Abundance ≠ Altruism

Don't Expect AGI to Lead to UBI

Kevin Thuot

Jun 30, 2025

The Cope

AGI will usher in an age of abundance that will be widely and willingly shared

The Reality

You will either get enough to survive, or less than that

First, a reality check: US government policy is that UBI (universal basic income) is not coming. Washington is very very far away from Venmo-ing you each month just for being an American.

But if we keep our rose-tinted glasses on, the pro-UBI story sounds plausible. AGI could generate so much new wealth that today’s winners hose tomorrow’s losers down with cash because it feels good and they can’t think of anything to do with all this extra money.

Trouble is, we’ve done this experiment already and the results are in.

Since the Industrial Revolution took off, per capita income has grown roughly 20× since 1700.

If radical abundance was happy and widely shared we’d already see it.

Instead, here’s what we see:

Hamptons Pilates classes packed with Cartier-clad CEOs wsj.com
Jeff Bezos dropping ±$46 million on a three-day Venetian wedding wsj.com
And yes, you too. A net worth of about $140 k puts you in the global top 10% today advisors.ubs.com. If you have that much, are you feeling flush enough to hand most of it away? Why not?

The pattern is pretty clear at this point. When new wealth is created:

A. The elite

Capture the biggest slice to fund status contests with other elites

B. The comfortable middle

Get better gadgets, cheaper services, mild anxiety

C. The precarious

Receive just enough transfers to avoid open revolt

D. The invisible
Live outside the winners’ social graph, think garment workers in far-off countries or populations left behind when elites retreat to gated enclaves. They get nothing.

Expect more of the same. In the AI era, Group B and C will be lucky to score cool VR headsets and free synthetic meat. Many will move from Group B and C to Group D. Group A will buy extra centuries of lifespan and summer homes on the rings of Saturn.

Fair? Not really, but it’s already the world we are living in and the default one we can expect going forward.

If you disagree, explain to me in the comments below how you would explain to an Irish tenant farmer from 1850 or a refugee in Sudan in 2025 what’s going on here in the Hamptons: