The arts are valuable and I'd love to have a country which could patronize the arts and artists. But we don't have that kind of money. Even if we did, there are other priorities for things we should be paying people to do.
In any case, the one argument for UBI I found somewhat convincing was that it could be cheaper than social security, unemployment, etc all combined, because there'd be less administrative cost.
I appreciate that some governments were willing to experiment.
Change can be good, but tests ought to be tried before large , even well-intentioned changes to massive systems.
You have the money to patronise the military-industrial complex, I think you could easily afford to patronise the arts more if that was your priority.
In the space of just social programs, or societal improvement programs, I'd love to see more national parks, environmental cleanup, scientific research funding, etc. There are people who are willing but unable to do work in these areas. The US provides a pretty good amount of money in these areas, even as I desire more.
tl;dr if you're a US citizen, vote for people who'll spend how you want them to spend. If you're not, oh well, it's not your decision
Perhaps UBI on its own is not sufficient to give hope for a better future, but combined with affordable education maybe it would be?
I imagine if one could take some time off without fear of starvation (or going massively into debt) to raise one's skills, then upward mobility would be much more accessible. I don't know if UBI is the only solution but I can see how it would at least solve part of the problem.
I'm too young to have experienced it myself but my understanding is that there was a time when people could actually survive off jobs which didn't require a college degree. I don't think this is possible in most places anymore and given that college tuition has only increased, it seems like upward mobility has decreased.
I realize that college isn't necessarily the right path to upward mobility but I think you can generalize the argument to most forms of education and it would still apply.