To be fair, there is a massive percentage of non-productive jobs that are mostly security guards for goods and locations, and many inefficient roles related to ticket clipping, inefficient distribution and marketing that all stimulate the economy without being productive.

"still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art."

Read more closely.

Arts & entertainment is (at least) 1% of USA's GDP. Roughly $1 trillion / year.

Production of culture seems important and worthwhile to me.

Probably apocryphal: UK's (then generous) dole led to the British Invasion (eg The Beatles).

>>went from productive work (someone paying them to do it) to unproductive work.

Umm, that is literally wrong, by your own definition.

>>work something different and still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art.

I.e., they went from an employer paying them to do work to a variety of clients/customers paying them to do different work of nearly the same value.

OFC, if everyone did it, the price of art might decline. Or demand might go up. Or both, or neither. We don't know. But either way, the example subject did NOT convert from productive to unproductive work.

Was it:

  $X from old job ~= $Y from art-gig

or:

  $X from old job ~= $Y from art-gig + $Z from UBI

Good qstn. The phrasing does leave room for ambiguity, but "make revenue close to" certainly indicates meaning closer to "$X from old job ~= $Y from art-gig"

>>work something different and still make revenue close to what they earned on their job by selling art