>The proposed problem - and it's an elitist one - is that if you try to solve the basic income problem with minimum wages, the skill level required to be productive also rises, and eventually you get to the point where employers try hard to automate the job out of existence.

"We'll just automate your job away" is one of the biggest empty threats along with "we'll just fire everybody, causing mass unemployment".

Employers fear a rising minimum wage because it eats into their profits. That fear translates into histrionics, threats and utopianistic predictions about the near future state of robot technology.

In the end when it happens they just deal with it and end up posting lower profits. As is the case in Seattle.