[mytailorisrich]

In this case society is paying (out of moral principles) so this gives it a fair right to set the moral expectation or just the practical one.

Let's say someone does not get a job. Are they looking for one and being unsuccessful or are they just cashing their benefits?

Checks are needed in practice unless it can be shown they are not (what I suggested in my previous comments).

[nothrabannosir]

Sure, in a world where you can effortlessly make that work without waste or moral lossage through faceless bureaucracy on the enforcing side, that seems like a great model. E.g. a parent setting some rules around a large monthly stipend for a child: the humanity remains, it’s efficient, the morality of “if you want money you have to do something for it” can be preserved without incurring larger moral costs like “you don’t understand the circumstances”, and maybe/probably efficiency can actually be improved.

as far as I understand this entire conversation around ubi, that ideal isn’t the issue. Proponents rather hold that you cannot scale this to a society without the cost exceeding the benefit. The bureaucratic machine to sustain these rules inevitably becomes soulless, expensive, inefficient, and counter productive. Is the argument.

It’s not that we shouldn’t, it’s that, at scale, we can’t. Is the argument :)

I don’t think your statement on morals is necessarily incompatible with the practical considerations offered by others. It’s a different conversation.

[toss1]

You keep claiming there is a moral problem with giving people enough of a basic stipend to actually live out of the gutter.

In the richest most affluent society in the history of the planet.

In a society where it is organized so a handful of people control more than 50% of the society's wealth, and it is also organized so the minimum wage has stripped is no longer even sufficient to work FULL TIME and get above the poverty line. In a society where a family owns the largest employer in the country and sits on $Billions of wealth while they pay so little that a substantial number of their employees qualify for food assistance.

Who is freeloading, the billionaire owners taking massive tax breaks and paying less than their office workers, or the minimum-wage laborer who must "take" government assistance in addition to his pay merely in order to not starve?

A society can rightly be judged by how it treats it's lowest members.

A moral affluent society would organize itself so every single person has a minimum of food, housing, healthcare, and education, even if a few were freeloading.

Instead, you attempt to justify refusing to feed and house people because a few might freeload. Or, if not refusing, to implement massive government bureaucracies, which 1) are both costly and 2) are proven to make worse outcomes and 3) are even more easily defrauded, merely to make sure all the lowly workers who cannot get a leg up are suitably shamed and monitored, lest they receive just a little too much.

And do not start on how some will waste UBI it on alcohol or drugs. The rich also waste their lives in the same way.

While you stand on your moral high-horse, you argue for the most immoral actions.

[onraglanroad]

There is absolutely no physical difference between someone on benefits living from your work and a billionaire living off your work.

Well, except you have to contribute a lot more of your time to support the billionaire lifestyle than the benefits one.

The legal difference is who owns some bits of paper but there is no physical difference in the work you do.