This I believe to be the best answer. It is not a matter of how to provide basic means to all people, but rather how to produce means cheaply enough to not be a strain on society's budgets.
Unfortunately, the biggest and most typically debilitating costs are housing and health care. The former requires land and synchronization of other services (transportation, firefighters, law enforcement) and is a very hard and complex problem to solve. The latter is extremely human-intensive, both for physical labor, subject area expertise, and interpersonal skills (only the right diagnosis matters). It would take revolutionary advances in machine learning and robotics for health care costs to fall to the degrees of food and personal entertainment.
The other part I would add is that as living standards broadly increase, people expect more out of their purchases, both personally and societally. We expect that all buildings will comply with fire codes, which add cost. We want quality food without pumping animals full of antibiotics or chickens rolling around in each other's feces, which is more expensive when society deems "humane" conditions to be necessary.
I have argued here and elsewhere - to little agreement - that instead of establishing basic income, we should incentivize extreme cost reduction. However, I am still fully in support of universal state services, such as guaranteed health care, since nobody chooses to get sick and a sick populace that is either untreated or submerged in medical debt is a drag on all of society's potential.
People will always want more, but at the very least we can set a floor on the provision of basic necessities.
Unfortunately, the biggest and most typically debilitating costs are housing and health care. The former requires land and synchronization of other services (transportation, firefighters, law enforcement) and is a very hard and complex problem to solve. The latter is extremely human-intensive, both for physical labor, subject area expertise, and interpersonal skills (only the right diagnosis matters). It would take revolutionary advances in machine learning and robotics for health care costs to fall to the degrees of food and personal entertainment.
The other part I would add is that as living standards broadly increase, people expect more out of their purchases, both personally and societally. We expect that all buildings will comply with fire codes, which add cost. We want quality food without pumping animals full of antibiotics or chickens rolling around in each other's feces, which is more expensive when society deems "humane" conditions to be necessary.
I have argued here and elsewhere - to little agreement - that instead of establishing basic income, we should incentivize extreme cost reduction. However, I am still fully in support of universal state services, such as guaranteed health care, since nobody chooses to get sick and a sick populace that is either untreated or submerged in medical debt is a drag on all of society's potential.
People will always want more, but at the very least we can set a floor on the provision of basic necessities.