The Problem with the "Robots are Taking Over / UBI Crowd"

So a very popular idea right now is that AI is going to take over and automate away all of the jobs for low skill workers and beyond. Many people suggest this means that capital is going to make labor largely redundant as an input to firms of all kinds. The prescription people who hold this view generally recommend is to offer everyone a universal basic income drawn from the return on AI capital to replace work.

In my view, this is completely wrong in the world as we know it. When you go on Google Maps and look around at the "real world" you can see many very poor parts of the United States and the wider world. The fact is, in many places, capital is quite scarce relative to labor. The reason you have long term unemployment in the U.S. is because we already redistribute income such that many people are not compelled to work because they don't need to work in order to eat. Their potential labor income is below their reservation wage (wage needed to join the workforce) due to the availability of benefits or income from other sources (other members of the household, primarily).

Now, at the margin, I think the U.S. has a surplus of capital because demand growth looks so weak. This does argue for income redistribution, but I think a wage subsidy would work much better. People who don't work, whether rich or poor, tend not to have great lives filled with purpose. The assumption that people would find productive things to do if not bound by the burdens of labor just isn't supported by my lived experience or that of many other people from what I can tell.

The problem with income redistribution is that the U.S. is the world's "demand sink." Foreign entities buy USD denominated assets to prop up the USD against their currencies in a "beggar thy neighbor" mechanism or because investments in their own countries are unattractive at the margin due to deflationary policies. As long as the U.S. has debt capacity, no capital controls, and the world has faith in the dollar, the economic benefits of improved demand will be dissipated through an expanded current accounts deficit. Accordingly, I think these issues need to be addressed in tandem, beginning with a tax on capital inflows to the U.S.

Thoughts?