It definitely should. But one real problem with bureaucracy is that it tends to go to great lengths to justify itself. It also self-replicates like a virus.

So, in practice, I imagine there would be lots of offices and agencies, services and interdependent liaison offices and agencies along with the requisite inspector general offices and agencies and the necessary committees, subcommittees, and working groups that would have to be created.

In the land of government bureaucracy, the rapidly increasing fixed-pie of current and (hopefully) future taxpayer revenue gets divided up into more and more slices every day.

I think that was a major point, too, because a significant portion of the money available for social assistance is spent on deciding who can get it and fighting 'fraud'. A blanket universal give is a lot easier.

However - I've always been puzzled by how each person in the US doesn't have a public, singularly identifying number assigned. Doesn't that make even an 'universal' basic income hard to define? How do you guarantee that every person gets one, and only one, BI check every month? How do you find out who is dead and should stop getting one...?

From what I know, SSN are used for stuff like that, but there's all this weird stuff about it (althoug I admit my knowledge of it comes from a half forgotten CGP Grey video, and that the impression that stuck)