The correct answer here is that you are not valuing your opportunity costs highly enough. If you are working 8-10 hours a day, you should be making an incredible surplus. People in ancient societies worked less, and managed to survive just fine. With the technology available today, you could be making millions of dollars of surplus value, if given the opportunity. All you would need is the time to experiment with your skill set, until you found a niche where your work generates a very large surplus.
Paradoxically, you would gain much more from a BI than someone who is currently living in poverty, because you would be free to extract the maximum potential from your hard work and talent.
But what's stopping you from just working hard, saving your money, and then taking extended time off of work to do what you want to? Why does that money need to come from other people? Maybe if the government just let you keep the majority of your earnings you could use that money to "work on what (you) like or not work at all when (you) don't want to".
Actually, nothing's stopping me from doing all of that. I'm also not asking for BI (it sounds like a bad idea long term), I'd take it if it was offered though.
If people can improve their economic performance so much with just a small cash grant then, why haven't businesses jumped in on this apparently incredible opportunity? Seems like a great chance for businesses to make some money in tandem with people reaching their potential.
Naturally it would be much better for businesses to do this than the government. Businesses have much higher motivations to use their money wisely (i.e. give the right amount to the right people and create the right incentives to ensure people are motivated to use the funds wisely, go bankrupt or get sued by investors if they spend poorly) than a government (which just gets to shrug or inflate the currency or embark on a fresh round of vilifying productive citizens).
Oh wait, don't we already have that? Bank loans or something, I don't know, lol.
Paradoxically, you would gain much more from a BI than someone who is currently living in poverty, because you would be free to extract the maximum potential from your hard work and talent.