I did encounter the Squareallworthy posts a while ago – from what I can tell, most of the proposals that they review fall foul of at least one of the following:

1. Trying to solve the US healthcare problems at the same time (definitely biting off more than can be chewed in one go…)

2. Trying to make a UBI too “comfortable” – many proposals are in the £12,000 or $15,000 range, which is 50% more than what is being suggested here. For every additional £500 of UBI you want to give out, you have to increase income taxes by around 2.5% (at least for the UK).

3. Making the UBI far too low to replace the programs that it is supposed to be replacing – Dolan’s and Torry’s proposals are for ~£3,000 or ~$4,000 which is effectively funded by halving government payments to the elderly.

4. Trying not to change income taxes – I have seen many proposals trying to fund it with “$Xbn – closing tax loopholes” or “$Ybn – reduce spending on [insert defence program here]” as an attempt to show that it can be done without raising taxes. These always seem wildly farfetched, and require much more sweeping government reform than is realistic. I think it is largely a quirk of the US to view any tax increases as quite such an unpalatable compromise.

5. Trying to be all things to all people – with any policy change it is a trade-off – for some people to be better off, some people are going to be slightly worse off. Rather than accepting this and making sure that the new system is fair, some proposals try to guarantee that everyone will be better off, which is pretty difficult to achieve without some rather bold assumptions. The proposal here for instance will result in slightly higher taxes for people earning >£31,000 p.a., and will likely result in lower take-home earnings for anyone receiving large housing benefit payments (the working poor, living in London) or receiving both state pension and housing benefits.

As far as the UK vs. US thing goes, the next post (the appendix) is an attempt at doing the accountant/realist calculations for the US. I do think it is a harder sell, because their tax regime is less progressive than the UK’s, and their welfare state is less comprehensive.