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by crooked-v 932 days ago
It already does exist in some places in the form of sovereign wealth funds, such as the Alaska Permanent Fund [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

1 comments

But that is derived from profits from the sale of Alaskan oil. It is not a wealth redistribution program, increased taxes, or reductions in spending elsewhere. Alaska is also a very costly place to live. It's also the only state that actually sells something and makes a profit which it can redistribute to its citizens. Maybe if America as a whole profited from the sale of its natural resources then it could, in theory, redistribute that and call it a UBI. Either way, to implement a UBI the money has to come from somewhere which at this moment means it has to be taken from someone/something else.
The point of a UBI is not to redistribute wealth. It's to provide a minimum standard of living for everyone more efficiently than means-tested programs do.

If you're going to provide a minimum standard of living to everyone, a UBI does this with minimal distortion of incentives.

> The point of a UBI is not to redistribute wealth.

Right, technically the point is to redistribute the productive capacity of that wealth so that everyone has access to a minimum amount of its production.

But is there a meaningful difference? For all intents and purposes, capturing a share of the production is equivalent to owning a share in the wealth.

Huh? The Alaska permanent fund comes from mineral royalties, which is literally a type of tax.
Royalties are not really a tax like taxes on citizens are.