I really, really like the idea of UBI. However, some napkin math:
In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many rich people are there to tax?
Different proposals use different amounts, $1k a month happens to be in the Yang proposal (Freedom Dividend) which was funded largely from a consumption tax: https://freedom-dividend.com/
Well I think it needs to at least be high enough that other social spending can largely be cut (except for healthcare maybe), and that seemed like a reasonable value.
Unfortunately I can't read the link you posted since I don't have an account there.
You can usually google articles and it goes around paywalls, otherwise you can just google for Charles Murray's UBI plan.
There are a bunch of UBI plans, which all vary across the political spectrum. Some are financed entirely with progressive wealth taxes, others nearly entirely with cuts to existing programs. The math usually works out decently through some trick or another, like limiting recipients to only {kids, adults} or phasing out by income.
Under 200million working age people Seniors already get BI via SS.
People with good paying jobs would pay additional tax that cancels out UBI.
So only the half earning below median would actually take cash out. That's 100M, or $0.5T net expense, a substantial but not order of magnitude tax increase.
Even median is above living wage, so you could reasonably cut even further.
We could let the government build factories, mines, and services. Then profits could be directed towards the program. The government services could also have a mandate for automation and job-destruction, in order to maximize the effectiveness of the people's capital.
You're forgetting about growth. Is UBI possible today? Probably not.
Quick googling (so take my numbers with a grain of salt but my point is to illustrate not be exact) says US economic growth the last 10 years has been ~45%. If that trend continues today's $3 trillion budget could be $4.5 trillion in 2030 - UBI starting to look much more possible. Another decade of 50% growth and the budget is $6.75 trillion in 2040 -- UBI seems absolutely possible. Sure there's population growth to consider as well, but you get my point where at some point the math works pretty well.
Briefly, the state of Alaska owns the oilfields in Alaska and makes money from selling the oil. That money is then partially disbursed to people living in the state.
The actual payment has varied over time (with oil prices, mostly), peaking at $3269/person/year in 2008 but was only $878/person/year in 2012.
That’s way it’s funded just Norway funds their social programs from oil revenues and tosses the extra in their sovereign wealth fund like Saudi Arabia. Alaska is listed on the wiki page for basic income.
In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many rich people are there to tax?