&quot;People won&#x27;t be &quot;livin&#x27; large&quot; on the basic income.&quot;<p>Not at first.<p>I&#x27;ll tell you one of my big fears about UBI, though: The first vote that comes in Congress about whether to raise it. What happens then? Obviously, you are an asshole of the highest order if you so much as fail to support raising it, let alone arguing that it perhaps needs to be reduced for some reason. It becomes a &quot;race to the top&quot; to compete as to who can promise the biggest increases.<p>If you don&#x27;t agree, well, let me get this straight, today&#x27;s politicians are reckless and stupid for not implementing UBI and having all these separate wasteful programs, <i>but</i> the instant they pass it, they suddenly become responsible caretakers of the common good?<p>Also: Suppose we become unable to support the UBI for some reason and have to reduce it. How many cities burn as a result? Or do we just not reduce it until society keels?<p>It makes socio-economic failure states go from &quot;bad&quot; to &quot;catastrophic to the body politic&quot;.<p>(As for observations that the same is true of many social programs today... yes, I fear that too. The only thing that prevents cities from burning when we must inevitably cut SS benefits is that the affected will be too elderly to go out there and burn things. But it&#x27;s still less of a problem, because the separation of concerns makes it hard for systematic calls to raise benefits to really get going, except maybe SS. Unifying them into one easy phrase changes that.)<p>I want to see this work at a smaller scale before I would even <i>remotely</i> support recklessly experimenting with the largest economy in the world with such a fundamental change. Yes, I am familiar with the much <i>too</i> small semi-studies that have been done, most of which have bad caveats and ran for nowhere near long enough to matter. Let&#x27;s at least see a county or something run this for 5 or 10 years, and through <i>at least one reduction</i>.