Then what you have, at the end, is just an additional entire department devoted to a welfare program, feeding from the same pool of funds that all the existing

Then what you have, at the end, is just an additional entire department devoted to a welfare program, feeding from the same pool of funds that all the existing welfare schemes are using. I mean, using "reduce" to mean "lower existing welfare payouts (not costs) by enough to allow UBI welfare" is very different to how UBI proposals normally mean "reduce". There is a need for something, but UBI as it is currently being proposed by world+dog is not that thing. I think your argument might be the first one that I've seen that doesn't use "reduce" to mean "almost eliminate".