Er - I'm not a proponent of UBI, but there's an important, but subtle distinction here.
UBI is not "paying people not to work." That's more like typical unemployment - when people find jobs, the benefit goes away, creating a disincentive. With UBI, the benefit remains, (theoretically) encouraging risk taking.
It's different to the normal dole in that you can take on part time work without losing the benefit.
This is not "paying people not to work" - that is a bad characterization of this trial, but maybe an accurate characterization of the dole. It's saying: Here's your minimum money, go and see what you can do.
For a local business owner, it's a big deal to take on a full time employee. If they have UBI, it is not. This makes it attractive and less risky for employers to give a few hours here and there.
It would have been nice if Ontario was permitted to finish our Basic Income pilot project. It would have been a valuable other data point. Sadly it was killed off before we could see any results.
The project in progress, however, saw people leave their existing jobs to, get this: go back to school full time so they could improve their lot, have children, or start businesses.
[Instead they got the rug pulled out from under them ~1 year into the program by the new government after being told they could rely on the program for 3 years]
I know it's a bit of snark, but your take is a bit simplistic and hand-wavy.
That's not what's surprising: if anyone was "paid not to work" in this experiment, it was the control group who stayed on traditional unemployment benefits - and yet they found jobs just as much as the UBI group did!
UBI is not "paying people not to work." That's more like typical unemployment - when people find jobs, the benefit goes away, creating a disincentive. With UBI, the benefit remains, (theoretically) encouraging risk taking.