The UBI can be funded out of the negative output gap that already exists in our economy, including the global supply available to be bought for dollars. Just print the money, tax it as income, and watch the people spend what’s left, creating income and payroll taxes as they go, and as their vendors go. When you apply the economic multiplier to the payment, it’s just the New Deal, a way to tap excess capacity without causing inflation.

The issue with all money-printing is inflation. Will it cause too much money to chase too few goods. That’s an historically contingent question. Technology boosts supply. It’s not just a matter of productivity, but of elasticity: how fast can more capacity be brought on line? How long does it take to “staff’ and “train” a robotic factory? Capacity that can be put in place in few months is, in terms of inflation management, capacity today.

Any analysis of what is essentially a technology of demand that does not look at changes in the technology of supply is bound to be wrong. It’s entirely possible that a UBI would not have paid for itself in 1960, before robots and container ships, but can pay for itself today. We are reliving 1875–1913, a period in which the technology of supply (industrial production) far outstripped the technology of demand (gold, no central banking). The result was deflation.

Globalization and automation are again producing more goods than we have figured out how to allocate. A UBI is now possible as a solution. My guess is that in this low-marginal-cost era, it will pay for itself. At the very least, proponents of UBI should consider mining the output gap of modern production before they turn to picking the pockets of American taxpayers.