and Medium took it and ran as fast as they could with it.

You mean Scott Santerns - a basic income advocate and someone who blogs using the Medium platform - who does not represent Medium itself...

Upon broaching the subject of Unconditional Basic Income, she was offended that the movement parades under the banner of "liberalism". She sees the idea as a radically-left, obviously socialist policy that undermines moderate leftists.

Liberals like this play the political game on conservative terms. Only a new radical left can help solve our modern issues with government/economics. The job of the radical left is to render the conservative/liberal tension obsolete: taking the economy to a new meta-level (what the next tensions will be I am not sure but my intuition is that they will revolve around transhumanism and super-collective intelligence).

The EU isn't doing so hot, but Scandinavia is more or less fine.

Countries like Denmark and Sweden are proof that building a human economy and being a competitive economic entity are not mutually exclusive concepts for developed countries in the 21st century. It is possible, in fact, they may be reaching a point where they can become more competitive (if the "Collaborative Commons" starts outcompeting traditional market forces).

Instituting UBI in America would have to be a process, and a long one at that. If we woke up with the policy in place tomorrow, I think almost all of your minimum wage employees wouldn't show up for work.

MAYBE. Research with basic income communities shows that people work more overall in a basic income society because they are more in control of defining their own work trajectory. There are many structural status quo 'impossibility' notions at work in the idea that the system would collapse because we wouldn't have minimum wage slaves. In particular I am interested in the fact that people say that most people will stop showing up to bullshit jobs - but my response is SO WHAT? I am sick of living in a society built on alienated (read: dehumanising) labour. Moreover, people will say that everyone will stop working alienating jobs, but I am more interested in the fact that people will not then simply do nothing. People want meaningful work. How about let's focus a discussion on that.

It's pretty obvious whose pockets the money will have to come from for UBI to exist. But these people, with their deep pockets, are actively making policy to retain as many pennies as possible. They don't want this. They don't want anyone talking about this. No, it will absolutely take serious social unrest before the discussion enters into the mainstream media circus. And again, it won't happen immediately or quickly. The process will be necessarily painful.

Demand the impossible.

There are also people who absolutely will not.

This is neoliberal ideology. The people who are a drain on society in the developed world are the mega-rich, not struggling low-income workers or the unemployed. People who receive a basic income and just decide to spend their basic income without doing anything extra will still have to spend their entire salary in the market. Also, we must work hard to ensure that new forms of collaboration and entrepreneurship will enable people to explore inherent pro-social and pro-creative interests and passions. I think that if we design a truly human economy we can eventually eliminate alienated labour altogether which will render redundant the whole discussion of whether someone is "employed" or "not employed". The goal should be collective self-actualisation - no one is left behind - all options for growth are open.

Edit: To you, Cadell, if you have the time - Everything I argued above is assuming a strictly domestic UBI (domestic to the U.S.). If a unified global hierarchy does indeed see adoption during the 21st century, you've gotta scrape a whole lot more wealth off the top to distribute to poorer regions. This complicates things... significantly. I hope transhumanism has got some A+ solutions in its bag.

IMHO - I think the job of the government today (and the job of a new international left) is to shift economic focus from corporate activity to commons activity (this means - as a foundation - huge investment in making education, health care, food, water, shelter free). New economy: all basic creature needs are a human right and non-negotiable (this is why modern liberals are destroying the left, and why they are playing the political game on conservative terms). I don't think this requires the erection of a "global hierarchy" - in fact - quite the opposite. I disagree with economists like Piketty that a global government is going to emerge to regulate a global market and distribute funds from a global wealth tax. True global organization is distributed organization (i.e. no central control). When we have reached the end of history there will be no state, but to get there we need to radically democratise the state and create a globe that is a common space for all humans. My hope is that one or several countries will lead the way in this initiative - in the developed or the developing world (i.e. Switzerland or Namibia for example) can institute a basic income and start experimenting with communities based on social self-organization projects. If you are interested about what is happening with basic income initiatives/advocates/research in Belgium, Switzerland, and Namibia I'd recommend this documentary which gives a nice summary.

EDIT: Here I would also like to add an old Hegelian notion that speaks to our current situation (which I believe to be largely one of overcoming our own psychology):

For Hegel: in order to pass from alienation to reconciliation, we do not have to change reality, but rather the way we perceive and relate to it.

In other words: we need to change the way we perceive and relate to our labour/work/society - we need totally new foundations for adult human life. Until that happens - we are going to continue to have the contours of our collective life organized by impersonal persons (corporations).