Putting aside the author's soak the rich rhetoric, the recommendation, which is basically to develop a sovereign wealth fund and pay UBI from that, has seen suc

Putting aside the author's soak the rich rhetoric, the recommendation, which is basically to develop a sovereign wealth fund and pay UBI from that, has seen success. Norway, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have been able to give back to their citizens through shrewd financial planning and resisting the populist urge of deficit spending. In America, however, we've gone the other way, with gdp of ~$18 trillion, and federal debt also at ~$18 trillion, we've got a $63 trillion hole to dig ourselves out of before we can pay a net 10% of GDP out to support the poor assuming 6% real returns on the fund. Unfortunately, it's very unlikely we would ever see the political will for a such a huge austerity project. Before you go saying we should just 'snag society’s capital income' as the author recommends, do note that large scale nationalizations as we've seen during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward in China and more recently Venezuela's actions under Chavez and Maduro have produced truly devastating economic and humanitarian results.