> UBI is not a loan

Right: UBI together with any reasonable funding mechanism is a structural force working against economic inequality.

In other words: a large-scale income redistribution that has no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape.

There are lots of large-scale income redistributions that have been adopted in the US (including EITC, which, while not a UBI, was directly inspired by Negative Income Tax, and earlier name for a policy exactly equivalent to UBI), and the American political landscape changes over time, largely through activism; civil rights, or even abolition, were once things with “no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape”, too.

The EITC is a $70-75bn program in the context of a $1.5tn income tax - it is not, as such, the kind of large-scale redistribution that we're talking about for a UBI.

I also would characterize it as the absolute opposite of a UBI: it is paid only to people who are working; and is more rooted in the history of offsetting increasing FICA taxes for low-income households than in the NIT experiments.

Obviously it's hard to prognosticate about the future, but right now the "more left" of the parties with credible possibilities of election success in the U.S. has chosen $400,000 as the income level above which taxes can increase. There's simply no way you can create a UBI on that basis.

> Obviously it's hard to prognosticate about the future, but right now the "more left" of the parties with credible possibilities of election success in the U.S. has chosen $400,000 as the income level above which taxes can increase. There's simply no way you can create a UBI on that basis.

$200/month UBI, while obviously not a full, mature UBI, would approximately equal the maximum benefit of general assistance (means tested welfare for adults without dependents) in most of the US, and could probably be done with net tax increases in only that range (though the increases would need to go beyond just “regular” income tax and also include things like ending the favorable tax treatment of capital over labor income.)

But, in any case, there is very likely a sea change coming in the Democratic Party, which is currently led by Boomers (and some Silents) who came into their political prime during and before the 1990s neoliberal consensus; the Boomer demographic wave is crashing and the Millennials (Gen X is both smaller and more Republican than the Millenials, so less relevant to the future direction of the Democrats) have a rather different understanding of political possibility not grounded in nostalgia for a bipartisan era that has long passed.

"Education does not fix poverty."

What the OP said was that education was once thought to be the magic bullet against poverty, much like UBI is now.

People always dream of solving complicated problems with "one weird trick". If it fails, another one will appear.

There is no evidence that student loans led to colleges raising tuition, as opposed to other causes.

No evidence?

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...

We find that increases in institution-specific subsidized (unsubsidized) loan maximums lead to a sticker- price increase of about 60 (40) cents on the dollar.

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It is basic supply and demand. How could universities charge so much if no one could pay for it? They would have to lower prices.

Correlation does not mean causation. Tuition prices were already on their way up before 2007 (as the paper targets). I suspect that this is because in the 80s and 90s the data showed that a 4-year degrees increased income substantially, and tons of people applied for colleges.

Student loans and grants existed before 2007.

Did tons of people apply for colleges because they heard about the data?

I swear, the "facts" that are flatly asserted on this site, with zero questioning or critical thought, seem roughly equivalent to the "election was stolen!" facts that you find in other echo chambers.