> If this comes to pass in America, you're going to have a large chunk of the population COMPLETELY dependent on the government's teat.
You won't, without substantial productivity improvements, because economics; UBI at any level that would, in the short term, make people willing to accept it and not seek outside income will rapidly lead to inflation from the increased cost of labor from the mass workforce exodus, rendering it no longer adequate to such lavish support.
In the long-run, with massive improvements in productivity and automation, sure, its conceivable that a well-designed (I mean this in terms of sustainability and stability) UBI could eventually result in a large portion of the population relying on it for their main source of income, but that's essentially a post-singularity economy by that point.
You won't, without substantial productivity improvements, because economics; UBI at any level that would, in the short term, make people willing to accept it and not seek outside income will rapidly lead to inflation from the increased cost of labor from the mass workforce exodus, rendering it no longer adequate to such lavish support.
In the long-run, with massive improvements in productivity and automation, sure, its conceivable that a well-designed (I mean this in terms of sustainability and stability) UBI could eventually result in a large portion of the population relying on it for their main source of income, but that's essentially a post-singularity economy by that point.