Elon Musk is calling for the government to guarantee “Universal HIGH INCOME” for Americans to offset looming job losses caused by artificial intelligence.
Adopting what is usually considered a progressive stance, the world’s richest man said Uncle Sam should write fat checks to Americans to keep us living large even if platforms like Chat GPT, Claude and his own Grok spawn a torrent of pink slips.
“Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” Musk tweeted early Friday.
He claimed that increased productivity from AI will counteract the rising price pressures that conservative economists often say are a side effect of massive government spending programs.
“AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation,” Musk said.
With Americans jittery about the impact of AI, Musk’s call for free money to ease the pain may have struck a nerve: a whopping 38 million people read the post in its first 12 hours online.
Musk appears to be boosting an enhanced version of a stance called Universal Basic Income, which calls for a government to provide citizens with enough cash to pay for necessities like rent, food, health and education, with no strings attached.
The idea is to keep all people contributing to the economy and society even if they are unable to find a job or make enough money on their own.
It’s somewhat of puzzler to hear Musk, an on-and-off Republican supporter of President Trump, call for such a gusher of government handouts.
The Tesla and SpaceX mogul has devoted most of his time and political capital to calling for draconian cuts to government spending. His short-lived Department of Government Efficiency, which he briefly spearheaded, cut funding for programs like lifesaving health and food assistance overseas.
Musk even appeared onstage at a conservative political event with a chainsaw to dramatize his eagerness to cut government spending and tame what he has called an unsustainable federal deficit.
Trump’s DOGE-inspired cuts to Medicare and even food stamps have left low-income Americans with less disposable income, not more spending power.
Musk broke with Trump in a huff in part over his complaint that the Republican leader’s One Big Beautiful Bill didn’t go far enough the slash what he calls waste, fraud and abuse in government programs. He vowed to bankroll his own new third party but later returned to the GOP fold, at least for now.