u/2noame

"We can get big money out of our politics. We can achieve Medicare for all, universal childcare and excellent schools, and affordable homes. We can bust up monopolies that keep prices high, rein in AI and its data centers, and provide a universal basic income so AI doesn’t take away our livelihoods. And we can raise taxes on the super-wealthy and the richest corporations to pay for what Americans need." — Robert Reich

Abstract: This paper shows that allocative efficiency may entail high income tax revenues and a basic income. We consider an economy where people consume three types of goods: market goods, public goods, and social goods. The latter are non-priced goods with positive externalities that are produced by citizens in their leisure time. We show that in the absence of income taxes, work hours are too high and social-goods production is too low as compared to the socially optimal levels. We characterize optimal income taxation and develop a set of testable predictions. One implication of the model is that, as wages grow over time, at some point a basic income becomes part of the optimal policy under economically plausible conditions.

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Lets say the government introduced a UBI that was enough to cover your rent, utilities and a couple of nutritious meals per day. In other words you could survive reasonably comfortably without having to work.

Anything beyond the basics would still be on you. Things like a better phone, streaming subscriptions, a car, eating out/takeaways, hobbies, nicer clothes, etc would require you to earn additional money through work.

Assuming you were genuinely free to choose your hours, how many hours per week would you choose to work?

And for comparison how many hours do you work at the moment?