By Helen De Cruz
Robert Heinlein was an influential SF author, writers of such works as Starship Troopers and Stranger in a strange land. In The moon is a harsh mistress, he developed a libertarian philosophy and presented the Moon as a libertarian anarchist utopia, a place without laws, no taxation, and lynchings instead of due process. According to Heinlein, art should never be subsidized. However, as Jeet Heer details, Heinlein received a fair bit of state support thanks to a disability pension as a veteran, which freed him up to experiment freely and to become a professional writer:
"His disability pension proved an indispensable life jacket, making possible his entire career as a writer. Heinlein not only weathered the Great Depression, but also pursued a wide variety of interests—he speculated on a silver mine, took graduate science courses, sold real estate, and tried his hand at architecture—before settling into science fiction. Aside from his naval pension, Heinlein also took money from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to study art. Later in life, as a libertarian, he would rail against “loafers” and the welfare state but in his leftist days he knew how much he depended on the government. As he acknowledged in a 1941 letter, “This country has been very good to me, and the taxpayers have supported me for many years.” The popularizer of TANSTAAFL [there's no such thing as a free lunch - the Friedman adage] ate more than his share of subsidized meals."
JK Rowling also received state support (i.e., a single mother on benefits as she was pegged down), a small state income that allowed her to try her hand at writing. Both provide small datapoints to support the view that a universal basic income would pay itself back in allowing all people - not just the rich who can afford writers' retreats, unpaid internships and the like, to take risks and cultivate their creative impulses. Pity Heinlein later would disparage "loafers" who got money from the government