Right! So everyone would choose to pursue passions/interests/leisure. We would be going into debt with no meaningful benefit to the taxpayer. Direct malinvestment.
I imagine just like with existing benefits, the majority of people wouldn't feel great about being on UBI doing nothing, and they would pursue something that gives them a better social standing, a better sense of purpose, a good challenge, whatever motivates an individual. It's why lots of people do volunteer work, work on important open source software, and so on. Sure, there's outliers that actually proudly slack off, but you don't address specific problems with generic solutions.
But more importantly, having the _option_ to fall back on benefits means people need to take fewer risks to pursue their talents and likely be of more value to society than if they did whatever puts food on the table today. Case in point: People born into a family that can finance them through college are more likely to become engineers than people born into poor households. On the flip side, some people do white collar jobs vs something like being a medic to uphold their standard of living from the higher salary, not out of preference.
I think it would need careful management, but I believe there's every reason to be optimistic.
People work for money. If a job has no pay, you can't expect it to get done.
We need people to actually run hospitals, produce food, construct shelter/infrastructure, provide childcare/education, etc.
It’s a classic economic blunder that dictatorships love to make:
1. Create money & rack up debt.
2. Produce nothing.
3. Create inflationary crisis and exacerbate wealth inequality.
4. Highlight your good intentions and relish your new position as champion of the people.
Also, it’s fascinating that you say “no benefit to the taxpayer” as if the taxpayer not having to work is somehow not a benefit?
A conversation that starts like this is not going to go well.
The vast majority of people's passions are partying, sex, alcohol/drugs, watching sports, gossiping, generally wasting time. Things that mostly
This whole line of thought to me is embarrassingly clueless, naive and basically childish.
It is just mind blowing to me how smart people can't see what a bubble they live in.
I almost suspect, the higher a person's IQ, the more susceptible they are to living in a bubble that basically has nothing to do with the majority of people with an IQ of 100.