[lexicalscope]

I think this might be part of the issue though - I saw another article about this plan that said people often _don't_ try to contribute because their welfare benefits are subject to them not doing certain things.

For instance - you get $X from welfare, you could make $Y doing some work despite your disability, but $Y < $X, and if you make $Y, the government won't give you $X - therefore there is no reason to pursue $Y.

Even if you don't have money, often if you're on disability anything that might show you aren't "so disabled" can stop it. Therefore even if you want to, there is really a strong reason not to try to do things.

That is what basic income is meant to really alleviate - there becomes no reason not to do other stuff, because it's unconditional - those already on welfare no longer have all those requirements.

I'm not saying it would be perfect, but I do think it would address at least part of this problem. I wish I had an actual study on the numbers of people that don't try to get jobs/be productive while on welfare because of the risk of losing the primary income stream they get from welfare, but I can't find anything. I have known several people in this situation though, and watching the system treat them that way was kind of heartbreaking.

[jerf]

"I saw another article about this plan that said people often _don't_ try to contribute because their welfare benefits are subject to them not doing certain things."

A good point.

But basic income is generally sold as an arts and hobby thing, where they're not going to make any money anyhow. Basic income participants who are going to take the money but not do a "real job" aren't going to go out and dig ditches or something.

Since this isn't a binary thing, we should expect to be able to find an effect if this is going to happen, even if disability isn't evenly distributed and even if certain categories are impaired due to welfare rules. Who's on disability making art or music or something who would otherwise be stuck in a job? Alternatively, show me a work of art or something from the cases of basic income that were tried that couldn't have been done without it.

(We'd really like to see a sufficiently strong pattern before we run this sort of experiment at scale, and we'd really like it to be somehow some appreciated work, but I'll start with asking just for one instance.)

If doing a little of this sort of thing does not produce a little of the desired result at this scale, there is no rational reason to believe that doing more is going to produce the desired result either. (Italicized words very important. It could indeed be the case that doing more would in fact produce the desired result, but there's no data to lead you to that belief rationally.) The rational belief becomes to discard the idea that basic income is going to be used for arts and music and stuff, because we can stop speculating about what people do under those circumstances and just look.

Because if basic income really is paying people to do nothing, it won't work at scale. We can't afford to pay everybody to do nothing. The economics would simply adjust such that the basic income is not a livable wage anymore via inflation mechanisms. (Which is basically one of my great fears; basic income combined with voting creates a one-way ratchet, and so far, I've heard no mechanism to even slow down the ratchet, let alone reverse it.)