We can go on about the morality of means testing but the way that welfare has been destroyed along with the increasing amount of bureaucracy to stay on it currently has shown a worrying pattern - those who get legal representation are those most likely to claim benefits they're entitled to, not necessarily the poorest.
One of the answers to the welfare means testing trap I've seen is to extend the EITC much, much more. It turns out according to the Andy Sterns think tank that researched it that the cost of such a program would be about $1T off from what UBI would be. Furthermore, such a program would be under incredible attack from the GOP that it'd turn into the sad state of welfare today such as in MS where basically nobody receives benefits while the state collects money for it. The attempts to defeat welfare will never end and given the clown car of different issues that are constantly being eroded perhaps another solution is worth a try to divert the attention of attackers (and also slide other important protections in place as well).
I've never seen any UBI advocate think that nobody has to work and it's a pretty inflammatory and bad faith argument that UBI advocates believe such nonsense.
The reason for using a consumption tax to fuel UBI is that if the workforce drops significantly, this doesn't mean consumption drops, and if much of the revenue produced is from automation or a non-human labor produced value taxing it doesn't seem unfair because no person earned said income directly. What we're seeing in trials repeatedly across even developed countries and concentrated among existing assistance recipients is that UBI recipients don't drop out of the workforce though except for new moms and students, both groups which probably shouldn't be plowing fields and in construction because their contributions to society also are required for it to continue. This idea that people en masse would stop working with UBI is simply not true - do rich people stop working because they have passive income? Not at all
I've never seen any UBI advocate think that nobody has to work and it's a pretty inflammatory and bad faith argument that UBI advocates believe such nonsense.
Sure you have.
Ask a UBI advocate what the cut-off threshold is beyond which people stop receiving UBI. If 20% of the population are receiving UBI and aren't choosing to work, does that mean the remaining 80% can't get it? Are they forced to work? How does this function?
You've never seen a UBI advocate address this basic problem and never will, because the entire concept is that checking out of work to live off the UBI payment is a universal right. By definition it's available to everyone. But also by definition it cannot be available to everyone.
In a real attempt to deploy this system, it would be kept in check by inflation. If too many people stopped working the amount of money collected in taxes would fall, so governments would have to print money to continue paying their UBI obligation. This would rapidly cause the UBI payments to become a trivial amount and outcomes would reset to where they are today. If UBI advocates attempted to prevent this fail-safe mechanism kicking in by making automatic UBI increases linked to inflation, all that'd trigger is hyperinflation and civilisational collapse. UBI would die, one way or another. The only way it can survive is if virtually nobody uses it to stop working, but "people can stop working and be super creative" is one of the primary arguments for UBI.
BTW your suggested approach of using a consumption tax doesn't work either. Think about it. The consumption tax must be zero if you're living on the UBI, otherwise it amounts to just a lower UBI. So we can say the real UBI is whatever you receive minus whatever consumption taxes you pay. If "real UBI" is set to some arbitrary number via legislation, that places a hard limit on how high consumption taxes can rise. The rest would have to come from borrowing (time limited) or income taxes (subject to how many people are working, and how effectively).
One of the answers to the welfare means testing trap I've seen is to extend the EITC much, much more. It turns out according to the Andy Sterns think tank that researched it that the cost of such a program would be about $1T off from what UBI would be. Furthermore, such a program would be under incredible attack from the GOP that it'd turn into the sad state of welfare today such as in MS where basically nobody receives benefits while the state collects money for it. The attempts to defeat welfare will never end and given the clown car of different issues that are constantly being eroded perhaps another solution is worth a try to divert the attention of attackers (and also slide other important protections in place as well).
I've never seen any UBI advocate think that nobody has to work and it's a pretty inflammatory and bad faith argument that UBI advocates believe such nonsense.
The reason for using a consumption tax to fuel UBI is that if the workforce drops significantly, this doesn't mean consumption drops, and if much of the revenue produced is from automation or a non-human labor produced value taxing it doesn't seem unfair because no person earned said income directly. What we're seeing in trials repeatedly across even developed countries and concentrated among existing assistance recipients is that UBI recipients don't drop out of the workforce though except for new moms and students, both groups which probably shouldn't be plowing fields and in construction because their contributions to society also are required for it to continue. This idea that people en masse would stop working with UBI is simply not true - do rich people stop working because they have passive income? Not at all