Purpose, or keeping busy at a minimum, is a tentpole of avoiding depression... even if it were seemingly "busywork."
There have been several studies/deployments that convince me that your worries are unsubstantial in practice. Really great resource: https://www.reddit.com/r/basicincome/wiki/index#wiki_that.27...
Depression is terrible (anti-social, self-destructive, painful, etc.) but useful when it's grounded in an existential crisis... it makes people reflect on themselves and think about what else they can do or change.
They're not worries, they're concerns. Also, that resource doesn't list a single successful, large-scale deployment. Finland is considering it. (The US will never, ever have such a fanciful thing because the plutocracy prevents it, even with Bernie 2016.)
And another concern: if people don't earn money themselves, the tendency is to waste, in all regards. This tends to reinforce learned helplessness, even farther away from the brutal reality of life/business/nature.
You're right about deployment size, but it's exciting to see those numbers growing with this experiment's consideration.
I am hopeful of USA's growth in the area of social security, indeed starting with Bernie 2016. ;)
I have not observed the same.
My impression is that the trend is we, people, like to waste when we don't have to pay, but if the money come from our accounts, we start to get careful, independently how the money arrived to our account. People would not like to waste their money even it's from a basic income.
Basic Income on the other hand would free people to pursue whatever purpose they themselves desire. You can make up your own meaningful job, cause you're already getting paid.
The other issue is that getting paid for a "meaningful job" which doesn't turn a profit is not going to scale. Millions of people suddenly wouldn't work in fast food, farm fields, industrial tanneries or meat processing plants because they're really shitty/dangerous/disgusting jobs. (But I'm sure some scary/crazy people enjoy them.)
And, when people have infinite choices and opportunities, the Paradox of Choice comes in to play and people become even more dissatisfied. See also: Zillions of wealthy housewives in perpetual existential boredom (depression) filling psychology & psychiatry offices.
With basic income you have a bit more choice when it comes to picking a job. You no longer have to restrict yourself to sufficiently paid ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
Also, there are lots of people whom already do things they love. My stepsister is a special ed TA and loves it, but makes peanuts. Would this help her family, absolutely.
With wide-scale deployment, a common issue will be too many people doing all sorts of terrible# crafty work without making something people would actually want to buy like bric-à-brac kitsch shops that wealthy spouses subsidize while having zero foot traffic.
# Terrible because it's far too common for people to make the novice mistake of asking opinion of friends and family whom will say only nice things, and those people to base their perception on those lies.
If you like monotonous factory work, then you are free to choose to do it. There's no problem here. Again, you get to choose what you do yourself.
> "The other issue is that getting paid for a "meaningful job" which doesn't turn a profit is not going to scale. Millions of people suddenly wouldn't work in fast food, farm fields, industrial tanneries or meat processing plants because they're really shitty/dangerous/disgusting jobs. (But I'm sure some scary/crazy people enjoy them.)"
If a job isn't turn a profit and can't pay a decent wage, it means that that job is being out-competed by something else. And risky jobs should pay for the risk involved. If the pay is high enough, then someone will choose it over basic income.
> "And, when people have infinite choices and opportunities, the Paradox of Choice comes in to play and people become even more dissatisfied. See also: Zillions of wealthy housewives in perpetual existential boredom (depression) filling psychology & psychiatry offices."
You don't have infinite choices. You are only good at a few things. Only able to do meaningful work in a few ways. With Basic Income the culture would change. People would start learning about meaningful work. Wealthy housewives would learn to do meaningful work. The culture right now is not helping wealthy housewives, because it says that they should already be happy without meaningful work.