{"id":7039,"date":"2026-04-17T18:42:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T18:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/7039\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T18:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T18:42:18","slug":"elon-musk-calls-for-government-checks-to-counter-ai-job-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/7039\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk calls for government checks to counter AI job losses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/siladityaray\/2026\/04\/17\/elon-musk-touts-universal-income-as-remedy-to-ai-driven-unemployment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">calling for the government to guarantee \u201cUniversal HIGH INCOME\u201d<\/a> for Americans to offset looming job losses caused by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>Adopting what is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/elon-musk-universal-high-income-government-checks-ai-job-losses-2026-4\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">usually considered a progressive stance<\/a>, the world\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUniversal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/elonmusk\/status\/2044990537145753894\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Musk tweeted early Friday.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>He claimed that increased productivity from AI will <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2026\/apr\/17\/elon-musk-proposes-universal-high-income-answer-ai-driven-job-losses\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">counteract the rising price pressures<\/a> that conservative economists often say are a side effect of massive government spending programs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAI\/robotics will produce goods &amp; services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation,\u201d Musk said.<\/p>\n<p>With Americans <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/policy\/technology\/5826742-ai-workplace-impact-survey-americans\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">jittery about the impact of AI<\/a>, Musk\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Musk appears to be boosting an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unc.edu\/discover\/the-pros-and-cons-of-universal-basic-income\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">enhanced version of a stance called Universal Basic Income<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s somewhat of puzzler to hear Musk, an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/06\/05\/nx-s1-5424686\/donald-trump-elon-musk-bromance-breakup\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">on-and-off Republican supporter of President Trump<\/a>, call for such a gusher of government handouts.<\/p>\n<p>The Tesla and SpaceX mogul has devoted most of his time and political capital to calling for <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2025\/04\/musk-doge-savings-austerity-spending\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">draconian cuts to government spending<\/a>. His short-lived Department of Government Efficiency, which he briefly spearheaded, cut funding for programs like lifesaving health and food assistance overseas.<\/p>\n<p>Musk even appeared onstage at a conservative political event with a chainsaw to dramatize his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/watch-elon-musk-wields-chainsaw-for-bureaucracy-on-stage-before-speaking-at-cpac\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">eagerness to cut government spending<\/a> and tame what he has called an unsustainable federal deficit.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s DOGE-inspired <a href=\"https:\/\/www.keranews.org\/government\/2025-05-27\/medicaid-snap-tax-cuts-texas-big-beautiful-bill-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">cuts to Medicare and even food stamps<\/a> have left low-income Americans with less disposable income, not more spending power.<\/p>\n<p>Musk <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/06\/us\/politics\/trump-musk-split-nasa.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">broke with Trump in a huff<\/a> in part over his complaint that the Republican leader\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill didn\u2019t go far enough the slash what he calls waste, fraud and abuse in government programs. He vowed to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/07\/26\/elon-musk-america-party-swing-states-00477177\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">bankroll his own new third party<\/a> but later returned to the GOP fold, at least for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk is calling for the government to guarantee \u201cUniversal HIGH INCOME\u201d for Americans to offset looming job&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,580,182,980,140,6364,5872,6365],"class_list":["post-7039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-chatgpt","tag-claude","tag-economy","tag-elon-musk","tag-grok","tag-unemployment","tag-universal-basic-income"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}