[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.