You have mentioned the successful Apollo program as evidence of our ability to accomplish great things.

When Kennedy announced the goal of sending men to the moon in 1961, he was a visionary. But Jules Verne was also a visionary when he wrote From the Earth to the Moon in 1865.

Both men were, like us, "stuck in the past" which was their present, a time before lunar travel became a reality. What made one vision a fantasy and the other a reality?

Timing was part of it. The moon shot was simply unfeasable in 1865.

But it also took a lot of planning, calculation, and work to make the Apollo program a success. It was far easier for Kennedy to say we should go to the moon than for thousands of engineers, machinists, chemists and other scientists and manufacturing workers to make it happen. (Side note: such professional workers relied on an army of secretaries, janitors, office suppliers, painters, and drivers to support their work. Would they all have continued working if they had the option of staying home and collecting a basic income?)

I suggest starting by calculating how much $15,000 times the population of the United States is. It is quite a large number, far larger than the 109 billion in 2010 dollars the Apollo program cost.

It is far larger than the "$600 billion military spending increase" (which is actually pretty close to the total U.S. military budget, not a spending increase).

It is in the ballpark of the total federal budget of the United States.

I am not saying a basic income is impossible. But I suggest that calls for UBI will be more effective if they are based on a plausibly realistic plan rather than simply accusing the doubtful of being "stuck in the past."