The strongest case for the UBI has nothing to do with automation or efficiency. Those are things about which people can easily disagree. The strongest case for the UBI is that we have earned it in the same way that Norwegians and Alaskans have earned their oil dividends. That’s one reason Andrew Yang calls his version a “freedom dividend.”

Because I’m not running for office, I can call it what it is — rent. The USA remains, for now, the best place on earth to sell things. Someday, maybe, China or India may be as good or better, but that doesn’t matter. So long as we remain politically and economically stable, we will be a place where sellers want to sell. So, if bricks and mortar stores have to pay rent and taxes, why shouldn’t virtual storefronts, the ones that make elsewhere and sell here?

“Real” stores pay rent to landowners. But who owns the virtual storefront? I don’t mean the distribution network. I mean the legal, political, physical, and cultural infrastructure that makes selling here possible. Who gets credit for there being respect for private property, an absolute necessity for an importer?

We should have a UBI because we have earned it by being good citizens. Felons should not get it, at least while they are under sentence, suspended or otherwise. Maybe honorably discharged veterans should get a bonus. But “need” should have nothing to do with it. The urge to replace welfare is too strong. Medicaid needs to stay, and maybe unemployment insurance as well. These are insurable risks, and we should insure them.

Regional differences should be ignored. Wages make up for cost of living. Apple pays the same dividends to all of its shareholders, wherever they live. If we understand that we are distributing the benefits of citizenship per capita, we don’t need to think about fairness within the group. Every law-abiding adult owns a share of the synergistic product of their behavior as citizens, and each gets the same share of the profit. Capitalists own the means of production and distribution, and they should get what they make possible. But we, the people, own the farm they till. At the end of the day, all economic actors are sharecroppers, and we should each be paid for enabling them to prosper.