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Comment by ng12 | Hacker News Reader

The biggest turn off for me is that most UBI advocates seem to have the opinion that people freed from jobs will turn into philosophers or artists or otherwise make productive use of their time. I argue you don't really have to look very far to find the answer to that question: check out what an underemployed ~25yo from a small rust-belt town is up to. Chances are not a whole lot.

That's why I'm really in favor of a scheme like this. Ensure that people supported by the community at least give something back. Go a step further and increase funding for the arts so we can create jobs there too.

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> check out what an underemployed ~25yo from a small rust-belt town is up to. Chances are not a whole lot.

The problems faced by small post-industrial towns are many, varied, and way outside the grasp of probably anyone on HN, but I'd be willing to bet that "underemployed", "rust-belt", and "small town" has a lot more to do with a person's lifestyle than the amount of free time they have.

You can't very meaningfully use someone's not making "productive use of their time" while lacking employment (and therefore income) as an argument against UBI. They don't have the income that might — yes, might — enable them to be their flavor of productive.

I suspect that a lot of people's flavor of productive might turn on "artist" or "writer" where very few will be interested in "coal mine equipment operator", or "customer service person for DELL." For the foreseeable future there will always be jobs people don't want to do that machines aren't capable of taking over.

I agree with this. What will be interesting though is to see if the wages of those jobs will increase because people won't want to do them, or if wages will decrease because there will be so many more people that aren't employed, and there may be a certain prestige to being employed to do any work at all.

I suspect that no matter how you slice things, there will always be people who don't qualify for UBI (probably anybody without citizenship or a green card), and that those people will end up working many of those jobs for low wages.

Yes, and it's a very good thing that a UBI system still allows the "coal mine equipment operator" to be paid for their work on top of the UBI.

Another demographic to consider is retired people with pensions. Some of them waste it down the pub, others lead meaningful lives and describe these years as their happiest.

Why is it necessary for everyone to make productive use of their time?

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