Somebody indeed appears to move the goalposts around. All I wanted was to draw the members of this thread of recent political events in France which concerned a proposal for basic income by the candidate for the socialist party. That is an historical event which you may or may not want to ignore. I prefer to learn about events.
Moreover, you present the idea that “the Joneses would be on the dole”. That would imply that everybody would be on the dole, as people would always compare themselves to the most desirable (for them) Joneses. It was never supposed that nobody would have to work in any basic income proposal, for the simple reason that we would still need someone to build and maintain the robots. Therefore, we would still be in a society were some people would live on basic income and some would have a job. That, in itself, creates some inequality. As society would need some means to convince some people to work building and maintaining the robots, it would also need to make that position desirable or nobody would do it. That, in turn, makes having a job, whichever it is, more desirable than not having one, at least for some people. That is the psychological equivalent of Veblen goods, where something becomes desirable because of scarcity.
My feeling is that this situation is already happening in France (and probably other countries as well): having a job becomes desirable in itself because of the social status it confers. That is my interpretation of the recent events I referred to.
