> I think that "expanding it a bit" is understatement.

I'm not sure that's true. If you implemented a UBI, you'd eliminate all current welfare programs. Since a UBI does not act as a disincentive, you should actually, overall, get more labor participation.

Current welfare is actively disincentivizing of labor participation. If you get a job, your overall wealth will sometimes decline. UBI does not have this problem - it simply raises the standard of what it means to be poor. Working more will always get you more resources.

> Is it working? The unsustainable budgets of all Western countries seem to suggest otherwise. The collapse in family stability and the workforce participation rate since the introduction of the welfare state also suggest otherwise. The rational behavior for someone who collects of significant portion of their income from welfare is to always vote for more welfare. It is almost always in their short- to medium- term interests, and in the long run we're all dead anyway.

They don't really suggest that, unless you are counting things like social security and medicare in your calculations. Straight up welfare programs are about 10% of the federal budget [1]. And social security definitely shouldn't be counted (even though it isn't necessarily a great idea), medicare you could arguably call a welfare program, but it's not exactly comparable to cash payments, and has problems that go well beyond those of a simple cash transfer program, so I would argue isn't particularly well suited to comparison here.

> Richer people have less kids because it's extremely expensive and time consuming to raise kids the way they'd want to, investing heavily into their educations and life experiences, going to PTA meetings, being involved with school activities, etc.
> I don't think this logic applies to people that are collecting checks for doing nothing.

That is a nice story, but if it were true, it'd suggest that the richest people, who presumably have more free time also have more kids. But, they do not [2]. Now, this chart doesn't break it down beyond >200k a year, but what you see is a very steady decline. The more people make, the fewer children they have. There isn't a single group for which the trend isn't met.

> As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, that would be totally unworkable. If the basic income is to become law, then everyone living in the country would have to receive it. If everyone else is pocketing twenty grand a year for doing nothing, then it's going to be impossible for immigrants to afford to live here without that same free money. Much in the way that it's become very difficult for single-earner households, since most households now have two earners.

Well, i'd say two things in response to that:

1. So what? All that means is that the barrier to immigration is high. That shouldn't be a problem, and it makes for a neat market-based solution to the problem of "how many immigrants do we let in".

2. In a society where everyone is given a basic income of 20k, then wages will have to rise to incentivize people to do any kind of work at all. What this means is that we can do away with the minimum wage, and allow wages to float freely in response to supply and demand. The market rate will always be a 'living wage' because people simply won't work for it if it's not. This, right here, is why UBI is so elegant. It doesn't distort markets, it just moves their boundaries, which allows them to operate with maximum efficiency, while still maintaining reasonable living standards for everyone.

Now, don't get me wrong, it's entirely unclear that we can actually afford a UBI. Even if we get rid of all welfare programs and account for the economic growth that would result (or at least, that I think would). However, if and when we do have the sufficient wealth to implement a program like this, I think it makes an enormous amount of sense.

Once you implement a UBI, you can wipe out tons of entire government agencies. You can get rid of rent control, minimum wage laws, all kinds of things that mess with markets and create various forms of deadweight loss. There is so much uncaptured value lying on the floor because of the inefficient ways the government tries to alleviate poverty or subsidize behavior, and every single one of them can be eliminated by the implementation of a UBI.

[1] http://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/policy-basics-wh...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...