There's this... frontier that comes up whenever UBI is discussed. It starts with an acknowledgement that a "Universal" "Basic" "Income" is unreasonable, so they chip away at the basicness until it's a "universal" inadequate "income." Then there's the acknowledgement that with limited funds, those eligible for this income must also be limited - usually to those most in need. It's usually less than three paragraphs between the magic words "universal basic income" and some technoutopian's first sketchy outline of welfare. I guess it's cute in a way; all these libertarians realizing that Atlas is going to shrug off pretty much everyone who doesn't have rich parents and then feverishly triangulating into some new territory that allows them some humanity but doesn't require them to acknowledge that socialist modifications are necessary to their hypercapitalist dream if they don't want a future of Dickensian squalor. But fuckin'A. Pick a city. A family of four in Tulsa Oklahoma needs about a thousand dollars a week. Composite across the entire country it's $600; San Fran it's $1400. Set aside for a moment the fact that $600 a week for every family in the USA is $76 billion a week. How is rural Tennessee gonna feel about those damn California liberals getting two and a half times as much as they're getting? There will be no progress whatsoever towards any sort of UBI until the proponents of UBI recognize that they're discussing a welfare state, and that welfare states have a long and storied history and lexicon. The only real impediment to progress is that it's anathema to everything they believe in.
I recently read an article by a Dutch UBI pundit who changed his mind and came to the conclusion that a 'real' UBI is unreasonable, but that a negative income tax might be a good way to achieve the goals of UBI: a basic level of security for everyone. It would cost around €4-€5 billion over here, which is not insanely high compared to the €6 billion subsidies for fossil fuel and €14 billion in mortgage interest deduction our government already spends.
Five billion euros for 17 million people is a hundred billion euros for 300 million people. It's also $300 a year which means the actual money comes from somewhere else. Mess around in here. I jacked taxes to the absolute max and managed to free up a trillion dollars by 2040... that's $2500 each, or double (and some) the Alaska dividend. Let's give that to only the 20 percent of the US population taking any sort of government benefit and yes - we're effectively doubling their available money. But make no mistake: we're talking about welfare, not UBI. We aren't doing any radical experiments. I mean, in most of the world you get 100% your salary for a quarter of a year just for having a kid. Realistically speaking the US would blow through that surplus I created just instituting modern paid family leave.