EDIT: Maybe I'm too cynical, but as far as I can see the last time serious improvements to the material conditions of the working class were made was when the soviets were still around, and the threat of a worker's revolution still seemed somewhat realistic. I think the politically dominant class has become quite adept at suppressing that kind of thing, and UBI does not seem to be part of their preferred playbook.
Solving faraway hypotheticals in lieu of actual problems is half of the EU’s problem.
57 million UK adults getting £1000 a month (It'll leave you dying on the street in 1/3rd of the country)
Over the course of a year = £684 billion. Current total government spend is 1,278 billion
If you abolished all forms of social care including welfare, pensions, child care, disability (the lot). And education. And the NHS. you could do it providing you also dropped defence by 2/3rds.
UBI is madness.
You phase it in. You start with something a little more than UC of, say £400/month for people not receiving pensions. You increase as it can be afforded. it gives people a great deal of security.
So far fewer people (37m of working age) getting less than half the amount you came up with costs. That is £278bn offset by reducing welfare spending. You would need to continue housing benefit and some others if it was that low so you could not dismantile the entire system.
> It'll leave you dying on the street in 1/3rd of the country
I doubt that - it is not a decent income, but most people would earn on top of it. That is the whole point. It would give people a greater incentive to work than the current system which reduces welfare if they earn. A lot of people will not work because they are no better off if they do.
OBR projects welfare spending to be £338bn by 29/30 anyway.
You are leaving a lot of things out. For one thing if it was taxable income (as pensions and many benefits are) tax revenues would increase too as most people would pay on it.
It would provide a huge economic stimulus which would further increase tax revenues. People on low incomes spend more of their income. Some of that would be on things with consumption taxes.
It would give people a great deal of financial security.
You cannot calculate the effects of a huge change like this on the assumption that nothing else changes.
[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal...
The fact that a UBI which set at a rate low enough to make some existing benefit dependents would also be a generous subsidy to homeowning couples who might be able to use it to to retire a decade or two early isn't one of its strong points
If you are suggesting people would choose not to work if we had UBI, the evidence from trials so far is that it does not happen.
AI alone is not enough to kill off all jobs. UBI isn’t coming.
We're the only developed western country on planet that doesn't have healthcare as a human right and you think our governments will pass a universal basic income?