I am interested in this idea. As I understand it, it's a long-held idea with some support from the center, left, and right. Having said that, last week I read

I am interested in this idea. As I understand it, it's a long-held idea with some support from the center, left, and right. Having said that, last week I read through an analysis piece -- 6-8 page pdf -- that I found on a financial site. I found out some interesting things that supporters don't emphasize. The problem, as I understand it, is that UBI is fine in theory and as a high-level idea. Once you start actually thinking about applying it? The words could mean dang near anything. Is it across the board? Are there exceptions? Would you use a reverse income tax, direct payments, or other mechanism to deliver it? What sorts of incentives does it provide to the working poor? If you really wanted to eventually replace hourly occupation, wouldn't it make more sense to begin providing it to those who have worked their entire lives? Begin direct payments to retirees and then slowly decrease the retirement age as the years pass? Those are just questions I made up after reading the article. Apologies if I botched it. But I was impressed with the fact that there is a ginormous gap between the slogan of UBI and whatever it actually might end up becoming. A big enough gap that politicians could say they support it and actually give you pretty much anything. There's also not a huge amount of real-world data here. So my position is "cautiously optimistic". Let's do some limited experiments with this to see how the real-world politics play out and what the difference between the PR package and the actual deliverable is. In the U.S., the states have traditionally been the "laboratories of democracy", but if folks don't like that, there has to be other ways to do a bunch of limited trials. What I am not in support of is some huge national movement built around a slogan where I'm forced to make a yes-no decision for the rest of the citizenry. Here's hoping it doesn't play out like that.