I think this approach is going to quickly become a necessity in the next few decades. Automation is coming to relieve the vast majority of us of any remote economic usefulness.
They prefer being called "Mechanical Americans." -.-
I just posted this to another thread, but the Marshall Brain short story "Manna", shows 2 extremes of how it could go. Based on the current state of things, I'd bet on the less utopian outcome. The story is available for free on his site.
Without having read it yet, though I will soon because that sounds cool, I can see two possible scenarios. Either UBI is designed in a way that allows people to thrive, allowing for increased access to resources for all and giving people the ability to live out their dreams unfettered by employment, or everyone is paid just enough to survive and it becomes damn near impossible to acquire anything more than that, resulting in a new gilded age. I'd hope, though, that government that's populous enough to create UBI would be populous enough to make sure it's set up so that you don't create a vast underclass of everyone who doesn't own an automated business.