When you realize that automation is eating the jobs that these people used to do, and realize that the service economy can't fit even a fraction of these displaced workers, you have a scenario where we can produce goods for sale in mass with minimal labor but now less people have money to buy things.

Creating a death spiral because consumers buying things is the fuel which makes the entire economy run and grow, so when you fire them all and replace them with robots, your individual profit might temporarily rise but as we all do it, more and more fall out of the workplace and can no longer consume, hurting the economy based on consuming.

Basic income may come across as a luxury today, in a world where there can still be enough jobs for the number of people in the economy, but it very well may become a requirement to ensure that consumers exist to buy automatically produced and automatically served goods.

P.S. the taxes don't necessarily rise on the workers, but rather on the automators and producers. The amount of income and wealth in this country is not decreasing, rather, the amount of it going to workers and consumers is. Is it ideal to have the government redistribute it such that the engine stops running poorly and works well again? No, but the alternative is worse.