Musk: Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.

X.com ^ | 4/17/2026 | Elon Musk

[Callahan]

Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.

AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.

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TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: ai; communism; modernmonetarytheory; moneyprinting; musk; muskworship; redistribution; ubi; uhi; unemployment

[ridesthemiles]

NOT SURE I CAN BUY THIS IDEA.

[TexasGator]

“because their focus is getting the LLMs to run on their hardware, without the need for the datacenters.”

LLM’s already run on phones. Both Apple and Android.

[rdcbn1]

Drivel

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Oh really?

Mark Zuckerberg is on record as advocating for a universal minimum wage for exactly this reason - giving his Meta platform a huge installed base of idle , government funded metaverse gaming and social media economy customers.

If you doubt that AI is going to be the most empowering and enabling technology the world has seen to this point the you are simply ignorant of what AI is all about and what it can accomplish.

I recently duplicated what was a 24 month PhD thesis project by one of the brightest and most capable students ever in our program in just over a week using AI coding tools.

After that I wrote an iPad based machine vision inspection system with very nice user interface and data analysis dashboard for an aerospace application to complete FAA compliance standards in about the same amount of time all by myself - just for the fun of it. It works great and is an amazingly capable and easy to use system.

I would not be surprised if AI could enable a small team of talented and motivated people to put together a newer , better version of Facebook that would make Facebook the new myspace.

AI is going enable creative and innovative people to do amazing things. Some people are self motivated and directed but the gaming and social media culture is addicting and it kills peoples initiative because it enables them to lead idle, sponsored lifestyles.

[Vision]

Tell Elon we need to pay back the $40T we already owe first. Good grief.

[caver]

FR is getting overrun by you GenX boomer haters. This is sickening.

[dfwgator]

Yes, but I am talking LLMs that can compete with the big frontier models.

[TexasGator]

“Yes, but I am talking LLMs that can compete with the big frontier models.”

Which will not run on Apple hardware. Not now, not ever.

[unlearner]

It’s easier to just end intellectual property. Open source everything and people will be able to produce whatever they need with AI and robotics.

[erlayman]

If we do end up with a few giant monopolistic AI companies somehow still profiting at that level then the solution is relatively straightforward — tax the owners of the robots/AI and distribute it. Most likely the level of automation he is envisioning will not come for hundreds of years and by then his robot insurrection will be the most pressing existential threat to humanity.

[panzerkamphwageneinz]

Flying cars are the future…1950 popular mechanics

[aspasia]

the end goal is replacing—not supplementing—replacing ALL labor

The terms are a bit vague.

Do you mean by labor as what is merely necessary for basic sustenance: food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, and education? Or do you really mean ALL and thereby remove ALL human production? That wouldn't just destroy an economy, it would erase economics altogether, as well as human nature itself.

Musk is optimistic that technology is going to free human potential from necessary labor (manual, repetitive, or low-skill work). But the activity generated from "human potential" creates a market that still includes labor (or maybe you have a euphemism). As long as there is human agency there is labor.

BTW, problem solving is more laborious than vacuuming or flipping burgers.