> As the gap widens, the demand for Universal Basic Income will rise and gobble up the working class and, eventually, even the most complicated jobs, until money is considered worthless and all basic needs are met by robots.
The problem here is that nobody knows when we'll get there, if at all. UBI seems like a solution designed for a society where most people have been displaced from the need to work, but it doesn't look like society is there yet. In the meantime we still have people who are struggling to even exist. If the gap to achieve Full Automation in most sectors is multiple generations, you might long reach social unrest before you can even "justify" UBI from a political perspective.
Right now billions in capital investment haven't quite mastered the art of getting cars to navigate roads by themselves, and some industry leaders (Waymo CEO) are skeptical we'll ever get level 5 autonomous cars. And this is all for one single and self-contained task in the human existence (which doesn't even rely on human appendages! try to imagine automating handiwork).
If 70% of people are without work, UBI is an obvious solution. But if 1-10% of people are without work and 40-60% are paid peanuts for shit jobs, what's the solution? If UBI is still best here, how do we justify that to society without appealing to Full Automation?