>That question is whether basic income is the best use of a given amount of public assistance funding. Whether it is more efficient at improving lives than alternatives such as food stamps, rent assistance, childcare assistance, etc. There seem to be no efforts to answer this essential question.

Honestly, it's sorta self evident that replacing a myriad of confusing and contradictory systems with one system is more efficient. We effectively have UBI already for a subset of the population and it not efficient at all because it's provided through a ton of different programs that all different regulations and inclusion parameters.