On the contrary, guaranteed low wage jobs sounds like it has all kinds of perverse incentives - for politicians and corporations.
Not to mention, why should people have to do worthless government-assigned work to get that money? Yes, of course, there will naturally be some people that would take the 10k and live on it - as best as can be managed - but I think it would free up a great many other people to pursue work they're actually interested in, especially in the arts.
In past times, the majority of human work was growing food. Today, less than 2% of the population can feed everyone else. As a result a great many people had to find other work; and they did. But now it seems that software and automation will reduce the number of people needed to do all other kinds of required work to a minimum, as happened to agriculture.
Coincidentally, artistic work by and large pays less than ever today due to the ease of piracy (you can trace the profits of RIAA over the last 3 decades for a good example of this) even as more people than ever are able to do artistic work (better tools) and reach an audience at no cost (better communications). Art and entertainment will be the last bastions of human "work" when current trends start to max out.
So - why not have a society where people are free to pursue the work they're interested in, whether it pays or not; where art and entertainment are possible to freely create or consume, unconstrained by the bounds of the market; and where the necessary work for human survival is compressed to a minimum of needed people that are interested in those matters and/or the money that comes with them?
No : Potatoes will cost the same for everyone (even the rich). So the cost of purchasable goods does not decrease (which would happen, if some people got free potatoes, for instance). Agreed, there would be more money in the economy, so there would be a step-wise inflation, but the pain would be shared out (mainly according to ability to pay).
The benefit of a basic income is that any paid work would simply add to your take-home cash. At the moment, means-tested benefits can cause people entering into the workforce to have benefits removed - so that their implicit marginal tax rate can exceed 100% (i.e. they are worse off working). Even if this perverse situation isn't directly manifested, the very poor suffer some of the highest implicit tax rates
due to benefits being removed. Which is a crazy situation.
Not to mention, why should people have to do worthless government-assigned work to get that money? Yes, of course, there will naturally be some people that would take the 10k and live on it - as best as can be managed - but I think it would free up a great many other people to pursue work they're actually interested in, especially in the arts.
In past times, the majority of human work was growing food. Today, less than 2% of the population can feed everyone else. As a result a great many people had to find other work; and they did. But now it seems that software and automation will reduce the number of people needed to do all other kinds of required work to a minimum, as happened to agriculture.
Coincidentally, artistic work by and large pays less than ever today due to the ease of piracy (you can trace the profits of RIAA over the last 3 decades for a good example of this) even as more people than ever are able to do artistic work (better tools) and reach an audience at no cost (better communications). Art and entertainment will be the last bastions of human "work" when current trends start to max out.
So - why not have a society where people are free to pursue the work they're interested in, whether it pays or not; where art and entertainment are possible to freely create or consume, unconstrained by the bounds of the market; and where the necessary work for human survival is compressed to a minimum of needed people that are interested in those matters and/or the money that comes with them?