I always have thought that a government/tax-payer provided UBI (essentially a negative income tax) was an idea worthy of discussion. As far as I know the first person to seriously suggest it was that notoriously Woke, left-wing, big government radical Milton Friedman
Friedman was hardly first or foremost A partial list:
Bertrand Russell, philosopher
Huey Long, governor and US Senator from Louisiana, in his Share Our Wealth plan
American economists James Tobin, Paul Samuelson, and John Kenneth Galbraith signed a document with 1,200 other economists in 1968 calling for the 90th U.S. Congress to introduce in that year a system of income guarantees and supplements.[95]
American economist Milton Friedman advocated a basic income in the form of a negative income tax in his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, and again in his 1980 book Free to Choose.[96][97]
Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek advocated a guaranteed minimum income in his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom, and reiterated his support in his 1973 book Law, Legislation and Liberty.[98][99]
British economist, Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics, and senior research fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, Tony Atkinson.[100]
British economist James Meade[101][102]
British engineer and pioneer of the social credit economic reform movement, C. H. Douglas[103][104]
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. endorsed it under the name of "the guaranteed income" in his 1967 book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? shortly before his assassination.[105][106]
French politician Lionel Stoléru argued for UBI in 1974, remarking that it would provide “a means of suppressing and simplifying the entire current series of social programmes”.[107]
U.S. Senator George McGovern from South Dakota sponsored a bill proposed by the National Welfare Rights Organization to enact a $6,500 guaranteed minimum income,[108] and in his 1972 presidential campaign, proposed replacing the personal income tax exemption with a $1,000 tax credit as a minimum-income floor for every citizen.[109]
Virginia Woolf, English writer
Michael Bohmeyer
German entrepreneur, author and activist
Mein Grundeinkommen
German registered association
The problem is political.
Legislators think proposing universal basic income is suicidal to their careers.