Once again, Elon Musk declared on X: “Working will be optional in the future. There will be universal high income.” This time, he was responding to entrepreneur Peter H. Diamandis, who warned that “jobs are disappearing fast.”
The backdrop to Musk's remark is striking. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers announced 54,064 job cuts in September, a 37% drop from August. Yet the year-to-date total of nearly 950,000 is the highest since 2020, and hiring plans at just over 200,000 roles through September are the lowest since 2009.
At the same time, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), the second-largest private employer in the U.S., is leaning harder into automation. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the e-commerce giant could replace half a million jobs with robots.
Industry analyst Jeff Kagan says Amazon’s move captures both the promise and peril of AI. “Every transformational wave has wrestled with the push-and-pull created by new technology,” he wrote in a Benzinga column. “The difference today is that AI may not create an equivalent wave of new jobs—it’s job elimination without relocation.”
The push toward automation also comes amid what many analysts describe as an emerging “AI bubble.” Venture capital investment and stock valuations for AI firms have surged at a pace reminiscent of the dot-com era, even as measurable productivity gains remain limited.
So, what exactly does Musk mean by “high”? And what would it take to make that a reality?
The Leap From UBI to UHI
The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI), which means a guaranteed payment to all citizens regardless of employment, has circulated for decades. It’s been tested in small-scale pilots around the world, typically as modest stipends to reduce poverty and cushion job losses.
Musk’s phrasing, however, represents a conceptual leap. Universal High Income (UHI) goes beyond subsistence. It implies prosperity. If automation and AI make us far more productive, we could share those gains so everyone enjoys a better standard of living.
“Universal High Income isn't a bigger safety net—it's a dividend narrative," says Ryan Waite, a policy expert at Think Big. “It’s about sharing AI-driven surplus so people participate in growth, not just get cushioned from loss.”
Still, the distinction between ‘basic’ and ‘high’ can be misleading. As UBI advocate Scott Santens notes, “Basic doesn’t mean low—it means foundational.”
“It’s a base that supports all other income,” he says, adding that automation could make that base grow over time.
Santens argues that a poverty-ending UBI in the U.S. would equal roughly 18% of GDP per capita, costing about 3% of GDP. He says that it is economically feasible even without robots. As productivity rises, that share could expand, transforming UBI into something approaching Musk’s purported “high income.”
When Does This Become Real?
Not soon, say many in the tech industry. Steve Morris, founder and CEO of NEWMEDIA.COM, believes the so-called “robot apocalypse” is unfolding gradually, not suddenly.
“Robots are taking individual jobs, not whole careers,” he says. “Even the biggest tech companies still can’t automate simple human tasks—that buys us time.”
That means economies likely have five to fifteen years to prepare, through retraining and smarter tax systems, before needing an income model like UHI.
Waite sees a 1–3 year window for small, local, or sectoral pilot programs and 5–10 years before national hybrid programs, combining cash transfers, benefit reform, and public ownership, could emerge.
The Real Hurdles
Experts agree that turning UHI from a slogan to a system poses immense economic, political, and social challenges.
For one, no country yet knows how to measure and tax automation's surplus. Waite calls that the “missing meter” in the UHI equation. Without mechanisms like automation taxes, data royalties, or platform fees, he says, “UHI is branding more than policy.”
Then there's the governance problem: who defines what counts as “surplus,” who distributes it, and how to prevent capture by corporate or political elites. And while automation may drive down costs, that same process could destabilize labor markets and public finances before any high income arrives.
Therefore, Musk's timeline of “in the future” may stretch across decades of experimentation, false starts, and policy resets.
Maybe, in a hyper-meta twist, the very AI that threatens to erase jobs could also help design the income systems to replace them.
Image via Shutterstock
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