[_heimdall]

Sure, I don't disagree with you about what the concept of a (U)BI is. I am arguing, though, that fundamentally a UBI maps very well to Marx's "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" writings.

Basic income on the scale of welfare programs for a small minority of the most poor aren't quite the same. A UBI is a much more broad program, even if it doesn't help every single person it does attempt to prop up a large chunk of the population. At that point we're solving the wrong problem.

That were we definitely agree. A growing number of people in the US are falling behind. We need to fix the root cause of that though, the lack of money is only an obvious symptom. If our social, political, or economic systems are the underlying problem then let's fix those. Throwing a UBI at the problem creates even more chaos in the system and we simply don't know what the side effects will be.

Worse, if a UBI isn't the right answer we will have wasted all of our attention and political capital forcing it through. We almost certainly would walk away feeling like we solved it and end up in a worse spot when we're blind to the still growing problem. Roe v Wade comes to mind, we hung our hat on the victory of one supreme court decision when what was really needed was legislation codifying the decision.