Labor force participation is falling while production is rising. That is what everyone on HN and in any engineering or computing related field does all day: figure out how to get more value from less labor.

You're right. People won't make stuff. People already don't make stuff. Machines do. A tiny elite class of engineers and managers figures out what the machines should do, designs them, and tends to them. The masses need not be involved.

Universal basic income != enough money not to work.

The report itself says that Alaska has had a UBI for 40 years with none of the predicted dire consequences.

You do need a think tank if your objective is to launder unfounded prejudices and discredited lies into something that sounds serious and academic.

"Alaska among top states in illicit drug use" [1]

"A new report from the state health department shows a dramatic rise in heroin use in Alaska. The number of hospitalizations for heroin related causes nearly doubled in the state from 2008 to 2012" [2]

"Alaska had one of the lowest four-year graduation rates in the United States in the 2013-14 school year...That year, 71.1 percent of Alaska's high school seniors graduated in four years -- the rest dropped out or needed more time to get their diplomas." It was 68% in 2011. [3]

[1] http://www.newsminer.com/news/local_news/alaska-among-top-st...

[2] http://www.alaskapublic.org/2015/07/14/report-heroin-use-is-...

[3] https://www.adn.com/education/article/despite-steady-gains-g...

As far as I know all those things are happening all over the American Midwest. You're trying to create a correlation where there is none.

I'm suggesting it as a possibility yes. Parent tried to suggest it as all rosy up in Alaska and suggest there's no negative correlation for UBI up there. And Alaska is toward the top on two major issues so it's worth noting.

If you don't have to work maybe drugs become more likely and graduating becomes less important?

"Paying people not to work means they won't make stuff."

Right. Luckily, basic income is not paying people to not work, so we had a lucky escape there. On basic income, people are still free to work.

>We only have stuff because people work.

In a society where everything is built or farmed by robots, only a small subset of the population needs to work. The rest can just do whatever they like. Even in today’s world, large amounts of people don’t really make “stuff” anymore.

Fortunately that society is at least 100 years in the future and none of us here will see it. When I was a kid, we were promised flying cars and life of leisure. 30 years later: no flying cars and busting my ass at work like a hamster in the wheel.

The problem is, our society right now only pays for "physical stuff". Hardware and services that are made and performed by people (who are usually in poverty).

However, think of all the artists/musicians/journalists that spend just as much "work" producing this content that you consume for free on the internet. We haven't figured out how to pay those people yet, except through internet advertising.

Now look at the most profitable company: Google. We make pretty much all of our record profits through advertising. Yet everyone hates advertising, and it's only getting worse, as evidenced by the ad-blocker wars happening right now. Lets get rid of the middle-man advertisers, and pay those content creators fairly for their work. UBI is one way to do this.