In several posts I have supported a modest Basic Income Guarantee (BIG), with the proviso that it be sufficiently miserly not to disincentivize work or add to the federal budget. My thought was that a BIG of about $700/mo would do the trick. But we all know that a guaranteed income of $700 a month would provide an incentive for some people to work less or not at all. Especially young people with no children or with children but other sources of income. So it would be inevitable that labor market participation would decrease to some extent, even with a modest BIG. And as with labor market participation, so with tax receipts.
But the issue isn't just with declining tax receipts. The longer you're out of the job market, the harder it is to get back in. Skills get rusty. Employers get doubtful. The law of inertia sets in.
Self-efficacy predicts goal setting and goal persistence. Mastery experiences feed self-efficacy. The most important source of mastery experiences is successful performance. Lack of successful experiences - opportunities to perform - zaps self-efficacy.
Bottom line: the longer you're out of it, the harder it is to get back in.
Many European countries had generous long-term unemployment benefits in the late 20th century. Just about all have tightened conditions and shortened these benefits because they led to decreased labor market participation. These benefits, in which people had expectations of being able to collect benefits for several years, are a better proxy for if BIG were a real thing, country-wide, than the example of the few small scale BIG experiments in developed countries, where participants know they're in a study and have no such expectations).
So, I'm no longer in favor of even a modest BIG.Instead, I'd focus on benefits for targeted groups: single parents, limited English speakers, the poorly educated and low-skilled. lunches, etc.).
For starters, I'd eliminate all the federal grants and student loans and provide a stipend (roughly $1000/mo) for up to 6 years total for all US adults enrolled at least half-time in post-high school education and training (including ESL, basic skills, pre-vocational, vocational, and college). The standard state grants and loans and fee waivers would still be available. The stipend would not be means tested, so recipients could continue to work (part-time work not being a risk factor for school completion).