Earlier this week, Elon Musk once again proposed a universal basic high income stating that it can be the ‘best way’ to deal with job losses caused by artificial intelligence (AI). Musk’s post started a debate leaving many economists “baffled”. Debating the Tesla CEO’s proposal, one user named Not the Bee @Not_the_Bee shared an The post caught the attention of Elon Musk who replied by asserting that AI and robotics will increase goods and services output by several orders of magnitude, creating post-scarcity conditions where items like penthouses become widely available without inflation.“Let’s say abundance is high, that’s fine. But money doesn’t just buy necessities. It buys luxuries. And if everybody has a billion dollars, nobody really does. If money means nothing, what determines who gets the penthouse suite? I think poverty and starvation can go away, but how do we deal with the very real necessity of scarcity in day to day life for everything that can’t be mass manufactured by robots?,” the user questioned. To this Musk replied:“Actually, AI/Robotics will mean can everyone have a penthouse if they want. The output of goods & services will be several orders of magnitude higher than today’s economy.Read the Iain Banks Culture books for the best imagining of how it will be.That said, what is the future you want? Amazing abundance seems the best to me.”
When Elon Musk predicted a future without poverty
Notably, this is not the first time when Elon Musk has talked about universal high income and predicting a future that is poverty-free. In December 2025, Musk predicted that “there will be no poverty in the future”. Instead, he said that there will be universal high income, adding that people would no longer need to save money. Musk was then responding to a post by investor Ray Dalio about Trump accounts initiative. Dalio had praised the effort, calling it a bipartisan move aimed at helping young Americans build financial knowledge and invest early. He also thanked Michael and Susan Dell for supporting the program and said the initiative aligns with the ideas he shared six years ago in “Why and How Capitalism Needs To Be Reformed.”Responding to Dalio’s message, Musk said: “It is certainly a nice gesture of the Dells, but there will be no poverty in the future and so no need to save money. There will be universal high income.”
