Why do you think middle class suburban teenagers work awful jobs with no chance of career growth (Walmart, McDonald's, etc)? Most of them have parents providing for necessities. It's because people always want more. Even the poorest people today live like kings compared to five centuries ago, but people still strive for more despite this relative prosperity!

>I've lived on 20k a year with almost no required work. And I've lived on 200k with a job. I'd pick the former everyday and twice on Sunday.

Almost no work is not the same as no work, and 20k is not the same as 12k.

> So I don't have some moral problem with not working. The problem is the tax base would implode and there wouldn't be anyone left paying the bills. The system would collapse. > Maybe if software actually eats the world but not until then.

That's the most likely way I see a basic income happening, too: automation eats into a huge number of jobs – self-driving vehicles take out a LOT of people currently working as truckers, delivery drivers, etc.; robots turn Amazon warehouses into ghost towns where a few technicians tend the machines; whole categories of office jobs continue to fade as analog data entry goes away and processes are automated; and so forth.

In that kind of scenario, it's easy to imagine voters supporting a tax on high earners and corporate income to provide an income for people who simply don't have skills which can't be done by a machine.