Universal Income? Is this like a Star Trek Economy?

Universal Basic Income: Why Elon Musk Thinks It May Be The Future

Universal basic income (UBI), an unconditional allowance afforded to all citizens for the bare essentials of life, is an old idea that's garnered support from members of both the left and right. Notable supporters have been as disparate as civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. and libertarian economist Milton Friedman.

 From article, (Universal basic income (UBI), an unconditional allowance afforded to all citizens for the bare essentials of life, is an old idea that’s garnered support from members of both the left and right. Notable supporters have been as disparate as civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. and libertarian economist Milton Friedman. The Nixon Administration even attempted to pass a basic income guarantee through Congress and failed only narrowly due to a disagreement as to how much the stipend should be.

Now, the debate over universal basic income is being renewed by industry leaders and billionaires who include Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson and Elon Musk, among others.

As automation approaches, the world is faced with the problem of displacement. One Oxford study predicts 47 percent of jobs are at a high risk of computerization in the next two decades. Previously, the authors published a study that seemed to be much more optimistic about the rate of replacement for workers. Their latest study seems to suggest that human workers are now losing the race against automation.

Deep learning is propelling artificial intelligence forward at a much faster clip than ever anticipated. Automation has eaten away at manufacturing jobs for the past few decades, and many expect manual labor and transportation jobs to be the next casualties of smart software. What’s somewhat shocking is the prediction that the service industry jobs may also be at very high risk, despite being an industry that has experienced some of the largest growth in the last two decades. As machines grow more able to recognize complex patterns, complete increasingly involved tasks and sense the world around them, more livelihoods will become susceptible to computerization.

Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, estimates that up to 15 percent of the world’s working population could be out of work due to self-driving AI, a machine-learning technology Tesla is working tirelessly to perfect.

Training these workers to develop creative and social skills or providing them with funds to seek higher education may not be feasible. In fact, it may be only a temporary solution as the reach of automation expands, possibly eliminating sects of skilled labor. At the World Government Summit in Dubai in February last year, underscoring the need to potentially accommodate such a colossal shift, Musk asserted, ​“There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better.”​

“I think we’ll end up doing universal basic income,” he said. “It’s going to be necessary.”)

Me, "Universal Income makes sense. How would it be funded though? It would work sort of like Social Security. A tax on Income made by a corporation.

The tax would be on corporations who build the robots, service the robots and operate the robots that replace human workers. If these corporations are making money at a human workers expense, they should pay some kind of income tax that the displaced human worker should be compensated with. 

Is this how the Star Trek economy works? In the Star Trek universe there is no money. There has been a mention of credits that can be used to buy things. So, does the Star Trek universe characters live off of a Universal Income?  

I don't think so. I think in the Star Trek universe the technology has progressed so much that there is no need for any kind of income. If you've seen a replicator on Star Trek The Next Generation a person can replicate anything they want. So, there is no shortage of anything. Food, Shelter, Clothing, Luxury items are all a replicator command a way.  Even the credits given to buy things in economies that still have a capitalist system are probably replicated.

As Captain Picard said, "The use of money as a motivating factor no longer exists. We work now to better ourselves."
So, until we have Replicator technology, a Universal Income is the next best thing."