Humans are older than money, so evidently we don't need it to survive, but there is more to existence than mere survival. I agree that people's basic needs to be taken care of, but I think that is an issue that needs to happen because of automation. It needs to happen because it is simply the right thing to do. I would go as fas as saying It shouldn't just be basic needs. Society should be aiming to provide the entire hierarchy of needs for everyone.

I think having employment delivers some of the higher needs to a subset of people, but it is a privileged few. A huge number work just to provide the basic needs. Advocating using the advances in automation to raise everybody up is what we need. Instead we seem to be maintaining a system that gives a few what we want and the rest of us are too busy with the survival part to influence that change.

Why not simply pay the homemakers? Why is it so important that everyone produce economic output at the widget factory?

Allow me to translate into a language you can understand: The people who are all “unemployed” are actually performing valuable services like maintaining the future labor pool, learning how to become skilled workers, and so on. These people should not have a second job, they should be paid for the valuable services they’re providing.

You didn't answer the question, you answered a different question: "why would someone want to work, just in general?" The question that was posed was, why would someone who has already chosen to retire, or who is already fully occupied, or who is sick, want to work?

Again, we're talking about retirees, homemakers, college students, disabled, etc. here.