I think the counterargument is that if everyone suddenly has $1000/month more, the market will very quickly eat it all, as prices readjust to consume the extra disposable income.
I want UBI to work. But I haven't heard of a good strategy to mitigate what I just described.
You can't use cash. Guaranteed housing, a universal food stamp program that doesn't suck — there are ways we can give everyone a fixed amount of additional value without injecting extra money into the economy and seeing inflation happen. After all, a grocery store can raise its prices on customers, but when it has to hand its food stamp receipts to the state for reimbursement, the state can ensure that prices don't rise for the consumer while subsidizing as needed.
As far as real cash payouts go, there's value to them, but not universally. In order to have the maximum impact they need to be limited to people with little to no other income.
Though one plus side of that is that it reallocates resources from capturing the value the rich control towards capturing the value that's been distributed to the poor.
Right now few bright folks are interested in revolutionizing affordable housing, public education, or payday lending because the money's not in it. They make a lot more money advertising to the affluent class or owning a marketplace that gives them vacation rentals or cheap transportation.
If we had UBI, prices would eventually equilibrate to eat all the new disposable income, but the gold rush in the process might build a bunch more halfway-decent housing.
a complementary argument is that we can always find things for people to do for money. we all have unfulfilled wishlists, at least 330M in the US alone. from eggshell coat clasps to urban greenspace to maneuverable model rocketry to DDR competitions to mobile surgical centers to childcare. the list is literally endless.
what we don't generally have is an optimal dispersion of capital (and power) to fulfill many of those wishes. concentration of capital and power also concentrates labor allocation and decision-making (something capitalism in ideal form opposes), so instead of drawing from the ingenuity of hundreds of millions, we're trending toward that of hundreds of thousands. it doesn't matter how clever those hundreds of thousands are, they'll never out-imagine hundreds of millions (or billions worldwide).
ubi is predicated on the idea that lots of people will have nothing to do soon, but that's only effectuated in a dystopian world where capital and power are extremely concentrated. rather than altruism, ubi is rather a critical step toward fascist corporatism, acting to stave off potential opposition by trickling down a tiny bone to the masses. the populace assuming mass joblessness are falling into the rhetorical trap of the subjugating corporatists, not accessing a benevolent key to economic and social freedom.
I want UBI to work. But I haven't heard of a good strategy to mitigate what I just described.