[bmelton]

> It's not unreasonable to assume that the difference of £85bn would essentially pay for itself by increasing the tax revenue from people spending their basic income.

If the idea is to give everybody money so that you can tax it more, you're engaging in economic waste. Without being able to increase productivity in other areas to cover the lost value, you will, hopefully slowly, but eventually trend towards zero, and a failure of the system overall.

Encouraging economic productivity in an environment in which nobody has to be productive may or may not be possible, I honestly haven't any idea, but its certainty doesn't seem terribly obvious to me.