Yeah, Big Mac index is a simpler way to gauge Purchasing Power Warity, but the idea is still based on money. For instance a natural catastrophe - say a storm or so - destroys stuff. In rebuilding it the economy burns through more money and therefore GDP increases. But in reality the result of the economy are less values, the money into replacing the destroyed values. On the flipside: if someone works without getting money (say a volunteer activist for maybe helping the poor), this work creates values, but isn't reflected in the GDP - with or without applying the Big Mac index or PPP. Sure comparisons between countries are better with PPP, but this doesn't solve the inherent problem with using money to measure economic value.

But as I wrote, this is still the best measurement we have at all.

The problem with using money to measure economic value is that it's very easily manipulated by changing the supply of fiat currency out there. We don't want more of money, we want more value for our money out there so a UBI does not fundamentally change the mechanics of the game ... 

We have to ignore the idea of money for a moment and look at our economy at a very low level to break it down into a simple supply and demand model. Gold for an example is always assumed to be in a fixed supply but it's demand is not so it keeps increasing in value relative to the other goods or services because of it's increasing demand. The issue here with using money or any other form of currency in this instance is that they seemingly cannot properly capture or embed the changing relativity in value between the differing goods or services ... 

No matter how much everybody wants it, we truly can't fix the value of money to anything out there so GDP as a measure of productivity is not so cut and dry. If we only had half as many services or goods out there but the same amount of cash in the next year would you argue that the productivity is still same despite showing that the GDP was also the same as last year's ? 

Nah, I just said that I agree with much of his positions, I didn't know I had to motivate it 🙂.

There is appears to be a clear use for UBI since it gets money to everyone for basic living expenses to help bring the bottom of poverty off the floor. That’s only the base benefit, it goes deeper since it also helps stimulate smaller economic centres.

I want to know how you think this is useless.