Universal Basic Income & Universal High Income - April 10, 2026

A.I. - It May Cause People To End Up On Welfare, Or It May Help People Find A Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Rainbow. 

Universal Basic Income, or “UBI”, is a policy where governments give regular cash payments to every adult with no conditions attached.  UBI is brought up in A.I. discussions where people see A.I. as not just as a productivity tool but as a fundamental disruption to labour markets; in this context UBI comes up as a  frequently proposed policy response to the anticipation of job losses arising from A.I.   

Universal High Income, or  “UHI”, is not a formally defined term, the way UBI is. It is a conversational concept that floats around in the technology industry and in futurist circles. It is used to describe a future where A.I. generates so much wealth that UBI could be set at a very high level; not just poverty-alleviation, but genuine wealth and abundance. Sam Altman and Elon Musk have floated concepts similar to UHI, as a way of generating excitement and enthusiasm for A.I. They suggest that incorporating A.I. applications and agents into our professional and personal lives will allow everyone to earn lots money, and reduce our costs…that A.I. will be a win-win for all of society.  Rather than having to provide basic income to society because of A.I. job losses, Altman and Musk would have us believe that A.I. will generate an abundance of wealth for everyone, and that UBI will really be UHI. 

Universal Basic Income

In researching the fundamentals of UBI, we learned that the concept includes the following:

• Everyone receives it.

• No requirement to work, nor any attempt required to obtain employment. 

• No need to prove income or eligibility.

• UBI funds can be spent however the recipients want.

• UBI simplifies welfare systems.

• UBI helps people handle job loss from automation. 

Because of its expansive nature, UBI will be expensive to implement.  In Canada, it's expected UBI would cost the government about $32B per month or $384M per year (assumes a total population of 40M people, 80% of which are over the age of 18, times $1,000 per month in UBI payments, per person eligible). In the United States, UBI would cost the government $258B per month or $3.1T per year (assumes a total population of 335M people, 77% of which are over the age of 18, times $1,000 per month in UBI payments, per person eligible).  

How does this compare to current “welfare” programs?  With welfare being defined as: old age pensions; employment insurance; child benefits; disability supports, Statistic Canada estimates these payments added up to $283 billion in 2024. So, in Canada, UBI ends up costing about $100B, or 35% more than the current welfare program. In the United States, according to usgovernmentspending.com, the US government spends approximately $2.0T on these forms of welfare.  Thus UBI in the United States would cost $1.1T or 55% more than the current welfare program.  So, given the cost to taxpayers of providing UBI, and the more relaxed eligibility rules for UBI, making it more likely that people who don’t really need UBI would get such payments, why would anyone advocate for such a generous form of welfare!  If anything UBI seems like a lazier form of welfare. Less work to administer the programs and less work to get free money. And, more importantly, in the context of the contemplated job loss from A.I. these relatively small UBI payments aren’t going to offer meaningful relief to those who lost their jobs to A.I.  

Universal High Income

Universal High Income (UHI) is a concept that builds on the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) but with a key difference.  Instead of providing just a modest baseline income, it aims to give everyone a high standard of living; enough to live comfortably, not just survive.

The core concept of UHI is that every person receives an unconditional income that is genuinely generous, enough to cover not just basic needs (food, shelter) but also leisure, education, travel, and a good quality of life.  UHI aims to provide abundance;  a level of income where work becomes truly optional for most people. 

So, who advocates for UHI?  There are no major economists, policymakers, or organizations that formally advocate for UHI. The term is associated with thinkers/promotors in the A.I. and technology space, particularly those who believe that A.I.-driven productivity gains could generate enough wealth to fund very high unconditional incomes. Sam Altman (OpenAI), Elon Musk (xAI),  and others have floated versions of this idea, more so to allay fears of massive job loss from A.I., trying to convince people that in fact everyone will become ultra-wealthy and never have to work again, because of A.I.  Of course, neither Altman nor Musk have shared any form of plan or details on how UHI will unfold.  

Elon Musk has said in some discussions that A.I. could create so much productivity that society might move toward “universal high income,” not just basic income (Source - Factually); he’s gone on to say that A.I. could make work optional and could push society toward abundance-level income (Source - Business Insider). 

Sam Altman’s more ambitious ideas include that A.I.  could generate enormous wealth such that governments could tax capital (companies, land, A.I. infrastructure), (Source - CNBC) and these taxes raised could fund payments to everyone. He proposed a system where citizens receive cash and shares from a national fund.

Those of us that are skeptical of UHI wonder about the following:

• Is it economically feasible at ultra-high income levels (doctors, lawyers, technology industry engineers)?

• Would UHI reduce the incentive to work?

• Who controls the A.I. wealth being redistributed? 

• Could UHI cause inflation if not carefully managed?

UHI is still largely a theoretical concept. Think of it as the optimistic answer to the question: "What happens to people when A.I. does most of the work?". Some economists propose to treat A.I. like a public resource that generates shared wealth. Possible models include: public ownership stakes in A.I. companies;  national “A.I. funds” (like oil funds); data dividends (people paid for use of their data). 

A.I. could make UBI economically feasible, but it won’t happen automatically. A.I. could be a wealth creation engine. But UBI requires a  policy choice about distributing that wealth created from A.I. UHI would require not just powerful A.I., but massive societal and economic restructuring. 

The Anxiety: A.I. Will Destroy Jobs

As A.I. and automation become more capable, they can replace human labour across a huge range of tasks; not just manual factory work, but also white-collar work like writing, coding, legal research, customer service, and data analysis. The concern is:

• If machines do most of the work, millions of people lose their income

• Unlike past technological revolutions, A.I. may move faster than humans can retrain and adapt. 

• The displacement could be so broad that the usual solution ("get a different job") won't work for everyone. 

At the same time, A.I. is expected to generate significant economic productivity. A small number of companies (and their shareholders) could capture trillions of dollars in value from A.I.-driven output. This raises the question:

• Who benefits from that wealth?

• If a handful of corporations and billionaires capture all the gains, inequality explodes

• UBI/UHI are proposed as a redistribution mechanism; tax the A.I. wealth and share it broadly.  So UBI/UHI come up as a safety net answer; if jobs disappear, society needs another way to distribute income to people.

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The Deeper Shift In Thinking

Historically, income was tied to labor. You work, you get paid. A.I. breaks that link. If machines produce the goods and services, the old justification for income distribution (you earned it through work) no longer applies. Society needs a new framework for how wealth flows to people, and UBI/UHI are attempts to answer that. A.I. makes UBI/UHI relevant because it simultaneously threatens the source of most people's income (jobs) while generating the wealth that could fund an alternative system. It forces the question: in a world where A.I. does the work, how do people live?