UBI is a nice idea but...
UBI is a nice idea but I don't believe that it's workable. It would be abused to hell on multiple levels and will lead to high inflation until the economy settles to a level where the UBI is worthless.
There will be a large number of people on or close to the line who will chose not to work and instead collect just UBI instead. While this may not seem too bad, there will be various hits from this. Firstly government tax income will drop not only from the reduction in paid tax but there will doubtless be quite a number who take the UBI and then supplement it through non-taxed methods - it would be rather Daily Mail/Express like to describe this as "UBI is funding crime" but it's pretty much how it would be seen.
Many of the people benefitting from UBI will be employed doing the less popular or menial jobs which will lead to a sudden workforce void in these types of roles and the only way to encourage people to do these level of jobs will be to pay them somewhat more than they would have been paid previously. This increase of low level job pay rates will lead to inflation as the extra money has to come in from somewhere which means dependent services and products will go up in price; this is already observable now due to the effects of minimum pay rate. The cost of food, accomodation, energy and transport will all rise due to both rising costs to provide these and through market pressures, i.e. "charge as much as the market will handle". If UBI isn't increased in line with the rises in the cost of food, accomodation, energy and transport then UBI will become worthless however because UBI will be the cause of these rises it'll become a circular economic loop.
It's not that providing support for those members of society that need it is a bad idea, it's just that utopian schemes such as UBI will not work in reality, particularly for larger and larger population sets. As a result some form of means tested system is likely the only workable scheme but only if this is a fair implementation - currently it is erring very much on the side of being inflexible, uncaring and overly bureaucratic. Society would also need to change to be more flexible and to allow the inclusion of those who are not able to operate at the same regularity or levels of performance as the "average" person does, such as the writer of this article. Through various contacts I know of quite a lot of people who would jump at the chance to work but cannot due to interactions with their current benefits, that they reply on to survive, but also due to employers finding it very hard to employ these kind of people due to bureaucratic issues more than operational ones.