Think of it like Pell Grants and the GI BIll of Rights and many other programs for college tuition Academe, seeing a free money tree in those programs, started raising tuition costs to absorb more and more of the grants. Today, tuition in most colleges / universities are through the roof and stand as another example of government spending leading to higher prices. So if everyone had a basic guaranteed income, just think what businesses and service providers would start charging so as to wring out maximum profits from such people.

It is another bad idea (like the minimum wage) that throws a monkey wrench into natural economics. It distorts the relationship between money, labor, supply, and demand.

Granted, the bloated welfare system you mention is a distortion too, but this would just substitute another distortion. Plus, the human race has shown that there is (and apparently always has been) some segment of our population that will sink to its lowest acceptable level of squalor and poverty if basic needs (and income) is met.

And with AI and automation, more and more people will be shifted to the non-worker category....which is yet another distortion of basic economic principles. That's why socialism and communism never work.... Capitalism is a purely organic economic system that grew out of what Adam Smith called "the invisible hand" with each person working for their own self-interests and without meaning to, improved the lives of others. Socialism/Communism are systems designed by a committee, or worse, intellectuals, and they don't work.