The article points out that making basic income available to those contributing to society (working, looking for work or volunteering). That's incredibly short-sighted for several reasons: 1) the idle are best being, well, idle - out of the way while everybody else gets on with making the world a better place. Sure they will reap the benefits but their number is likely to no higher than the currently idle. Indeed the numbers are likely to be fewer since everybody is free to do what they want; 2) means testing whether somebody is eligible is going to create bureaucracy and drive up the costs of the system and finally 3) if I wanted to spend a couple of weeks cleaning up my local beach of garbage I should be free to do so - the benefit to society is obviously large but the effort might just be me or a small group of similar minded folks. Justifying that to some authority so I could collect my payment would kill a lot of creativity because of the paperwork involved. As a result of lot of trivial but useful things, cleaning garbage from playgrounds or collecting household vegetable waste for a local compost heap would go undone.
>their number is likely to no higher than the currently idle
Why do you think giving some people free money that do not get it now would not result in some of them becoming idle?
There is evidence as payments increase the idle increase. For example, I think the OECD has data showing there are more people on disability by a wide margin across countries, and this correlates with the benefits the various countries offer. Do you really think there are naturally more disabled people in the UK than the US, or that because they offer better support more people are inclined to try and get it?
>if I wanted to spend a couple of weeks cleaning up my local beach of garbage I should be free to do so - the benefit to society is obviously large but the effort might just be me or a small group of similar minded folks
Obviously large to whom? Why does this group or person not already pay someone to clean the beach? Apparently the value is so low that people spend their money on things they want, instead of hiring you to clean the beach.
What you're arguing is that people will produce things of lesser value to society, but of some value to their own belief set, things of such low value overall that no one will pay for it. This results in a lower amount of goods and services, which ultimately results in society getting poorer, not richer.
Some of them do become idle thats the whole point because some of them ARE idle. We are not talking about living like a king. We are talking about basic income i.e. getting by.
