[creadee]

Maybe some would buy your art instead of paying Netflix to watch other people's art?

I think it's safe to say we don't have a clue how things would pan out with a UBI, since none of the examples have been universal yet.

A few things are a given though:

1) Many people wouldn't consider the UBI to be enough to sustain their lifestyles so they'd continue to work.

2) Low-paid work that people don't like doing will have to become higher-paid work. (Or at least the total of its pay + the UBI will have to become higher. I'm assuming here there'd be no minimum wage.)

3) Higher-paid work which people like doing may become lower-paid or charity work, depending on the work.

4) Work that's not currently done because it's uneconomic may start to get done.

5) Most benefits currently provided could be done away with.

In other words, it'd transform society. Whether it'd be for the better or worse remains to be seen. It's by far the most interesting economic idea around at the moment though, so let's hope some country tries it soon!

[gaius]

Many people wouldn't consider the UBI to be enough to sustain their lifestyles so they'd continue to work

No they wouldn't. They'd vote for an increase in UBI.

[dragonwriter]

> > Many people wouldn't consider the UBI to be enough to sustain their lifestyles so they'd continue to work

> No they wouldn't. They'd vote for an increase in UBI.

UBI isn't magic. If you raise UBI to high for the conditions in the economy to sustain, it drives inflation such that further increases to the nominal UBI level produce ever smaller increases to the real UBI level.

(And people who understand this, and those who have moral objections to UBI beyond a minimal level, and those who oppose the UBI entirely but weren't strong enough to prevent it from being passed -- they would all vote against the increase to the UBI, either always or past certain points. So, there's political limits to the ability to raise the UBI, as well as, even if not all completely independent of, the fundamental economic limits.)

In the end, even with a UBI, people who aren't happy living on what the UBI does (or can) provide are going to need to engage in economic activity to produce non-UBI income.

[gaius]

That's nice in theory but unfortunately we have real-world counterexample: Greece. The people will happily vote for their government to spend more than they can afford, and they'll do it again and again.

[dragonwriter]

Greece is not a example of the people voting for more UBI instead of working, nor was the effect discussed related to what the government can afford, it was related to fundamental economic limits on the ability to raise real levels of a UBI no matter what happens with nominal levels.

That people can vote for a government which enacts policies which have an unsustainable balance of spending vs revenue is true independently of the presence of absence of a UBI, and not any kind of argument against a UBI. And it also has inherent limited, as seen recently in Greece, by access of the government to credit.