Who pays for Universal Basic Income (UBI)?

Nobody, yet. No country runs a Universal Basic Income (UBI). But 3 governments tested the bill, and all 3 handed it to the same person: you. Macau is the casino model. Eligible permanent residents get 10,000 patacas a year, about $1,240, skimmed from gaming taxes: 92.1 billion patacas since 2008, about $11.4 billion. Alaska does it with oil. Fine, if you are 700,000 people sitting on a cash machine. 8 billion are not. Iran is the subsidy swap. In 2010 it scrapped fuel and bread subsidies and wired nearly every citizen about $45 a month instead, a third of what a typical Iranian earned. By 2011 those payments ate 6.5% of the economy. Today inflation has chewed them down to pocket change. A cigar from your own box, lit with your own match. Mongolia is the borrowed cigar. From 2010 to 2012 every citizen got about $15 a month from mining money, about 5% of an average monthly wage. In 2012 the fund swallowed 18% of government revenue, part of it borrowed. The handouts died after the 2012 election. The fund died later, 1 trillion tugrik in the red. Silicon Valley is next in line. OpenAI proposed handing 5% of its shares to a US public wealth fund. A US senator wants a one-time 50% stock tax on the biggest AI companies, a $7 trillion pot. Neither is law. Nobody has seen a cent. So who pays? You do. In subsidies you lost, in debt your kids inherit, in pocket money whose value the government sets and inflation erases. The oil, the casino and the machines never pay. They collect. That is the real bill.