Have a friend, originally from Quebec, who told me that some 25-30 years ago, welfare was available to some 20% of the population. Anybody who could lie on a paper form with some level of credibility could receive welfare (and it was quite generous). It was an industry. A very common scam was for a couple of friends on welfare who lived in Montreal or Quebec City where tourists are looking for monthly lodging during the nice months of the year, and who had 2 separate apartments, to have one of them move with the other, renting the vacant apartment to tourists and sharing the income. When winter comes, they return to their individual apartments. He heard that this scam is still very popular to this day.

My friend used to be sure that such a system for 7-8 million people would fail miserably; he left Quebec for that reason. But he was totally wrong: Quebec is doing well. That's close to the concept of basic income. I am not saying that it would work for a very large country. But for small countries like Finland (and rest of Scandinavia for example), it can work pretty well it seems.