This is a huge concern. I have known several people who, when they lose their seasonal jobs, coast on unemployment insurance until the very last minute, sometimes even going as far as welfare and couch surfing before a new job finds them (they won't go looking for it themselves).

All they want is beer, weed, porn, and video games. They don't seem to want relationships, work, friendships beyond smoking buddies... it's saddening, honestly.

I worry that UBI will enable large swathes of these people, permanently stunted in their personal growth, incapable of acting as real adults. Meanwhile, UBI itself may not be a sustainable system; if it results in taxation that cannot be borne by those who keep working, the result will be that it will eventually be cancelled. What happens to all those who subsist on UBI if that happens? Nothing is guaranteed...

Where are you living that social nets are getting bigger and wider? It seems to me that the modern idea, since the 1980s, has been to constantly cut them back.

There will be people that go to entertainment and drugs as well as people that take that money to add to society. The question is what the net effect is.

Basic income solves the problem of how to get spending money to consumers. This is an important problem. If consumers don't have spending money, then the economy won't function properly.

It is true that, in today's economy, we try to get spending money to consumers in other ways. Are these alternatives somehow more effective than basic income?

For example, should we be making up unnecessary work for people to do as an excuse to give them spending money? Should we be distorting the labor market by "creating jobs" or artificially boosting wages?

A big part of what a properly calibrated basic income does is that it allows the labor market to be efficient.

You're certainly right that we don't want people to become miserable blobs. That's not a happy life. But what's the best way to prevent this? Is it to withhold money from them and force them to work at unnecessary jobs? Or can we do better?

I also have a hard time buying that. Wouldn’t that mean that high tax countries with more welfare would be more probable to have big drug problems? E.g. Sweden does not have a bigger problem with drugs then the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_prevale... (and of course you are not saying that social welfare is the only parameter)

I think it can be balanced by the amount of UBI. UBI should just be enough to make sure no one goes hungry or has to sleep out in the cold. That, in addition to public health care and education and access to libraries and opportunities for self-growth. Anything more can and will be misused. Anything less makes it too risky for people to experiment and fail. At least that's the theory I have in my head. How exactly to determine this amount fairly? I don't know.

Even assuming you had any facts to base your assumption, why is that a bad thing? There is nothing holy about work, especially work for the enrichment of others.

I, an i suspect many people here, get paid handsomely to move bytes from one place to another and this funds either our ambitions or tastes. I think it's hard to argue that your general well paid tech employee is contributing to society moving bytes around appreciably more than a stoner chilling out on the couch.

It will probably do both. "There are people who will take risks that they otherwise wouldn't be able to with a basic income" and "there are people who will do nothing of value to anyone besides themselves if they have a choice in the matter" are not mutually exclusive.

Where is that?