It’s a fallacious idea that UBI needs to be funded in some way. At least what conventional thinkers mean by “funding.”

If done right, a UBI could be phased in to correspond with falling AD due to decreasing employment/increasing automation. Where would the money come from? It’d come from nowhere. Fiat money is cool like dat (with its gangsta stroll).

No, this isn’t some pie-in-the-sky idea. Remember QE I, II, and III? Where do you think that money came from? Where do you think it went? If you can answer that cogently, you’re doing better than most.

The idea that UBI needs to be funded is like saying that the Fed needs to get its money from somewhere. No, it really really doesn’t. Here’s where the Fed gets its money (note: this isn’t completely true but for the sake of brevity and not writing a book….): there is a bank account somewhere. It has $1.0000000000 in it. Someone at the Fed shifts the digital decimal point to this: $100000000.00.

Boom. There is $10 billion that didn’t exist anywhere before. Nevertheless, there it is. It is now real.

This is how you’d fund UBI (note: the Fed wouldn’t be the one to do this — like I said, I don’t want to write a book).

Also note that it’d actually be better if we pretended we needed to fund UBI by taxing the rich heavily. This would lead to a better society for all by reducing inequality. But that is in truth a fiction. The federal government isn’t actually in reality funded by taxes right now (also a convenient fiction).

All money is convenient fiction. But if used right, we can make that fiction do some really cool stuff.