If we have a labor surplus, how does a basic income solve the problem? The money has to come from somewhere. Moreover, the population will age, and as demography and technological advancement increases the (stipulated) surplus, there will be fewer and fewer sources of revenue to fund the basic income. It seems like magical thinking.<p>I often find myself thinking that invocations of &quot;basic income&quot; are really just excuse-making: if we could just re-engineer the entire economy, we wouldn&#x27;t need to confront this tangle of systematic racism and 1950s-era civil and social engineering. But in fact, we do need to confront it, or resign ourselves to networks of large US cities that serve primarily as a poverty trap for African Americans.<p>It&#x27;s also a way to avoid engaging with the actual article, which is what happened here.