UBI is not welfare. It is just a livable minimum wage, for everyone who works. For those who cannot work, it replaces welfare, but that is not it's primary purpose.

As a welfare replacement, it is much more efficient, since there is no effort spent determining who qualifies. People can spent their money however they want, rather than the patchwork of separate programs we have now.

It doesn't need to bring anyone down. It's just a different way of distributing what we already receive. For you ordinary workers, they will receive $X in a monthly check, and their salary can be reduced by $X (since the minimum wage can also be abolished).

That does mean that the desirability of some jobs will shift. Good. We have a bunch of very dirty jobs being done for minimum wage, even though demand is extremely high. I'd love to see the garbage men and chicken processors get more money for their dangerous work.

And if I get less for my cushy desk job, oh well. Especially since we seem to be putting all of the effort into replacing me, and none into the jobs that come with hazards to life and limb.

The annual minimum wage (at the federal level, not counting states with higher) is around $15k. There are about 267 million adults in the US.

That is double current federal and state welfare spending.

I'm dead tired right now so I'm sure I'm missing something, but considering that is far below the poverty threshold in any big city, I dont think we'll be solving anything by eliminating welfare in favor of UBI.

UBI is basically of no benefit to the upper middle class or wealthy, and it won't be enough for the poor who cannot work enough. It really only benefits the upper lower class and lower middle class the most.

But surely you can see that if the main selling point of UBI is

"Everyone gets a livable minimum wage! Oh by the way if you had a cushy desk job, that's gone because Claude can do it, or you get paid peanuts to manage Claude instances if you're lucky. Don't worry though, you can still make big bucks by working as a garbage man or at a chicken processing plant"

and the alternative is

"Burn the data centers down"

then the 2nd option may have a bit more appeal?

A UBI is basically impossible to implement on a large scale without there being significant downsides. In what world does increasing the budget by a trillion dollars or more work out well?