This is a pretty privileged perspective to have and shows that you may not fully grasp what it's like to be poor.
Do you understand the costs of moving (both monetary and time spent)? Do you understand the cost of most likely having to quit and find a new job (if they are available)? do you understand the costs (socially and mentally) of having to leave your community/family of support?
The opportunity cost of what you are suggesting makes it much less feasible than you make it seem
I don't have a good answer either... I just agree that UBI seems like a net positive.
It is, of course, possible to implement a UBI that is too low to make it practical to move, but I would argue that in that case, it is missing the "Basic" part, because it does not provide enough to meet real people's Basic needs.
Sure, that would definitely be one area where UBI would assist with but as I mentioned in another comment - it would kind of defeat the purpose of the UBI if people had to spend it on mitigating the consequences of people taking advantage of them receiving UBI
The thing that gives "Capital" power is that you have it, no one else does, and you're trying to transform it into some arrangement that over time creates more value than it consumes.
The transformation applied can absolutely be done incorrectly, making subsequent capital value transformations more difficult to accomplish profitably given greater constraints on the means the capital allocator can bring to bear.
Nothing about UBI substantially changes the nature of that system, therefore, the real problem to be solved, (the asymmetry of means between capital allocators) given a system that optimizes toward capital control centralization (more capital fewer hands) without also being paired with wealth ceilings via tax extraction at the top and reinjection at the bottom.
Poor people don't have functional families or communities of support in a lot of cases, that's why they're poor.
it would kind of defeat the purpose of the UBI if people had to spend it on mitigating the consequences of people taking advantage of them receiving UBI
It would kind of defeat the purpose of making money with a job if people had to spend their earned money on mitigating the consequences of people taking advantage of them receiving money.
So... the takeaway is strive to earn less so you get preyed on less?
I don't agree. Jobs are much more than just income. They provide purpose, skills (possibly for life and future work), experience (in general and for acquiring future work), possible medical or investment benefits, connections (social and for future work) etc. All these things mean that there are many situations where earning less or having to move would be outweighed by the benefits.
This is not the case in my example - UBI is JUST income. If the providing of UBI creates more problems and negates the income, then it loses its benefit and purpose (not saying this would be a guaranteed problem inherent to UBI, but that was the premise of the OP)
I actually think that would be a better solution than UBI, figure out what American public housing has done wrong (namely the idiotic towers in a park idea) and fix it, say by producing lower density functional neighbourhoods that have proper streets, places for business, community services, etc. and just build masses of them. Housing is the biggest cost after all and it's a large public works project that could be carried out everywhere. You'd have to fix the problem of corruption in projects of that nature though and that's unfortunately a much bigger challenge.
There was an article on here a while ago about a successful undertaking in Greece to build massive amounts of new housing without major public investment, maybe just do that? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-15/the-desig...
I think an issue with this approach is that it's top down, as as mentioned in the article, "those at the top can’t manage all the information about the economy".
A counter-argument may be to just let towns and cities decide what to develop then, since local people have the best information about their neighborhoods. However, 1. this is already the default method and has resulted in housing crises where NIMBYism is rampant. 2. UBI would also help in this case as you're increasing the demand for housing while increasing competition between people living there and not (assuming people want to move to the area in the first place).
What you are saying would work perfectly for a young college graduate, without much family or friends, who has no dependency or no one dependent on them.
Now imagine a young single mother or father that depends on their family for babysitting or caring for the child while they try to become functioning member of society.
Imagine someone with some health condition that needs access to certain medical facilities.
People live in cities and migrate to cities because they can access schools, colleges, entertainment, public transport, medical facilities, better opportunities, parks etc etc. They can't just pick and move and uproot themselves.
I think people who work in technology do not have enough exposure to the poor and struggling members of the society. I grew up in a really really poor family and when I talk to my coworkers it is very apparent that they don't understand poor people.
I am not a young graduate, uprooting now would be a big deal for various reasons. Neither are my friends in their 30's raising families - some of which are living with their parents for the kind of reasons you describe.
My point is that without being so close to the financial edge all the time, even less well off families can take a step back and make decisions that work best for the future. The stress associated with risk (like quitting a job) results in a scary amount of lock in for many people I know.