> Unless we get something like UBI we'll always need shitty job to keep people busy
I find myself often making this assumption too, but I wonder if it's warranted? A "shit" job is often shorthand for a job you can grab someone off the street and more or less have them start working, an "unskilled" job. But the fact that pretty much anyone can do a job isn't the same as saying that someone doing a "shit" job is only capable of that kind of work.
What if we did get to a point where nearly all the tedious, unskilled jobs were done by machines -- what exactly is the barrier to taking all the humans previously doing those jobs and leveling them up to do jobs machines can't do as well? I don't think it's human capability -- I'm quite skeptical of the idea that there's whole classes of people actually _unable_ to learn skills needed for better work. It seems the barrier is that generally it's not economically beneficial to do so -- training takes time and money. But if that's actually the problem, then its not an overall lack of money, it's a distribution question.
Perhaps it's because I'm watching The Expanse now and remember the books, but I'm not completely sold on UBI. I think it gives up on the idea that masses of people can work better jobs. As a supplementary income program I can see it working, but as a replacement for having any job at all I'm not sure I'm on board.