In a system with so many failing institutions, universal basic income would not only fail to achieve the desired results but would be an economic disaster. You

In a system with so many failing institutions, universal basic income would not only fail to achieve the desired results but would be an economic disaster. You can't fix what ails the US by generically throwing money at it. If the people are being poorly educated, poorly trained, poorly policed, and the culture is rotting, and then you dump an enormous amount of loose money on that garbage fire, what do you expect to get as a return result? It's exceptionally obvious what would happen. For example the biggest problem the US has in healthcare (and education) is cost, not lack of spending. If our costs were more in line with other affluent nations, you could expand Medicaid to cover 40-45% of the population with little additional expenditure. Nobody with a prominent position is brave enough to say it much less attempt to do anything about it (which would involve smashing incomes and jobs in the healthcare field). Some pretend we can spend our way to universal healthcare, ignoring the $1.2+ trillion in costs that have to be slashed before it can be implemented (which is why California can't implement it, they can't come close to affording it without cutting healthcare costs first). That's typical of what goes on in the US, it's a hyper irrational nation, incapable of even basic reasoning + action when it comes to solving big problems. Start by fixing the broken, corrupt institutions. But that's a super hard problem that will take two generations of grinding persistent effort, whereas printing money is easy, which is why so many people love the fantasy of universal basic income.