Can I just say that saying "There are severe problems with it" isn't an answer? I could say that about anything, and you wouldn't have to believe me.
I know, I'm just trying to be pragmatic. I may be too old to be idealistic.
I like our welfare system and would rather see it improved, but that stuff is complicated...
Also, how is "They can't afford to work less" a decent argument against "giving people money and freedom to work less"?
If people work less, their productivity goes down. Your employer might as well move his factory to a country where workers are cheaper and more productive. Industrial production and exports are the backbone of our economy. Work costs are high here, but workers are qualified enough to keep companies here. In some sectors they are moving to other countries though, and that is a real problem.
Quite frankly I love automation. Freeing people up to do things more important than sit in front of an assembly line or stack boxes 8-12 hours a day is great. The problem is that those people, in those crap jobs, can't make enough to save enough to transition into more important work, like education or business building, after their job has been automated.
Again, I admire your idealism, but when you think realistic here, many people are neither willing to nor capable of creating businesses. The problem isn't only that they can't save enough to do something else, but that they have mortgages and families and that they don't want to spent years getting the qualifications for another, more interesting job. Education is pretty much nationalized here, there certainly should be more money for that, but again, that money has to come from somewhere.
Well, I guess I'm just saying national economies are super-complicated, especially in a globalized context. If I had a working solution for something like universal income I'd be happy to collect my Nobel-prize.