UBI and discretionary income
Apologies if this has been discussed to death, but I don’t ever think I’ve seen a direct take on what the UBI scenario would look like in terms of folks who want more money to buy things above and beyond what would be considered covered as basic under UBI. There’s a huge population of middle/upper-middle class folks who buy the nicer house, the nicer car, the splurge vacations every once in a while - does that lifestyle exist in an accelerated world with UBI? For example, I have a music hobby, and my collection of guitars, piano, equipment etc is easily in the $25k+ range over 20 years of buying, selling, trading etc. What would acquiring that same level of gear look like with UBI as my main source of income? To be clear, I’m not “anti” this, but I’m just curious as to how it’s addressed, as I assume a lot of people won’t necessarily like the idea of having an involuntarily greatly reduced income that affects their current lifestyle if they otherwise had the opportunity to continue to keep working and have a higher income stream. Or will UBI be much higher than I’m assuming? Or is the real answer here that we’re expecting those people to be told “tough luck, this is how it is now?”