I remember watching my aunt lose her job at fifty-two, then spend two years sending out applications that vanished into portals. She wasn't lazy. She was just structurally obsolete, and no amount of retraining fixed the fact that the market didn't want her. That's when I stopped seeing UBI as a handout and started seeing it as a buffering system. The "good policy" question isn't about whether work should be rewarded. It's about whether we should let people fall through cracks that are getting wider. Every economic shock, from automation to pandemics, hits hardest at the bottom. UBI smooths that volatility. It gives people bargaining power to reject exploitative jobs, start small businesses, or stay home to care for a sick parent. Those aren't disincentives to work—they're preconditions for doing work that actually matters. Critics call it expensive, but we already spend billions on conditional welfare with armies of administrators. UBI simplifies that. It's not a utopia. It's an upgrade to the safety net, with fewer moving parts. That's why it's good policy.