For Bill Gates wealth, maybe. For the average case, I would say, no. Our choices are like compound interest. Consistently making 1% better choices than average, over time, leads to extraordinary results. 1% worse choices over time, turn on Maury Povich, or Judge Judy, or go to walmart and look around!
> over long run the supply chain would adjust bringing the prices back to equilibrium
Not everything is a widget. Competence is still in short supply. The machine is nowhere near replacing electricians, mechanics, doctors, salesmen, engineers, teachers, etc. Brain power (esp healthcare & tech) already extracts the largest number of dollars from the average joe. The tribute that it demands will most certainly rise along with the cash in circulation.
> It's valid concern that inflation would destroy the middle class.
Never said it would destroy anyone. I wrote that it would make the people who are currently borderline self-sufficient fall into dependence upon the new government subsidy, and that dependence becomes yet another system of control. Do your own taxes. Look at how much social engineering is already in play.
> With that said UBI for bottom 50% is going to become more and more required as digitization, automation, and AI makes it that few people can own entire industries.
This is silicon valley sales/PR BS, and for several reasons:
1) Moravec's paradox. The hard things are easy, and the easy things are hard. Many jobs that our coastal elite are gunning for are going to be much harder to AI-away than they think -- victims of their own caste bias. Given current ML techniques, and a hundred-mill, I'm sure we could beat the pants off of most radiologists, but if you look at all of the weird houses and buildings out there, AI won't be replacing plumbers and electricians for generations. They've been saying that the self-driving car is right around the corner for 10 years now, but they're still mowing down pedestrians.
2) Moore's law. It's mostly dead. We can get speedups here and there with architectural tweaks and additions, but that's not the same as a doubling every 18 months for almost 40 years. It is unlikely that we'll see the same kind of progress in the next 10 years as we saw in the previous 10.
3) Service economy. Plenty of space outside the bleak world of maximum stuff for minimum dollars. Local bands, yoga instructors, lawn guys, personal trainers, camwhores, writers, hairdressers, etc, etc. The move to the service economy has been under way since at least the 90s. Much of what we can automate has been automated for some time now.
So, long story short, it's an elite fiction. A psyop to turn a chunk of the able-bodied working-age population into scared old ladies worried about what's going to happen to their social security.