Childcare, elder care, home improvement, picking up a piece or two of litter while on a stroll, cooking & cleaning, gardening. These don't contribute to GDP, but if all this unpaid work halted and the people doing it suddenly demanded payment, the economy wouldn't exactly be in for a good time—we do need some amount of this, and it's not clear the amount people have time for is optimal, rather than just an accident.
Regardless, I don't think a ton of people would be content with UBI money and would probably do at least some paying work anyway. People want to live a certain place, have a certain lifestyle, provide for a family (have a family!), send the kids to good schools, have nice stuff, have some pocket money for doing stuff with friends, et c., and none of that goes away just because everyone's getting enough money to scrape by. Concerns about an epidemic of people declining to do anything productive because they won't literally starve on the street if they don't, seem like fantasy to me, and I've yet to see any remotely-serious proposal for UBI that pays out enough that people wouldn't still want to double, or triple, or quadruple that amount, by also having a job.
I know some folks who are probably in the category of people that some worry would stop working entirely (low-paid, not-great prospects, drug enjoyers to a greater degree than is probably, ah, healthy) but guarantee they would not. They'd still want to have money for, like, all the stuff you can spend money on that's not barely-scraping-by, and they'd want it enough to keep working. Now, they might put up with a little less bullshit at work, and employers & managers that can't seem to help treating everyone terribly may have to adjust, or else suffer, if being unemployed isn't quite as bad as it is now....
Regardless, I don't think a ton of people would be content with UBI money and would probably do at least some paying work anyway. People want to live a certain place, have a certain lifestyle, provide for a family (have a family!), send the kids to good schools, have nice stuff, have some pocket money for doing stuff with friends, et c., and none of that goes away just because everyone's getting enough money to scrape by. Concerns about an epidemic of people declining to do anything productive because they won't literally starve on the street if they don't, seem like fantasy to me, and I've yet to see any remotely-serious proposal for UBI that pays out enough that people wouldn't still want to double, or triple, or quadruple that amount, by also having a job.
I know some folks who are probably in the category of people that some worry would stop working entirely (low-paid, not-great prospects, drug enjoyers to a greater degree than is probably, ah, healthy) but guarantee they would not. They'd still want to have money for, like, all the stuff you can spend money on that's not barely-scraping-by, and they'd want it enough to keep working. Now, they might put up with a little less bullshit at work, and employers & managers that can't seem to help treating everyone terribly may have to adjust, or else suffer, if being unemployed isn't quite as bad as it is now....