Conservatives will only approve of a UBI that replaces existing welfare---eliminates Medicare and ag subsidies

The main challenge for UBI advocates is defining just what such a program would look like on a large scale. “UBI proposals tend not to be fully baked,” observed liberal economist Max Sawicky. That was in 2013. Some four years later, it’s still true. Some projects are operating under the radar, including the Oakland project, on which Y Combinator’s Altman declined to comment.

Indeed, one reason UBI attracts adherents across the ideological spectrum is that it can be so variously conceived. It’s a bit like the story of the blind men and the elephant, with every promoter visualizing the totality based on the features he or she considers most important.

Conservatives like UBI because they think it can replace the web of social assistance programs we have now, presumably at a lower cost. Political scientist Charles Murray, for example, has asserted that a guaranteed income of $10,000 a year would be enough to eliminate “Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare programs, social service programs, agricultural subsidies, and corporate welfare,” while leaving in place public funding of education, the transportation infrastructure, the courts and a few other services.