"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.:
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....