The ruling class knows full well that UBI will be perceived by most working-class people as a tax on them to support freeloaders. The ruling class also knows that many people in the NPR-listening liberal demographic will view UBI as a wonderful thing that will allow people to be freed from the onerousness of having to work some boring stupid job that a robot should do, and free to pursue their heart's desire. "How cool is that!"
The liberals will, the ruling class hopes, support UBI and view working-class folks who oppose it as Neanderthal ignoramuses. And the ruling class also hopes that working-class people will view the NPR-listening demographic as a bunch of pro-freeloader elitist jerks.
This, divide-and-rule, is the real reason that Big Money is starting to promote the UBI idea. It's a trap!
The ruling class is not going to implement anything that actually makes our society more economically equal, unless there is a very strong movement composed of a large majority of the population that is fighting for it. This cannot happen when half the population is for UBI and the other half opposes it as freeloading, can it?
On the other hand, a large majority movement for economic equality can indeed form around the moral principle that the vast majority of Americans DO want the economy to be based upon: "From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to reasonable need or desire, with scarce things equitably rationed according to need." Big Money HATES this principle because, if implemented, it would mean that the billionaire class would no longer have its extreme wealth and privilege and power; the billionaires would be just like everybody else economically.
The ruling class tries to suppress any mention of the "From each according-- principle because it knows how unifying that principle is. Instead, the ruling class hopes to use the UBI idea to stigmatize the idea of economic equality as freeloading, to make sure that no large unified movement for economic equality ever forms.
ROBOTS?
Capitalists have been replacing human labor with machines for hundreds of years. They do this whenever it lowers the cost of production. No doubt the trend will continue, with robots doing more and more things once done by humans.
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