I would say, it's totally okay for any person, in rural US or urban, to not go to college if they don't need it. I am a huge proponent of higher ed, including making it freely available to all, but this idea that you have to go to college to "amount to something" is damaging.
Additionally, your use of "amount to something" is showing your own bias towards feeling that white-collar work defines success in life. Not everyone feels like this -- as you've noted, but it's not limited to "college-educated hippies." I know many, many people who work solely to put food on the table and find their fulfillment elsewhere. This could be via volunteering, art (not only hippie art), mentoring others, or pursuing dream jobs in their free time. Imagine if the safety net of UBI existed -- how many more people would feel confident taking the risk to open the restaurant they've always dreamed of opening, or art gallery, or other cottage-industry?
Furthermore, It's not about preventing people from working if they want to. It's about ending minimum-wage slavery -- making sure people don't need to work two or three minimum wage jobs just so their children have food to eat and a roof over their heads.
> I would probably just spend my life on the internet and playing games while feeling guilty.
You say this, but I kind of doubt it. That guilt would spur you to do something of value.
> Others would escape through drugs.
There is currently an epidemic of drug use in the US due to all the people trying to escape from the misery of their $7.25/hour existences.
These people can still let work define themselves, with less competition and more responsibilities which would make them more happy.
> Would you care about high school if it's totally okay to not do anything? Maybe you'd go off to college, but then come back when it gets hard because it's totally okay if you never amount to anything.
I think this is totally okay. Every time there is a topic on college there is the debate of whether college should be job training or overall growth of individuals. This solves that problem altogether and all the way to high schools. Also, when those people enjoyed enough of their free time and want to go back and learn, they will be able to do so without pressure. We cram 12-16 years of school on kids because most of them can't afford to not to. We already see middle class and wealthy children taking gap years to explore life, this just let everyone do that.
> I would probably just spend my life on the internet and playing games while feeling guilty.
Do you spend all your time on the internet and play games after work? If you don't, why would you when you don't have to work?
> Others would escape through drugs.
I'd say more people escape through drugs due to pressure in life than the lack of pressure.
Where I disagree with you, however, is the assumption that finding life meaning and purpose and a sense of usefulness and competency and enjoyment out of work is a thing limited to specifically today's culture, a thing that we can just change. For one, most people don't have the introspection and willpower to self-actualize and create their own meaning in life. This is a huge reason we have depression and nihilism and existential dispair. Two, we have stories from history and interactions from other cultures that show that finding meaning in work holds true for them as well.
For example, unless currently possessed by a Strange Mood (in Dwarf Fortress artifact making sense), it takes me 4 free days to even start (or resume) something productive more complex than general housework stuff. That excludes most of weekends out, since they are too short.
People who would have trouble finding valuable (to them) things to do under UBI regime, have even more trouble now, unless they lucked out and consider the job they must do now to be more valuable than the money it brings. And not a soul sucking waste of time that doesn't leave enough time and energy to even realize something fulfilling can be done.
My original comment somewhat lacked empathy, perhaps because I don't suffer from problems with free time fragmentation because I'm always possessed by a Strange Mood. I still think my point stands though. I meet a lot of people with what I know to be fairly large chunks of time that don't do anything with them anyway, not because they feel like they can't achieve something in that time but because they don't have any hobbies or ideas, or particular skills. In fact, that's true for most people I meet, and it's actually difficult for me to tell whether that's an artifact of perceived free time fragmentation or not. And this is in a culture where people are 100% encouraged to develop skills and hobbies.
But think about it, as much as we hear about retired people doing epic things, we also don't hear about retired people, like my grandparents, being terminally bored and ending up back to the workforce.
Here's the thing. As much as jobs can be boring and soul-sucking, to an extent they provide more of something then doing nothing while on UBI does. In addition, they provide a lot of training for life, like perseverance through boring things, and people skills (this is my experience at least) that you can't really get anywhere else. Plus, while jobs might be unfun, developing any kind of skill and competency at something genuinely gives people a sense of self-worth. Often, jobs provide the sort of skill that is easier to master than, say, art or poetry. Unless UBI comes with some sort of education or structured skill development, it really won't be good for people in the way you're suggesting.
I'm willing to consider it possible however that there might be more people capable of learning skills and achieving self-actualization than we currently see manifest in society, and that with UBI those people will be freed up to do things. I just don't think that it's a totally positive thing. Besides all kinds of other logistical issues and issues like it ending up subsidizing drug addictions and such.
But the main premise of UBI is that you just don't need economic output from all the people you have. So the only question remaining is how it would affect those people, the ones lacking the drive and ability to become useful. That is not the question of societal judgment -- if UBI ends up funding lots of mindless candy crashing it is only bad insofar as it affects the person. If they are satisfied, that's the end of the question.
I agree that a sudden transition for people who worked whole life and are finding themselves in effective retirement might be harsh, but the alternative here is sudden job loss and poverty, which is more immediately dire.
Might be a question to be resolved with data and studies I suppose. But my expectation (given that you don't need people to be economically productive anymore) is that benefit of having free time will be positive on balance, and the negative outcomes would be just another logistical challenge of education and motivation.
Consider also all the people in golden chains, who had ability and drive (which is arguably just another form of ability) to get good jobs, but who would rather apply those talents to something else.
Keep in mind that (quoting a random UBI plan that seems fairly representative), a universal payment of $12,000 per year to each adult U.S. resident over age 18 would cost roughly $3 trillion per year... And according to the IRS, in 2016 people payed a total of $1.4 trillion in taxes[1] meaning we'd have to triple current taxes. Even taxing the top 1% at 100% income tax wouldn't pay for that.
[1]: https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...
Also, there are some studies recently started concerning UBI, so we'll see.
The other thing is that that money isn't free, it has to be taken from someone, and given to someone else... So the question is, why do the people receiving that money deserve it? If UBI is an almost entirely good force, and isn't mostly just wasted, then maybe it's worth considering, but even then the amount of money needed and morality of it is iffy. Without the garuntee that it would do anything good, I'm even more dubious of it.
I disagree with your assumption about education. A lot of people take pride in their knowledge. Most great scientists throughout history were basically trust fund babies. That's how they could afford to not work in a field and instead get educated and study science.
I want us to look at this the way we look at the invention of agriculture and not some dystopia where everyone is living in a slum. Agriculture freed up a lot of people from worrying about finding food. Do you think they were against growing grain and lost their sense of purpose because they didn't have to spend days running down deer? I seriously doubt it. This then led to people specializing in other fields. We see people becoming masons and building grand structures. Moving from militias to standing armies. Studying the stars leading to the ability to navigate the oceans. I think it's going to free up a lot of people who would have other wise been minimum wage indentured servants to have the ability to study and become great scientists or writers or doctors or whatever. Who knows how many great minds were wasted toiling away as a serf to some lord.
It frees companies to only hire people who are interested in what the company is doing and enthusiastic about it.
It frees people to do constructive, contributing things they might want to do, but which wouldn't pay enough, or which they wouldn't be able to do full time but can do part time.
They are quite different than college-educated hippies who would rather get more education and go surfing for a few years while they write bad poetry.
I mean imagine living in a rural, middle-of-nowhere US town where everyone pretty much lives on $800/mo from the government. What would you do out there? Would you care about high school if it's totally okay to not do anything? Maybe you'd go off to college, but then come back when it gets hard because it's totally okay if you never amount to anything. I would probably just spend my life on the internet and playing games while feeling guilty. Others would escape through drugs.
It is possible to change our culture and attitudes to work, but that's a really big change.