> They could spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment.
In countries with a tradition to have full government care for all citizens, those cases are solved by having the payments managed for you (usually by the city). So you would have weekly smaller payments rather than a monthly payment, and you may even have the city pay your rent for you rather than giving you cash in hand. And if you still mess up and are in a temporary urgent need for money, you can apply for an additional extraordinary amount to cover your critical expenses.
I'm aware that such a "nanny state" is not attractive to a lot of Americans, however this is an approach that solves most of the potential problems and it also relieves other citizens from being concerned about having to give out charities.
The "nanny state" is only part of what would make this unattractive. I'm pretty sure that a lot of other Americans would see this not as UBI but as the government funding landlords and making them richer.
Because addicts, when given the choice, might choose not to have a roof over their heads and thereby collectively pay landlords less, it would make landlords richer to give them reasonable living conditions standard?
It's not as if the government will rent you a penthouse. If there are no cheap apartments available in a certain place, you just don't get to live there. I've lived in a building with a fair number of government-paid apartments and the people there are very, um, shall we say "poor" in the non-monetary sense (though that too). The rents were low (that's why I was there as a student) and while I'm sure they turned a reasonable profit just like they did from the students renting there, the rents were below those of neighbouring buildings. What's more, in the Netherlands many landlords price their apartments just above the limit for government support so that even if you could easily afford a place €10 cheaper, you now can't because you are losing out on up to 350 euros a month of support. Landlords don't want government-supported renters much of the time. It's not that lucrative.
In countries with a tradition to have full government care for all citizens, those cases are solved by having the payments managed for you (usually by the city). So you would have weekly smaller payments rather than a monthly payment, and you may even have the city pay your rent for you rather than giving you cash in hand. And if you still mess up and are in a temporary urgent need for money, you can apply for an additional extraordinary amount to cover your critical expenses.
I'm aware that such a "nanny state" is not attractive to a lot of Americans, however this is an approach that solves most of the potential problems and it also relieves other citizens from being concerned about having to give out charities.