> You must definitely count these programs, especially Social Security, which is effectively a UBI for old people (it is sold as a public pension plan that you buy into, but there's been much analysis that debunks this. Social Security is: 1) A tax program and 2) a welfare program that is vaguely and in some circumstances somewhat based on how much of the tax you payed.)

I don't disagree that it is similar in effect, but your original point, I think, was that people would keep voting for an increase in it. But that just hasn't happened with social security.

> The market rate for wages will not be a living wage. For unskilled labor, I could see it being as little as a quarter of the UBI. Most certainly not enough for a low-skill worker to sustain themselves without a UBI.

Well, i'm not sure exactly how we can resolve this point without an experiment. But a priori, why do you think someone who is receiving a UBI would work full time for 5k more? It doesn't seem worth it to me. I mean, don't get me wrong a few people would. But to meet the demand for labor you'd need to see very large numbers of people working at this rate.

> I actually agree that it would be a good thing to stop taking low-skill immigrants, given our surplus of low-skill labor. Why are people so adamant about keeping the southern border open then?

I have no idea. A misplaced sense of ethics, perhaps. It's really a very weird thing.

> Your data proves nothing of the sort. 200k a year for a household is not "rich", they would certainly not call themselves rich.
> The actual rich do seem to be having more children. http://grist.org/population/2011-03-03-are-rich-americans-ha....

It's interesting, so, the data I cited included 200k and above. The data you cite seems to refer to the top 1 percent or so as having more kids. According to this: http://www.usfunds.com/investor-library/frank-talk/what-does... the top 1% is about 500k/year.

That suggests that somewhere in the 200k-500k range the trend reverses. I'm not sure exactly what to make of that. I do concede the point that you are right, it seems that at a certain point along the curve wealth does seem to beget more children.

However, i'm not sure how exactly how that relates back to our original point. Since, at least in your citation, its discussed as an ostentatious display of wealth. And it's also discussed as being extremely expensive.

I suppose there are two models of child-having that would produce different outcomes:

1. The poor have lots of children because they're either dumb, unaware of contraception, don't have access to it, or have religious opposition to it. Because it does seem clear that when you are poor (unless you live in an agrarian society), having kids is a burden. Having wealth tends to ameliorate some of these things (religiosity and wealth are fairly inversely correlated - though this could be a function of the correlation between religiosity and intelligence, and intelligence and wealth, which would of course break down under a UBI).

2. Free time begets children. The people at the very top and very bottom of the income distribution presumably have more time, so they have more kids. UBI expands free time so it expands child-having.

It's not exactly clear to me which of these is the case, and the truth is probably some mixture of the two. I'd be willing to concede that people receiving a UBI might be more likely to have more children, but I think it'd be offset to a fair degree by the increased access to knowledge and contraception. It'd be worth looking for instances of natural experiments to establish exactly what the numbers might look like though.