I recall that the notion of a basic guaranteed income actually came up during the Nixon administration. They kicked around the idea of getting rid of the whole welfare establishment and just hand out cash instead. Reagan also observed the huge expense of welfare as opposed to the actual benefits getting to the recipients.
I don't know how such an arrangement comes into being while we suffer under the opposite condition of most wealth being tightly centralized. How does this change without violence or revolution against the oligarchs? We're gonna need a miracle.
