This is the exact opposite of that. When you send free goods into an economy, you inhibit demand which in turn inhibits economic growth. When you send money into an economy, in increase demand and it will have the opposite effect.
So it will lead to short-term inflation, and without the long-term investments in production, that inflation will continue for as long as the injections continue.
As the cash injections aren't universal, those who receive it will benefit, while the ones who don't will see their purchasing power drop significantly, and their lives worsen.
Cash injections CAN lead to inflation as an effect, but this is not a tautology (i.e. by definition).
And if solving economic problems were as simple as "just take more money from the rich people and give it to the poor people," this problem would have been solved centuries ago.
That's why we don't have any rich people any more and wealth inequality is at it's lowest point in decades, right?
> And if solving economic problems were as simple as "just take more money from the rich people and give it to the poor people," this problem would have been solved centuries ago.
When in history have we tried anything like UBI? How can we know if it works if we have never tried it?
UBI isn't inherently different. It's trying to pretend you can manipulate a market with no detrimental side effects, but it's been tried many, many times.
You seem to be of the opinion that nothing can be done to eliminate poverty, so why even try?
Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty. I'm confused why you would think large-scale involuntary wealth redistribution is the only way.
It is, by definition, not a subsidy since it does not target a subset of economic sectors.
> Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty.
Name one means of eliminating poverty without wealth re-distribution or subsidies. The only ones I know of involve sterilizing, deporting, killing or otherwise demographically elminating poor people.
Nobody's eliminated poverty yet, so it may be impossible. We do have ways of fighting it, though, which can (and does) include charitable giving (note: voluntary) and economic development of areas.
When this situation comes, the good option is that the society simply gives the new class of unemployable people their basic needs one way (like UBI) or another; the evil option is that the society doesn't give them the basic needs and they starve (since their labor has no value and they have nothing to trade for these basic needs); and the third option is that they take the basic needs in a revolution that likely destroys half of the society. Really, noone wants the second or third options, including most of the 0.1%, so we will see some mass redistribution system being implemented.
In 1917, taking all the resources from rich people and giving it to poor people wasn't enough to keep the poor people out of starvation for long and destroyed the productivity totally. In 2017, taking more money from the rich to feed the poor doesn't require even close to taking all their resources, as feeding the poor is so much cheaper compared to 1917; it would be deeply unpopular but is doable without killing the rich, and the society could sustain such level of taxation indefinitely if they wished even if nothing changed - but it's going to change, and in 2037 taking enough resources from the rich (i.e. the owners of highly automated means of production) to feed everyone UBI-style would be expected to be just a minor tax, and a boost for the economy, giving spending power to people who'd otherwise have no spending power at all.
Regarding your second paragraph: You're looking at this as a measurable global issue that will happen at a single time resolvable by a single government entity, but that's not how it will unfold.
It won't happen overnight, so there will be no point for those options to be evaluated. Let me pitch you (what I see as) a more realistic option:
Some countries will try to implement UBI. They will encounter the same problems opponents have been warning about. The productive will (over time) move to countries that don't take so much of their wealth. The people receiving more than they're contributing will have more children, will have more votes, and will vote to take more and more from the decreasing minority. Even if you can make food truly post-scarcity, housing, healthcare, and other goods/services are not.
If everything is truly post-scarcity: It'll be no problem. Those countries won't really need the wealthy. But I'm not sure true post-scarcity actually exists, and I think (especially in the US) UBI would be a moving target that only ever goes in one direction.
You're right, though, that I don't really have a solution if (e.g.) 80% of people no longer have a meaningful way to contribute to society. That may be fundamentally impossible to solve. But that may never happen and we may never have true post-scarcity, so we shouldn't be redesigning society based on the premise that wealthy people are an endless money tree, and if it's wrong, society collapses.