I agree. He's setting up a classic straw man. "The only way we can afford UBI is by letting the conservatives gut other necessary social programs."
That's not a flaw in UBI, that's just an assumption that the politics would work out poorly. UBI may be impossible in the current political climate, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea, or that it could never work.
Every time UBI comes up on any discussion in libertarian-conservative circles I participate in, UBI always gets grudging hypothetical support conditional on replacing all other social spending with UBI.
A lot of people see UBI as a small-government low-overhead libertarianish solution to current social programs, and the universality of it is seen as making it less unfair/redistributive.
Anecdata is not data, but I don’t think this is a straw man; you just need to talk to some conservatives.
On the other hand, it’s not fiscally manageable. It costs as much as we currently pay in taxes, and we still have to pay for defense and pork on top of it. So implementing UBI would exceed our income.
This would require dramatically higher taxes which are politically unpalatable (such taxes would last no more than two years before any representatives who voted for it got voted out). The amount of money is not life changing for anyone other than the poorest. And it would cost way more than estimated due to fraud (see Medicare for an example). Plus why wouldn’t businesses grab a share of it by jacking up prices on things that poor people can now afford? From the mindset that brings you slum lords.
The market for US sovereign debt is drying up so we’re not going to be able to overspend in the profligate way we have over the last few years.
I agree with almost everything you say. The area I break with you is that I don't think that fraud would be a major concern that couldn't be addressed with reasonable checks (and a decade or more of jail for intentional fraudsters).
ignoring the political acceptance of it, UBI would end up tax neutral for many. You also have to change the way you tax and create a wealth tax. ie, if you imagine the wealth distribution in a country, and overlay income tax, you will see it doesn't match wealth distribution, so you need tax models that tax wealth and match your tax take to the wealth distribution (not that you can do this perfectly, but just need something that tracks better). This would make the majority of people better off, politically that's a good thing. Businesses follow market forces, more people with more money should create opportunities for more competition. Where it can be problematic is where there is a limited resource, like housing, it could push rents up, however, it may also give people more opportunity to move out of cities, so hard to know how that would play out.
That's not a flaw in UBI, that's just an assumption that the politics would work out poorly. UBI may be impossible in the current political climate, but that doesn't mean it's a bad idea, or that it could never work.