I think you may have a skewed view of what the average person does with their free time (probably because you and your peer group are not typical). Here's a breakdown of what the average unemployed person does with their day (lots of television, almost no education): http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t08C.htm. There's also a big chunk of unspecified leisure/sports, but those activities don't seem to be the type you're hoping for either: http://www.bls.gov/TUS/CHARTS/LEISURE.HTM.

You may very well be right that the relatively small group of people who like to do creative things in their free time would make a big impact, though.

Long term unemployment in the contemporary USA means

- Enormous stigma

- Being a powerless pawn of Kafkaesque bureaucracy

- Poor nutrition, distracting hunger, nagging uncured illness

- Pressure, stress, fear and suffering

- Low access to anything not in walking distance, or which costs money to get in

- Easy access to distracting pop culture and particularly TV

It's basically unsurprising that a person here and now who's unemployed DOESN'T behave like a person in a society that distributes Basic Income without stigma.

If you want to look at a group which might make a better comparison, look at retirees, or lottery winners.

Fair point, but compare full-time workers to people aged 75+ (who are mostly retired): the latter have 4.5 hours more leisure time per weekday, and 60% of that is spent watching TV. The category most likely to contain creative hobbies ("Other leisure and sports activities, including travel") gets an extra 4 minutes per day. Education time rounds to zero. They do read more, though: about an hour more per day.

Dropping back to ages 65-74 is mostly similar, except they only read half as much.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t11.htm

[2] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t03.htm

This is skewed towards people who are unemployed in the current system. It's a bit far-fetched to conclude that this is also what the average person would do. It's more plausible (to me) to assume those people are doing this regardless of the system, and those who would quit paid work because of basic income might do something different.

Also, many types of work are just not possible outside of a company context because you need infrastructure and, well, company. Some people may be willing to do a bit of today's work for free, just for socializing, if they have basic income and if it's socially acceptable to work without pay. Or maybe not. But it's hard to know, from just looking at this data.

You do realize you need money to do what the OP said, an unemployed person with no BI income is not the same person with BI income.

If I have a basic income, I would love to go out and do something productive, take classes to benefit myself to get a better job. I have a few family members who doesn't have a job for a few years and they cannot take any free classes, they all cost money, especially the intensive technical courses.

I would love to go to the arts and stuff but the moment I step out as an unemployed person with no income, it will only incur expenses I can't afford. Rent, Bus fares, food, clothing and so on are vital expenses that I need to save for, I can't do that with no income. I've met people who can barely make any profit after paying their expenses.

This. I've seen people effectively emulate this lifestyle by living on student loans (that they then didn't actually use to pay tuition). Except in the end they'd have accrued a considerable amount of debt, of course.

The benefits of BI can be summarized in that it eliminates the foundation of the hierarchy of needs from everyday considerations. Even minimum wage can't aspire to solve this (simply because at some point minimum wage becomes so high the jobs become unprofitable if they can be avoided -- also because minimum wage does nothing for those who don't collect a wage).

Or simply jobs in a better market. Many people that are just making it can't really afford the direct cost and risk of moving.

This is just a glass-half-full way of admitting that a lot of people will quit their jobs and stop working. Unfortunately, we're not mining asteroids yet, so we need enough people to continue working regular jobs that there couldn't be a significant gain in short-term-unproductive pursuits.

According to a study (don't have a link unfortunately), 56% of Danes say they would continue working their current jobs if then won millions on the lottery. In a society like that, basic income may very well work.

Would love to see how that statistic breaks by class of occupation though.

Whilst there are plenty of people who wonder how they'd fill their day if they didn't have computers to program or interesting research to complete, there are an awful lot of people who work long, tedious and unsocial hours simply to make ends meet. Any feasible value of BI is going to be set at much closer to the current incomes of the latter group of people than the former. Even if the first group is vastly larger than the second group, they're still going to have to pay significantly more for the drudgery to be done.

Unfortunately, there are still a few problems. One, we don't know how many would actually continue working. Two, 44% quitting is still far too many. Even 10% of currently working people would cause huge problems.

On the other hand, any feasible BI program couldn't pay anything close to the annuity possible by winning a lottery, so a lot of Danes should still be 'stuck' trying to make their desired income level.

I agree we may be able to count on the Scandinavian mindset to make social programs work that couldn't in a place like the United States, but even in Denmark, I don't think this particular program can deliver the desired benefits without giving out enough money to cause problems.

Two points:

1. The study does not say that 44% would stop working - they just wouldn't continue working in their current company/occupation, with a portion of them probably moving on to more fulfilling work (as opposed to living a life of pure leisure).

2. The stats refer to winning a lottery, which solves one's all financial problems and desires. Basic income does neither for a majority of people.

Right now business is under heavy pressure to "create jobs" - that is, make busywork for humans.

If that pressure went away, a lot of automation would arrive very suddenly.