One thing a lot of middle class policy-heads, even those in favour, don't really get about a #BasicIncome is that having a true UBI (equal payments to all) is a million times less important than ensuring a payment is sufficient for sustenance and has no work-related conditions.

If people have a guarantee of enough to live on, that's what removes jobseek-or-die pressure and gives them desperately needed security and stability. That's what frees them to make their own choices to retrain, seek work, work for their communities, heal, as they need.

The benefits of basic income to public health rely on the capacity of the basic income to fully support someone: so do the economic benefits, as retraining and living cost support while starting a business allow both a kinder and a much more flexible and innovative economy.

Whether payments are a universal "true UBI" or not is by comparison almost irrelevant. It does make a difference to how the policy is seen, the on-paper costs, the rate at which work boosts income - but these are minor compared to the core impacts of a basic income policy.

That's because most of the impacts of basic incomes are on people who either have very little money now or could choose to lower their income for some other cause (caring, retraining, etc). Those people would be covered both by universal and income-tested basic incomes.