Sure, but you could say the same thing for teachers, foodservice workers, nurses, etc.... yet they are unable to avail of this program, for reasons I don't understand.

Perhaps valuing artists over nurses is why so many Irish nurses are in Australia.

> teachers, foodservice workers, nurses

These are mostly employed positions, where employees have procedures to negotiate their salary with the employer (which might be the government itself).

Most artists otoh are self-employed, and the government decided that the country at large would benefit from giving some of them economic support. You can argue with the modalities but the reasoning does not seem that opaque to me.

I’m hypothetically a self employed Twitch streamer who has 0.5 viewers.

How is that different than being an “artist” whose art isn’t consumed by anyone willing to pay for it.

I kind of see the reasoning to some extent but then also e.g. “full time gardeners” if their yards are visible from the sidewalk should be paid.

Sure, but in practically every other non-essential situation (i.e. food, medicine, housing) that gap would be considered supply in excess of demand and allowed to work itself out.

This feels like it violates the social contract where we all produce things other people want/need, and in return we get the things we want/need. It feels wrong that artists get a special carveout there, where they get to produce things other people don't want (at a livable price) and everyone else is forced to create the things they want/need anyways.

This would be different to me if it were a full post-scarcity thing that everyone gets because the prior contract is based on a scarcity that doesn't exist anymore. This feels wrong because it both acknowledges that scarcity still exists, while taking money from the people producing those scarce goods to fund creating goods that are overabundant to a degree where the creators are destitute.

If we were collectively creating so many car tires that they were being sold below marginal cost, the solution would be to make fewer tires and have the workers go make something else. It reads wrong to me that for art the solution is just to levy taxes and continue making more than the market can bear.

Then don't count that money in a fake economic justification. Just say "the bureaucracy would like to assign people your tax money based on vague criteria" and leave it at that.

I think you need to solve the gap the other way, by bringing down the "amount people need to live", ideally to zero, and not by directly paying people.

There is no numerical value of UBI that makes any sense in Canada. Rent is expensive and toys are cheap.

You need universal basic services with income being a thing you use for toys and vices. So this hypothetical artist should instead get paid what other people are willing to pay but need $0 in pay for basic food, water, healthcare, and housing.