The fact that those people enjoy receiving free money, proves nothing, except their bias.
Social Security is insolvent: it brings in less money than it pays out.
I have been looking for costs on your articles, i'm glad you mentioned it. So if everyone in the US, 320 million people, receive $12,000 a year, that's a total bill of $3.8 Trillion, that is more than the entire current federal budget. And you want to keep Medicare, so add another Trillion to that. Those two programs alone would be about double the current entire federal tax revenue, and that sounds cheap to you?
What about those other 2 out of 10 households, do you plan on robbing them at gunpoint yourself, or are you going to cop out and ask the government to do it for you?
RE: Will universal basic income give too much power to whomever distributes it?