I'm not an economist either, but here's how I'd like to see the McDonalds example play out :
Presumably, McD's pay folks on top of their basic income to entice people to work for them.
Eventually, these wages get high enough (and robots become cheap enough / advanced enough) that it becomes cheaper to automate away those jobs. The gained productivity allows McDonald's prices to drop, and a (properly configured) tax eats a healthy portion of McDonald's new profits. That tax goes directly into the basic income fund, lifting all citizens basic income by some amount.
People are still incentives to do icky jobs now (because they get more than basic income) and as they disappear, those efficiencies become profit, which is taxed and dumped into basic income which then goes up (so we lift everyone to higher standards of living as we destroy jobs people no longer need to do)
Eventually, that process repeats in every business and every industry, until we live in a Star Trek style post-currency economy, where people only work for exercise / interest / fun, and all necessities are covered by machines for some amount near free.
It's not an overnight thing, it's a "spread out over the next century" type change, where basic income started at the US minimum wage, but (over 100 years) eventually gives folks the 100-year-from-now equivalent of 100k/year salary as basic income.
I'm not an economist either, but here's how I'd like to see the McDonalds example play out :
Presumably, McD's pay folks on top of their basic income to entice people to work for them.
Eventually, these wages get high enough (and robots become cheap enough / advanced enough) that it becomes cheaper to automate away those jobs. The gained productivity allows McDonald's prices to drop, and a (properly configured) tax eats a healthy portion of McDonald's new profits. That tax goes directly into the basic income fund, lifting all citizens basic income by some amount.
People are still incentives to do icky jobs now (because they get more than basic income) and as they disappear, those efficiencies become profit, which is taxed and dumped into basic income which then goes up (so we lift everyone to higher standards of living as we destroy jobs people no longer need to do)
Eventually, that process repeats in every business and every industry, until we live in a Star Trek style post-currency economy, where people only work for exercise / interest / fun, and all necessities are covered by machines for some amount near free.
It's not an overnight thing, it's a "spread out over the next century" type change, where basic income started at the US minimum wage, but (over 100 years) eventually gives folks the 100-year-from-now equivalent of 100k/year salary as basic income.