The amount of taxes and the laser-like focus of said taxation required to make basic income both workable and meaningful for the population at large won't reall

The amount of taxes and the laser-like focus of said taxation required to make basic income both workable and meaningful for the population at large won't really feel like taxes. 60% of all income above $X per year versus the 40% now is a tax, sure. But the original comment was "The money for basic income will come from automation driven productivity improvements." So you're going to make a new tax of 500% on sales of automation equipment? Or 50% of the money saved per year by your installation of automation equipment? And then hire several million auditors to go inspect every facility in the country every year to ensure that people aren't installing unregistered automation equipment? There are already a bunch of tax laws on the books that should make those automation drive increases in profitability get taxed and go into the government's coffers. But companies are very adept at finding loopholes, getting new loopholes, etc. Structuring their business so as to minimize their tax burden. I think it's pretty obvious that just "raising taxes" won't accomplish enough revenue to make basic income work. So that means you've got to do something new, and something that probably won't feel like any previous tax ever levied. While you might argue that if it's a tax it's a tax (and that's probably technically true) there's a huge difference between increasing existing tax rates and generating substantially new tax law.