"But, how do you convince the upper classes (who control the capital) to support it?" This is a red herring. It's easy to assuming that such an enormous undert

"But, how do you convince the upper classes (who control the capital) to support it?" This is a red herring. It's easy to assuming that such an enormous undertaking can be solved by "tax the rich". It doesn't work that way. There isn't enough money in the top 1% of the United States to pay for such a program. Inevitably a UBI would be paid for by the middle class, the meaty part of the bell curve. This means people who took on debt loads to become a doctor, lawyer, whatever, and have worked hard to pay it down (and probably still are paying it down). $250k/yr sounds like a lot, but when you're paying back $400k worth of loans, it's really not as exorbitant as it sounds to many people -- especially if these same people are trying to buy a house, save for their kids' college, etc.