The better remuneration and conditions the workers have, the more expensive they are, and the more there's an incentive to invest into capital replacing labor so that you have more machines and fewer workers.

There are many things that could be automated right now (for example, in the garments industry) but are not because it's currently cheaper to do them in a third world country by poorly paid workers - but the moment those workers would have to be properly paid, the tasks would go away as then it would be cheaper to automate.

Then those tasks absolutely need to be automated. If you can't even pay living wages in a poorer country then this isn't a task that humans should perform.

You'll just get more and more people believing all work is exploitation and they'll stop working. Then the people still working will have higher taxes, feel that they're being exploited by the people not working, and soon everybody will be unemployed and nobody will be exploited and it'll be paradise.

> You'll just get more and more people believing all work is exploitation and they'll stop working.

Which means less labor supply, which means higher labor prices, which means greater incentive for people to work (since wages would no longer be suppressed by the "either I take this predatory offer or I starve to death" effect).

> Then the people still working will have higher taxes

Not necessarily. That depends on who and what you tax. A land value tax + a tax on income or wealth after a certain point (say, $1m/year) would readily pay for UBI without putting any tax burden on the working class. The other benefits of LVT (like incentivizing denser urbanization and penalizing land speculation) are nice cherries on top.

>Which means less labor supply, which means higher labor prices...

...which means higher prices of good and services, which means that the basic income you had previously settled on is no longer sufficient to survive on. How sure are we that there's a stable equilibrium?

> which means higher prices of good and services

Only if automation never happens. Clearly that ain't the case, per this very comment section and the topic thereof.

Indeed, automation's going to continue anyway, because as automation costs fall they'll eventually undercut labor costs - even those artifically suppressed through coercive means, as is currently the case in any (capitalist or otherwise) society lacking a socioeconomic safety net like UBI. So sooner or later something like UBI is necessary either way (that, or making people do pointless busy work, which is both paternalistic and grossly inefficient).

Almost yes, except wages for the stuff that needs to be done will rise to the point that you actually earn almost what your labor is worth :-) some of the most important jobs in the world (nurses?!) pay much less than my hobby of sitting in front of a computer and making pretty plots. That's fucked up

Quite the unsupported fantasy you've put forward - sounds similar to the argument that once people have enough money they'll stop working, so better pay them only enough to survive - until you include billionaires into the equation, who don't stop working when they have enough to live for 1,000s of years.

Billionaires are crazy kind of folks.

To realize what people are going to do when they don't have to work, look at those in retirement: gardening, choir singing, lotto may be?

So disappointed that batman/social reform was never realised by those folk.

Right, billionaires will do whatever they can to earn more, including leaving a country with high tax rates.

But a lot of people if guaranteed a minimal quality of living would just stop working and do things that they like (that don't necessarily make money) and that's the whole point of UBI.

Doing things that they like would still be working. They just don’t have to engage in rat race jobs anymore. They can have the dignity a billionaire has.