Thank you for your thoughts Michael. I agree, I don’t think any of these proposals work in isolation. I believe that human beings inherently want to find purpose and meaning in life so are unlikely to not want ‘to get up in the morning’ unless there are other factors at play that lead to people being disillusioned and disenfranchised. I believe educational and community initiatives would have to be in place alongside UBI.

I think the underclass already exists in the UK. People who are stuck without the means to be able to pull themselves out and without the political power to effect change. I think this is why when they are given a choice to express their frustration at the ballot booth we get outcomes like the ‘leave’ vote for Brexit, which may seem counterintuitive but can probably be understood as a protest against current conditions and as a desperate attempt to regain power, even if misguided in their perception of the institutions that are doing the oppressing.

This website documents all the worlds UBI experiments and is an interesting read. Interestingly it seems to suggest that often the population started to believe that UBI was disincentivising work whilst the data showed little difference. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map