What is different is that it frees you from the worry that you need to eat and have an abode. And the hope is that this comfort will make you engage in work you really want to do, rather then turn you into a couch potato.
For example, I live in London and enjoy this city. I would love to be able to stay at home and work on my side projects in hope of making extra money, but given the outcome I believe from this, everyone who was to only accept the basic income amount would no longer be able to afford to live in London and would have to relocate to less desirable places in the country.
Yes, you would now be free to work on your projects from your own home, but you would now not live where you want, with the people you are friends with, in an area which would be full of people who also are only taking the basic wage and probably a pretty horrible place.
The on paper calculations of the affect of this is like a snapshot of some code, before you press run. In the first state it is in, it would be fine, but the economic effects from this over the long term both in social and financial terms would be profound.
If you say, everyone in London will need a job, then you are then moving the poor / unemployed on mass out of the city. On paper this may look great, but for social-economic reasons this is a disaster.
You would end up with a 'walled garden' of elite living in London and the poor / unemployed living outside. The city would lose it's unique cultures, become even more gentrified / elite than it currently is and social unrest could start to occur.
The further London moves away from the UK, the more are cities like Brighton, Cambridge etc. looking more attractive. More attractive to people willing to live in a more mixed area too.
BTW,
>You would end up with a 'walled garden' of elite living in London and the poor / unemployed living outside. The city would lose it's unique cultures, become even more gentrified / elite than it currently is and social unrest could start to occur.
This is already happening/has already happened, unfortunately.
Some models call for a universal income which takes location inconsideration. The income would be higher in London, for example. That's a pretty controversial model, though.
In any monopoly/duoploy/oligopoly/cartel-ish environment in which prices are determined by limited supply and therefore buyers ability to pay (seller gets the economic profit) makes buyer side cash infusion useless.
Why wouldn't that happen everywhere?
If we assume people prefer to live in a major city, and incomes are adjusted so that your income matches your cost of living, there is no downside to living there. That puts upward pressure on an area that is probably already maxed out for living space, which causes people to pay a little bit more in order to secure a place to live. Then, your income rises to offset your new costs of living there, providing the money necessary to allow someone to pay just a little bit more than you, thus beginning the cycle.
Outside of the city you would find a low demand and high supply of housing under such a scenario, and thus there would be no fuel to ignite a race to out-pay each other to find a place to rent. In fact, there you could probably convince the owner to accept a little bit less for rent as few people are interested in the place at all. If your offer is not accepted, it might sit vacant.
I fear that for every person doing something meaningful with the freedom given to them via basic income, there'll be 10 or 20 who become couch poatoes or worse, self-destruct (booze, drugs, gambling) out of boredom.
Do you realize what you're saying here? That people should be forced into wage slavery to keep them from becoming lazy or alcoholic or drug addicts. That's an incredibly regressive position to take.
Basic income should be given to all. This gives everyone more freedom. If people have mental health problems including substance abuse, they should be given treatment.
Throughout the history of human civilizations we have stood on the shoulders of giants. We have built ourselves up from nothing and all of that progress has been measured by our ability to reduce our dependence on a subsistence lifestyle, freeing people to innovate and create great works of cultural or artistic importance. Now we are finally nearing the end of this long road. We are finally approaching complete freedom from labour as a survival necessity. And now people are complaining that this is a bad thing?
No. People should be forced to do something useful, because the goods don't come out of the blue. This is not the same as "wage slavery".
Edit: I am alluding to the fact that we are way past full employment.
Well there's your problem, fear is not the proper state of mind with which to make good decisions.
I also suspect that a lot of these guys have been trained for manual work that is, regardless of basic income, being moved overseas and automated. The work is going/gone.
Edit: Also, I would highly respect any manual labourer who would stay in their job even though they were sure of their income. I think that is a useful currency too.