Inclusive ownership of assets is a good idea, but it shouldn’t rule out UBI.

The idea of Universal Basic Assets does seem superior to UBI, but I don’t think that means UBI would necessarily be terrible. I would never support a UBI funded through monetization — my assumption has always been that in order to make it redistributive, it would be funded by progressive corporate and inheritance taxes. You could even mitigate the monopoly effect, which you rightly worry about here, by using steep corporate taxes as a sort of anti-trust buffer.

Andrew Yang has spoken about creating what he calls a “Freedom Dividend” — his branded phrase for UBI — in the United States, which would pay adult Americans a yearly guaranteed income using the interest generated by a sort of sovereign wealth fund that’s invested in relatively safe securities. That sounds pretty much like UBA to me, even if he calls it UBI.