We already have welfare programs. Nobody is starving to death in the US.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-04-13/...
Having been welfare adjacent more than once, getting food stamps is difficult and many legislatures have spent the last few years making it way more difficult, adding job requirements and the like. Ideologically you are probably fine with that, but it has consequences that you seemingly do not perceive.
The trouble with that is the same reason communism fails - too many people decide to just live off of the work of others, and play video games all day.
Also, who is going to work as a janitor? Most jobs are not filled with glory. They're tedious - that's why they are called "work".
- Some labor is easy both to offshore and to automate -- e.g. factory work
- Some labor can be offshored a lot more easily than it can be automated -- this causes at least a practical problem for the "nice UBI" countries. I'm struggling to think of particularly good examples...
- Some labor can be automated more easily than it can be offshored, e.g. self-driving
- Some labor is "rare enough" that it can potentially be well-paid -- my intuition says construction and repair, especially with the aid of machines
But janitorial labor is low-status, is required constantly, needs to be done on-site, and is really hard for a robot.
So a particularly good UBI test: how do you hire janitors?
It's not necessarily impossible -- for example, if a few shifts of janitorial labor could double this "decent baseline," would people pick it up? Would this leave it affordable?