But the people &quot;on UBI&quot; will be everyone. It seems like you&#x27;re thinking of &quot;the people on UBI&quot; as only those who don&#x27;t have a steady job, live at their parent&#x27;s house, etc.<p>I think of the average person I know, who works, has hobbies, who might have a side business, play a sport, participate in local theater, volunteer at a religious institution or charity, belong to a club, etc. Those people will also be &quot;on UBI&quot;.<p>I think, if they didn&#x27;t have to work full time (or more), they would still be &#x27;productive&#x27; members of society, engaging &#x2F;even more&#x2F; in all those things they are already doing when they aren&#x27;t working. They might continue working full-time, or part time, or on weekends, or take contracting gigs. They might be more apt to quit, or at least speak up, when a workplace is mis-managed, because the downside isn&#x27;t as painful as just hanging in there. In that case, a truly bad workplace will see that fact more accurately reflected in turnover.<p>I don&#x27;t have a problem with people who aren&#x27;t working on UBI. They probably already get some government benefits; UBI doesn&#x27;t change that or enable them any more than what we have now.<p>What UBI offers in addition, is that those productive, self-motivating people would have the freedom for self-direction, instead of stuff they have to do to pay the rent. I would rather subsidize them and get the people who could use their physics or mathematics PhD instead of slinging frappucinos.<p>As a programmer, I know a number of people who would probably devote a major chunk of time to their startup or open source project rather than nudge layouts on corporate pages, if they didn&#x27;t have to. They would be doing it already if they didn&#x27;t put their income and health insurance in jeopardy.<p>If the cost of that is to allow a few people to sit on the couch more comfortably, so be it.