I will be investing in antidepressants.
You could look at those examples to see how society will be impacted...
Australia is a good place to start your research.
(It's not quite UBI because you have to apply for it and do something to get it, but it's pretty close)
You bringing this up at this point in time as if it's relevant almost seems trollish.
The commenter seems to have made this observation in good faith. It seems rude to me that you would insinuate the point is irrelevant and "almost seems trollish" just because you disagree with it, particularly when you did the bare minimum to mount a substantive rebuttal. It's true that we shouldn't conflate the unhappiness associated with welfare with some sort of ennui induced by a lack of productivity; but that doesn't preclude the point you're disagreeing with, which could still be true.
And it's also why you won't see it when UBI comes in.
A long term policy of government as a mandatory employer of last resort with make-work jobs doing work for which there is no real demand is a route to creating a permanent underclass. (A short-term policy of government as mandatory employer of last resort in response to an unusual economic disruption where this serves to maintain skills in jobs for which market demand is expected to rebound, to provide bridging income support, and to leverage temporary labor surplus for public infrastructure is a different story. As is a permanent policy of government offering non-universal last-resort employment in regions or industries experiencing short-term downturn without an economy-wide collapse, though that obviously can't replace general universal safety-net programs.)
People keep predicting this utopia of people sitting around twiddling their thumbs with nothing to do as all basic needs are provided. These predictions go back to the pre-industrial era.
Inequality is the fuel of ambition and simply having the basic needs covered won't be enough for people in the same way it currently isn't for upper middle and upper classes -- they still compete.
The "work" we will be doing will just be different. 3D printing and autonomous vehicles are going to have a massive impact on manufacture and distribution. However people still need to create things -- and AI is currently just good at optimizing things not "new thinking".
Does that sound good to you?
The alternative is what, exactly? Continue having jobs automated out of existence, letting the middle class cease to exist while placing the blame on the segment of the population that has little influence over what trades will be valuable tomorrow? How about we subsidize coal mining jobs long so people can stay busy?
This kind of black and white thinking is pointless. Using this as a justification for ignoring growing problems is negligent. There are a lot of things that people could do, and probably would do voluntarily if they didn't have to do their dead-end retail jobs.
One option is taking care of the planet we are hell-bent on destroying. Imagine if we had potentially millions of people to take care of our forests and rivers? What about taking care of the elderly or teaching or any number of jobs that are practically poverty wages now that would be possible while living a middle-class lifestyle?
That's a far more liberal perspective than the republicans in my family take, unfortunately.
I grew up in an area of questionable safety. There was a woman across the street who spoke to my mother about how she would scam the welfare system to receive multiple payments every month. This was on top of food stamps and child support checks. She was making more than most people with full time jobs in the area while doing absolutely nothing for society with no desire to ever change.
People will take advantage of the system if they can. Spelling out what it is and what it is not would have to mean making people understand that it is only the minimum and somehow encourage them to expand their horizons. That seems like a cultural shift that needs to happen before UBI becomes prevalent.
People on welfare often already treat it that way, doing under the table cash work while receiving benefits (many don't, either for moral reason (it is fraud, usually, both tax and welfare) or fear reasons (the punishments for such fraud can be catastrophic) or availability reasons (they just haven't found opportunities, which aren't exactly openly advertised). But it's still fairly widespread; UBI would normalize additional work and stop punishing it, and allow it to take place in the formal economy, which all by itself would produce exactly the culture shift you refer to.
Because if we leave people to their own devices, they'll burn the whole fucking thing to the ground. Open literally any history book to see examples.
And? People are remarkably good at finding something to do once they are bored.
A lot of people veg out in front of the boob tube because they are so exhausted from working to pay for basic necessities that they simply don't have the energy to do anything else.
I completely disagree. Bored directionless people, especially bored directionless men, are the worst thing a civilization can have. These are the guys that pick AK-47's and join terrorist organizations because they have no direction in their lives and they think they found it.
But if people are given more than the empty prospect of future penury and distress, wouldn't they find values of discovery and creativity to be much more appealing?
Who picks up an AK-47 and joins a terrorist organization just because they have nothing better to do? I think that sort of thing probably comes from a deeper malaise of the soul, and an environment devoid of hope is probably a big ingredient there.