Universal Basic Income, IMO, should be regarded as the ultimate nanny-state boondoggle. Or, well, a boondoggle, as I understand it, is just an unproductive undertaking, a waste of money. UBI is the kind of thing likely to wreck lives and nations. It's an empirical question, of course...but I don't want the experiment run here. Let Minnesota wreck itself. That's kinda what the laboratories of democracy are for...
What no one should disagree with--but many progressives will, of course--is that [a] proponents of UBI must carry a very heavy burden of proof, and [b] the idea must be extensively tested before nationwide implementation is even considered. That is: conservatism must regulate any serious consideration of UBI. But this is almost just a characterization of the difference between conservatives and progressives (and, I must regretfully add: liberals). The left errs, in large part, by advocating for ceaseless, radical change based on ill-considered and largely untested hypotheses. They never stop pushing for likely-to-be-catastrophic change... This is why slippery slope arguments so often turn out to be sound when directed against the left. There's no doubt that the Editors are right--if Democrats see an opportunity to move these "Trump accounts" in the direction of UBI, they're likely to take it.
But, furthermore, my own rather watery conservatism in this domain basically amounts to the thought--a radical departure from my view even a decade ago--that we're better off keeping the tax codes simple. There are all sorts of tweaks and fancy policies that might work if not for the law of unintended consequences... But, in fact, are likely to be a wash at best.
Of course I don't know anything about any of this, so that's a relevant factor here if you're a stickler for that kind of thing...
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