> "Yeah but there is one thing that people doing quick mathematics ignore when they pronounce Basic Income unworkable. And that is that it will absolutely have to work in some manner."

This is known as the head-in-the-sand approach and it is obviously nonsense.

Basic income is one proposed solution to the increasing automation of work and population growth. It's achieved such a cultlike status in some circles that those within them forget it's not the only possible solution.

And, truthfully, there is no guarantee that a solution will even be found. If one is, it may not be a "solution" in the usual sense. Here are some other possible resolutions to increasing wealth concentration combined with population growth:

1. State redistribution of wealth via tax and other changes

2. A shift of wealth from industries that automate things to those that produce valuable things or services which cannot be automated (i.e. as automation becomes increasingly cheap, competition in industries which rely on it results in those becoming commodity industries)

3. Society chooses to tolerate an increased number of homeless and poor people and their suffering rather than make changes to its tax or legal structure.

4. Artificial population control. A world with decreasing job opportunities can be sustained as long as population decreases in proportion.

5. Revolution

And there are other options, some completely unseen.

> "You are not going to put 50% of people of work, and you're not going to consign a hundred million people to a worsening standard of living even as those with capital get to live like gods."

The exact numbers may not be as dire as 50%, but historically plutocracy has been the norm and not the exception. Plenty of egalitarian societies (for varying definitions of "egalitarian") have sprung up and died off, but plutocracy as a system exhibits long term stability due to the nature of wealth and inheritance. Whatever its moral deficiencies, plutocracy is simply a consequence of the fact that wealth naturally tends towards concentration rather than dispersal.

The real problem with basic income is that the inspiration for the system not only relies on an unproven assumption about the future, but one that has no historical precedent: the destruction of job opportunities for most people without a corresponding increase in new opportunities. The former has happened over and over throughout history but it has always been followed by the latter.

What we've seen over the past century has been a steady automation of mundane tasks displacing menial labor and an increase in the number of people in "creative" professions. Until strong AI comes along, and in particular a strong AI that enjoys making art, there will always be a need for human beings to serve in the latter category of jobs.

A bigger economic problem, and one which actually does deserve serious thought and consideration, is how to make the economics of a creative economy work. The old feudal style model of publishers lording over their effectively serf-like artists (while the latter churned out content whose profits were largely eaten by the former) plainly doesn't work.

The bottom line is that changes are coming, and while those changes can't be stopped it is hubris to claim that one and only one never-tried-before solution will solve a never-occurred-before economic problem. The reason you never see faithful proponents of basic income discuss it in terms of hard numbers is because doing so makes it obvious that other solutions will have to be considered. The mainstream proposals for basic income are an economic religion complete with all the hallmarks of religion: an unfalsifiable dogma ("in the future, robots will take all the jobs"), guilt and fear as a means of control and persuasion, and an apocalptic narrative. But they are most definitely not economic science.