You might now know this if you live in North America because Australia hardly enters our consciousness or our news cycles, but in many parts of the world Australia has a reputation of being a very innovative country, especially in physical engineering and software. Part of it has to do with their anti-authoritarian heritage and survivalist mindset--they don't take hierarchy too seriously. Whether their creativity is helped by a generous welfare society or not, I'm not sure, but you definitely can't say Australians aren't innovative.

Who gives a duck? If people are well taken care of, I'm take less innovation, since usually it's useless customer goods innovation these days.

> I heard people would become more creative and innovative under those circumstances.

That could be one of the possible outcomes, yes.

Remember too that Australia only has a population of 25 million - only 7.5% of America. So even if Australia was twice as creative and innovative as America, it can still only innovate and create 15% as much as America can simply because of the size difference.

Another outcome from all this might just be that you create one of the best places to live on the planet... i.e. one of your cities has been voted world's most livable city (or second place) for decades.

Australia is doing pretty damn well. The pay there is fantastic, and it's one of the few countries where you can work any honest job and still get paid well (I can attest that this is not the case in the U.S.). Many foreigners flock there in large part for this reason. 1 month+ vacation, strong healthcare system, good benefits, etc. And remember their population is only 24.6 million.

I'd say having a higher standard of living is more important than being the "innovation engine of the world", however arbitrarily defined that is.

It's literally not a UBI, did you not see the OP spell that out?

Means-tested welfare is misaligned with productivity because the money stops coming once you make more. A UBI is a more pragmatic, efficient approach to reducing wealth inequality.

Have you heard of Jira, perchance

Where have you heard that?

This is a textbook example of a strawman argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man