UBI improves business confidence - Increases business investment and profit.

UBI would also serve as a valuable Keynesian stabilizer by keeping aggregate demand up even during economic downturns (Theobald 1965, 113). That will help governments to smooth out business cycles, which will increase business investment because companies will be able to take bigger risks without worrying about long, major recessions. If necessary, UBI payments could be easily increased with a stabilization bonus like the stimulus payments various countries, including the United States, have made in the past. In fact, rich countries could have implemented UBI instead of engaging in Quantitative Easing, which props up troubled banks by buying beaten down financial securities (Standing 2017, 100–2). “Technology,” one UBI proponent assures readers, “will inevitably increase productivity” (Crocker 2020, 8). Innovation will not dry up under UBI as it is mostly state-driven. As two researchers put it, “figures such as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk slyly obscure their parasitical reliance on state-led developments” (Srnicek and Williams 2016, 179). Moreover, UBI will increase private innovation by giving people a secure base from which to launch enterprises (Theobald 1965, 93) and free up their time to engage in entrepreneurship and provide them a backstop when they fail (Sammeroff 2019, 23). Increased productivity from technological advances will ensure ample tax resources to fund UBI, even without full employment (Standing 2017, 99). Policymakers should not worry about raising taxes if necessary to fund UBI because a study showed that high-income people work almost as long and hard after taxes go up. In fact, unless taxation becomes confiscatory (100%), they might work even longer and harder to keep their net income up (Standing 2017, 149). If tax resistance is a problem, though, UBI can be funded by creating (“printing”) new money with no need to raise taxes or sell state assets. UBI, in other words, can be combined with what Geoff Crocker calls “sovereign money.” With antiquated calls for “full employment” stifled, modern monetary theory (MMT) plus UBI will add up to plenty for everyone, without inflation (Crocker 2020, 37– 40). As Crocker points out, if the sums printed match “potential full employment output GDP” inflation will not ensue (Crocker 2020, 6–7, 30, 45). The fact that governments have been “printing money” and running up large deficits and national debts for decades proves that it causes no economic hardships or problems. “Deficit is inevitable and manageable,” as one researcher put it (Torry 2019, 183). The need for a balanced budget is an illusion of economic orthodoxy, nothing more and nothing less. Money is just a claim on GDP (output), so austerity is harmful because it limits output (Torry 2019, 184).