The UBI already exists for the 1%

I'll never forget having lunch with my co-workers, all of whom were paying 30-35% in income taxes, lecturing me that a 20% capital gains tax was unfair because the investor, "already paid taxes" on that money when it was first income, so taxing the gains amounted to double-taxation.

I've never understood the argument that raising the capital gains tax would slow economic growth either. Why would people give up free money just because they have to give a little more back to the government that makes the marketplace possible?

Another thing. State "capital" has been done, it's called communism (or heavy socialism), it doesn't work. Why not? Because the people making decisions on State "capital" do not get any of the downsides. You burn 50% of State owned capital? Who cares, it's not yours anyway.

And final one - managing capital is work! Knowing where to put your cash is work and it has a huge impact. Think how much of an impact can have somebody investing billions in space exploration (Musk?), or aging, or cancer. There are plenty of big trends worth investing that will give humanity as whole immense benefits (just look at the past 100 years).

Capitalism is not perfect, post-scarcity is a real threat, but the author is making the wrong arguments. The real problem is what people will do once we reach post-scarcity? What religions will they believe? What philosophies? How will they spend their time? Can they bear a life with 0 problems (I am not so sure I could)?

In America, however, we've gone the other way, with gdp of ~$18 trillion, and federal debt also at ~$18 trillion, we've got a $63 trillion hole to dig ourselves out of before we can pay a net 10% of GDP out to support the poor assuming 6% real returns on the fund. Unfortunately, it's very unlikely we would ever see the political will for a such a huge austerity project.

Before you go saying we should just 'snag society’s capital income' as the author recommends, do note that large scale nationalizations as we've seen during Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward in China and more recently Venezuela's actions under Chavez and Maduro have produced truly devastating economic and humanitarian results.

First, income from rent (say, for real estate) isn't divorced from work. The landlord has to make some arrangements for the upkeep of the property. The renter, by virtue of being a renter, can't be responsible for everything. If nothing else, the landlord must make and maintain a business relationship with a property management firm.

Second, critics of universal basic income have not neglected to note the destructive effects of the lack of useful labor among the upper classes. The decadent aristocracy has been a trope in fiction, history, and priestly sermons for ages.

Anti-Enlightenment scholars and traditionalist Catholics have pointed out that the nobles in the Vendee worked the fields much like the peasants. The nobles had more land and better land, but not extravagantly more. The Vendee and Brittany launched the counter-revolt that nearly ended the French Revolution. It was the provinces whose nobility were busy buggering mistresses in Versailles and Paris that fell most easily to the Jacobins.