and scientists so they can pursue their calling without having to work a day job in the patent office like Einstein was infamously forced to and without having to work for a university where there are perverse incentives that discourage the most important work in favor of what is most likely to lead to publications and to governmental/corporate grants. Of course UBI is only part of a plan to control the labor supply and thus drive up wages. We also need to preserve child labor laws, lower the retirement age (60 or maybe even 50 would be reasonable), tax outsourcing instead of subsidizing it and restrict the sort of immigration that takes our jobs instead of creating new jobs. In the case of immigration, that's why green cards for college graduates are preferable to guest worker visas because highly skilled immigrants seem to be disproportionately entrepreneurial but only if their immigration status isn't tied to a job. Prosperity for all rather than maximizing GDP needs to be the goal of economic policy. The issue with most UBI proposals is that their supporters seem to have no understanding of economics and no bigger plan to achieve any real policy objective. So their proposals would just cause inflation unless corporations were able to automate away almost all jobs. In which case we'd basically have an imperial Roman style economy where most of the population is dependent upon the government for bread and circuses while a few accumulate great wealth from the machines (in the case of Rome, humans who had the misfortune to be born as "machines") that run everything. I don't think that's really the kind of future we should want.