You fail to understand the perversity of the incentive. The incentives rarely scale down smoothly. Probably one of the biggest things is health insurance.
At some point you have people near the cusp of getting free health insurance and health care. Imagine you are also getting $300 in food for your family monthly.
Now imagine you at some point get the opportunity get a raise and make another $400 per month. You earn a whopping $4800 more unfortunately you lose the food assistance worth $3600 and you end up paying $300 every 2 weeks for health insurance for a 7800 loss then you have to actually pay for your prescriptions and this amounts to another 200 a month or ultimately another $2400.
I have not even touched on subsidized housing which is yet another factor for some.
In the above example taking a $4800 raise would cost you $13800 leaving you 9000 in the hole for a family that can't afford to lose much and still remain solvent.
What you want is for those people to take every opportunity available to progress the incentive you have created is for them to stay a part timer and work the exact number of hours that keeps them on benefits and look for no path upward because every path upwards leads through a space where they are apt to lose their ass and possibly their home.
You have also created an incentive for them to vote more of your money into their pockets in terms of benefits. With half the nation sharing 12% of the income if you let the have not class grow large enough eventually they will coalesce around voting your money into their wallets.
All those things are fixable by using curves instead of hard thresholding points. A largely USA specific set of incentives problems isn't a general argument for UBI, which claims to be a global solution.
I think there's also a problem with arguing the solution to badly designed welfare systems is a far bigger one. What makes you think it'd be run better? As I point out elsewhere, UBI will still be means tested and still require administration, if only to restrict it to residency in a local jurisdiction.
At some point you have people near the cusp of getting free health insurance and health care. Imagine you are also getting $300 in food for your family monthly.
Now imagine you at some point get the opportunity get a raise and make another $400 per month. You earn a whopping $4800 more unfortunately you lose the food assistance worth $3600 and you end up paying $300 every 2 weeks for health insurance for a 7800 loss then you have to actually pay for your prescriptions and this amounts to another 200 a month or ultimately another $2400.
I have not even touched on subsidized housing which is yet another factor for some.
In the above example taking a $4800 raise would cost you $13800 leaving you 9000 in the hole for a family that can't afford to lose much and still remain solvent.
What you want is for those people to take every opportunity available to progress the incentive you have created is for them to stay a part timer and work the exact number of hours that keeps them on benefits and look for no path upward because every path upwards leads through a space where they are apt to lose their ass and possibly their home.
You have also created an incentive for them to vote more of your money into their pockets in terms of benefits. With half the nation sharing 12% of the income if you let the have not class grow large enough eventually they will coalesce around voting your money into their wallets.