> This idea is basically UBI couched in capitalist terms

"Universal Basic Income" is already a radically capitalist idea. It's often discussed using terminology borrowed from Marxism and socialism, but it couldn't be any more capitalist of a construct. We're just not used to hearing it discussed with that language.

This would address one (but not all) of my fundamental complaints about UBI though: What do you do when due to some disaster, you must pull back your UBI payments? Consider significant war losses, for instance. In this case the answer is that GDP would go down and so would the payment. (Though maybe we can't tie it to GDP per se, since in a war situation you can't afford to see your GDP rise due to forced construction and then also have to pay your populace more.)

That said, it addresses it structurally, but I still think the result would still be a disastrous political explosion if that ever did happen. UBI seems to be fundamentally predicated on the idea that growth and improvement are inevitable, the only possible way that things will develop going into the future, including any structural or societal changes that may develop as a result of UBI or GDP-sharing itself, and therefore there's no need to ask who starts swinging from trees the first time that UBI or GDP-sharing has to be cut back, and what disastrous decisions will be made on the basis of not wanting to be the one swinging from trees.

well like many other attempts to inject more government control into our lives; usually to "get back" at someone who is "unfairly benefiting/abusing/etc/etc"; those with the proposal wrap it up in a grand egalitarian wording and market only the promises that sound good but are too good to be true. to sell it they sneak in seemingly related facts that are not debatable.

the one common response they all have when their plans are revealed for what they are and comparisons made to what others have done is always the same , we will do it right this time.

it is easy to prey on the greed of anyone by simply remaking it into the person having their stuff taken as being the real greedy one.