I personally don't actually think it disincentives working very much because people who want to work for more than just the minimum always will and people who really, really don't wanna work find a way to get out of working within the current system. Since my family is full of degenerates, I've seen every trick in the book used. Out of my dad's family (8 kids) only one (1) has meaningfully participated in paid employment.
Personally, I don't think that you're ever going to get rid of those sorts of people, so someone ends up "paying for them" anyway.
As an aside, my best friend (prescribed adderall) has always been affected by "the curse of the gifted". When lower grade school is easy. After high school, real intellectual competition breaks that paradigm of "if it isn't easy for me, it's too hard" resulting in similar lazy adult behavior...although he does work. He's never been stable and still hovers just over minimum wage and cannot care for his kids. These problems that have similar outcome (like homelessness) which are often conflated.
I can only speak to my personal observations.
There's the people who never get a job as an adult and so they never move out of mom and dad's house. Mom and/or dad end up supporting them until their deaths. I asked a guy I know whose son is 37, living with him, and doesn't have a job and hasn't had one in decades (and never worked full time) why he allows that sort of arrangement. He said "because I know he's got a safe place to sleep and something to eat."
There's people who have a kid or two and live off child support. In some states having a one night stand that produces a child with someone who has a salary of ~$120,000 is more lucrative than going to college and working the median salary for a college graduate. Even rape victims owe child support. There's two victims here, the person paying and the child(ren) who exist solely as a paycheck.
There's the related "bait and switch spouse," that's when someone, upon marriage (or cohabitation), just quits their job (or gets fired) and unilaterally decides they don't want to get another. This, of course, was their plan from the start. They may make the motions of trying to get a job to make it look like they are trying to work to their spouse, but the goal is to not work. They will ride this out as long as the spouse will put up with it, which can be decades. This is what my dad did, he basically worked for a couple weeks of my parents marriage and my mom has been footing the bill for him in the 4 decades since (and, no, he never took care of the housework or childrearing or anything like that).
Then, finally, we have the fake disability people. Claim you can't work due to pain, depression, anxiety, migraines, etc. Anything that's a subjective diagnosis. Establish a paper trail, then apply for disability. It really helps if you are in one of the above categories while doing this, because you have a history of "not being able to work" for the disability claim.
It's also cruel way to make people live.
I have some sympathy because I got sick in the early 2000's and couldn't work and was just about overwhelmed with just trying to figure out what was wrong medically. Fortunately I had enough savings to see me through without having to worry about being homeless. And enough professional contacts that I was able to land a light duty job once I started recovering. I only needed to work 3-4 hours a day at first.
To make it worse, there is often an income point where the payment goes to zero (ex. if you make more than $800, you are no longer eligible, leaving a $200 gap). Or there are certain benefits that are lost (child credits, transit credits).
With UBI, you get $1000, but then every hour worked puts more money in your pocket.
Within my entire known family tree maybe 1 in 8 people work jobs essential to the creation of goods (including food, power, water), the construction or maintenance of shelter, or the providing of health or transportation.
A huge swath of society is employed in doing things often equating to simply moving numbers around in databases or inside heads. Or more generally, they serve economics by operating to move money from one pocketbook to another.
Its also worth mentioning that labor force participation rates trend downwards over the last 50 years in industrialized nations. Since the participation boom of womens emancipation there has been a general decline in participation not reflected in unemployment figures largely because the number of people required to produce the needs and wants of 99% of everyone else is so few, and because there are so few of means to create demand all on their own (ie, millionaire+ elites) for more extravagant goods markets that don't manifest in a widespread form.
Probably about to the amount of working time and thus income it replaces? That could be an hour a day, a day a week, or a week per month depending again on how much UBI we're talking?
"Having a minimum wage job that that keeps you at the the poverty level doesn't really dissuade people from wanting more and trying to get it."
That's because the job isn't keeping someone at the poverty level, they are keeping themselves at the poverty level by choice. Sometimes, some people choose to change that because they realize they are the only thing holding themselves back, not the other way around.
"The entire culture of having a "career path" with an upward trajectory runs counter to the idea that people, given something like UBI, will suddenly stop wanting & being willing to work for more."
Agreed...although many in America are already choosing to reject the notion of a "career path" and have relinquished their desires for "upward trajectory" - and that's before UBI.
Many people will work fewer hours or quit their second jobs. Currently 7 million workers have a second job.[1]
Young people graduating from high school and college would have a greatly diminished incentive to enter the workforce. Why get a job at all when you can shack up with your buds, pool your UBI, and have all the money you need for booze and video games? Many will fall into this trap temporarily, some permanently.
Millions of creatives who want to work on their music or write the next great american novel are out on day one.
How about the folks currently working to supplement Social Security? Currently, 10 million people over 65 are still working[0]. How many of them quit their jobs on day one of UBI?
Millions of working moms are out on day one.
The biggest issue will be the fact that UBI will make retirement instantly possible for many, and much easier for many more. Currently, to retire with an income of 40K, you would need a nest-egg of $1.3M (assuming a conservative withdrawal rate of 3% annually and no social security). But if you're guaranteed a UBI of 12K per year, a married couple receiving 24K per year in guaranteed income is able to retire with a nest-egg of only 533K. Tens of millions of the most productive workers in the economy will be ready for retirement decades ahead of schedule.
None of these things are necessarily bad--I'd love to be able to retire a decade ahead of schedule! But when the workforce is significantly reduced in size while spending is dramatically increased, taxes will necessarily skyrocket, the incentive to work will plummet even further, and the resulting feedback loop will hollow-out the workforce and bring the economy to a screeching halt.
[0] https://unitedincome.capitalone.com/library/older-americans-... [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-everyone-have-two-jobs-153...
Then when you get a job, the UBI starts to reduce, at a rate LESS than the money you are earning. So if you're paid $1000 monthly UBI, and get a $1000 job, it might reduce UBI by $500. So you're always better off working. You'd probably want a sliding scale so maybe the first couple of hundred only reduces your UBI by 0.20 per dollar, or whatever. It can be structured so the net tax take for the government is the same. Yes this probably means people earning more than say $100,000 pay a bit more in tax. I'm okay with that.
I'm eating the same thing everyday, like to stay at home and hate to buy things. I'm working because I know it's necessary.
If you can make it work for a group that are working for money less that the population average, surely you can make it work for a larger population? Keep in mind that there are other parts to this like sick pay, maternity/paternity leave, unemployment leave etc. There are a collection of separate systems that could be combined, have vastly less administrative overhead and improve incentives (ie more work = more pay).