The argument tends to circle around the fact that the existing programs dis-incentivize getting off disability or Section 8 because the recipient is penalized in a step-function way (as soon as they get a job, they may become ineligible or could be charged with a crime). A well crafted UBI such that it's an income tax rebate (not to be confused with tax credits or tax deductions) to replace the many smaller safety-net / welfare programs eliminates the disincentive for people to get off these specialized programs that already exists.
While I don't think Americans are well informed enough to make a rational decision (and will likely be swayed by emotion), I think there are reasonable arguments for UBI / BIG.
[1] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/01/munger_on_the_b....
"You are taking away my retirement I earned and giving it to everyone?"
"Don't touch my medicaid!"
"They are trying to kill the soup kitchens; look at these children we feed."
Or whatever. There is such aggressive fighting for scraps that no one wants to make a big-picture shift that might have unknown societal repercussions.
This is the biggest challenge to UBI becoming a serious mainstream topic in the United States IMHO. It takes me hours of conversation explaining UBI to any of my southern/conservative family members to get to a point where they at least acknowledge that it isn't just a fancy word for socialism... and even then they still don't like it.
Granted, I'm their left coast liberal silicon valley nephew so they aren't really interested in anything I have to say anyway.. but maybe thats the point. To a lot of Americans it just sounds like free liberal hand outs, no matter how much data/math/science/economics go into it.
Hopefully smarter people than I can figure out how to message UBI to that part of America.
https://youtu.be/82SG_EpCsVs?t=1524
And a 1968 clip from an interview with William Buckley Jr.:
Recall the history of labor unions in the U.S. The AFL-CIO was formed in 1886. The 1890s and early 1900s featured strikes where there actually was shooting in the streets, widespread rioting, bomb-throwing anarchists, and general pubic and social unrest. It took 2 world wars and a great depression before the U.S. got to the "golden age" of labor union capitalism that certain people want to recreate today.
If you don't test out possible solutions on a small scale before the old social order disintegrates, you get things like the Communist Bloc, where revolutionaries overthrow the old system, but then install a new system that sounds good in theory but really doesn't work in practice.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the US Congress actually passed a UBI bill that was simple, elegant, and did not have a bunch of complicated amendments tacked onto it. Let's say they passed a bill stipulating that every person in the United States would get a check from the government every month, and that every check would be for the same amount. Let's also assume that the bill replaces every other welfare program with UBI, like the libertarian proponents of UBI hope will happen.
Even if that happened (and it certainly would not), it would only be a matter of time before it gets messed up. There are a lot of reasons the current system is the way it is. There are many reasons the voters would want some people to get more money than others under UBI, and many of them would be convincing. For example, should single mothers get more UBI money? What about cutting benefits for convicted felons? What about more UBI money for people in high-cost-of-living cities like New York and San Francisco? What about more UBI money as a form of affirmative action for certain racial groups? People will vote for some of those changes.
We would therefore end up re-creating a lot of our current welfare programs within UBI, for the same reasons we created those programs in the first place. Tyler Cowen has written more persuasively on this topic here: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/11/wha...
UBI proponents have a few questions to answer: how can we afford it, how will it work, and how can they prevent it from being turned back into our current welfare programs under a different name? And how can they prevent the voters from simply voting to give themselves more money, thereby bankrupting the government?
I think I understand your position better now, though. It's not so much about whether voters can vote themselves more money - it's about whether they have the incentive to. I don't agree, because I think shared interest in the stability of the system would be a strong opposing force, but I can see where you're coming from.
For example, say you're healthcare lobbyist and you want to boost your business selling drug X, but patients who need X cannot afford the amount you want to charge. What do you do? Lower the price? No, you will lobby for making expenses on X tax-deductible. If you succeed, you will be forcefully taking money from people who don't need X, giving them to a person who needs X, who has no choice but give it to you. This has happened with healthcare, education, housing, etc. (and nobody is shooting anyone on the streets)
UBI removes the need for tax breaks, reducing lobbyists' ability to direct consumer spending, and that's why it won't be implemented any time soon.
Also, from the historical prospective, governments are the ones who are responsible for most killings of people on a large scale. How, then, can an intelligent person trust a government?
Because that's just the better option. Somebody is always going to gather a lot of power with a big organization.
The choice you get is between an organization whose purpose is to serve the masses (democratic goverment) and organizations whose purpose is to serve very elites (corporations, organized crime).
Regarding your specific point regarding killing people: I think you are oversimplifying here. With the opium wars and the subsequent flooding of china with opium, British trading companies probably already firmly hold the record for killing people on a large scale. For more recent examples, I would point towards the commercial part of the US Industrial-Military complex.
But yes, the government is then frequently instrumentalized to do the actual killing. I would assume this to become harder the stronger and more democratic a government is.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2015/aug/27/...
Which I guess is the point of the war on drugs, but that hasn't worked out so well.