>Does your thinking here work if including automation into the equation? Yes, I am more of a technologist than anything. Automation is not free, and if a thing

>Does your thinking here work if including automation into the equation? Yes, I am more of a technologist than anything. Automation is not free, and if a thing can be efficiently automated it is already or will be as soon as it's efficient. Automation gains in the past have not freed large swaths of workers, simply because as more goods are available people want higher quality of life, absorbing any gains. If you want to live like someone in 1950 you could on a much lower salary than people get now, but people now want bigger houses, more cars, more goods, more entertainment, more of everything. If you think automation will free us all, work on figuring out why all the massive automation gains did not already free large amounts of people from work. >If UBI had to be spent locally and only on "local" goods - within the ststem - then there's no leak This completely fails. Consider how good your life would be if you could only have goods you made. Not nice. Then make it people within a mile of you. Better, but still crap. Make it a US state. Better again, but not really anywhere near first world standards. If you want a first world standard of living, you need goods from around the planet and skilled people from around the planet trading and making and innovating. Buy local simply lowers your quality of life (and everyone, since you'll soon lower the # of specialists that can exist by serving large populations). >This is why major, credible think tanks estimate an immediate 13%+ increase in GDP with implementing a $1,000/month UBI. And others have reached the opposite conclusion. Most importantly, the evidence from real world trials is consistent with a smaller, not larger, economy.