You're making a huge assumption there that UBI would be implemented successfully. On paper it sounds great to me, but if it's not done incredibly skillfully, UBI would just be a fast track to Zimbabwe-style economic ruin, except instead of just producing humorous-looking banknotes for the rest of the world, I'm pretty sure complete economic collapse of the US would have... a few pretty bad knock-on effects on most other countries, as in like, 2008 squared.

The biggest danger of UBI is that, since every seller knows now that every buyer has at minimum $XXXX/month to work with, anything that sounds like a great deal to someone at that income level will be repriced so that it's out of reach. e.g.

Your job income was $4000 a month, rent was $2000, childcare $1000, food, $500, car expenses $500. Now UBI comes around. All these things go up. Why do they go up? Some people say greed. This is wrong! There are still, say, 1000 2-bedroom apartments in your city, but now people have more money. Many people have been wanting to move up and now they can afford the $2000 rent. Maybe all the landlords are good Democrats and refuse to have would-be tenants bid, so they simply rent out all 1000 at the same $2000 rent (using a lottery to award them).

But now there are 200 more people who want apartments, and no apartments for them. Everyone knows there is this shortage. They're even willing to pay $2500 or $2700. New units are built that would not have been worth building at $2000 rent but which pencil out great at $2700 or $3000.

>Isn't there more than enough excess in this economy for all of us?

Prices are indeed just a label of whether we have a surplus, just right, or a shortage, but they're coded in psychology. We instinctively know what feels like an okay price for most things, and anything above that is a nearly 100% reliable indicator that we in fact have a shortage of that thing. And of course, the inverse too, which is why you see clearance racks with great deals on phone cases for 5-year-old cell phones.

You asked if we have more than enough excess. I'd say, no, we have for instance, way too few houses, and also not enough energy. Also not nearly enough semiconductors. Those are just a small sample, but those things are obviously pretty dang important. And we also of course have shortages of labor in actually useful fields like doctors, nurses, tax attorneys, auto mechanics, but way too much labor in other college-educated fields with less obvious applicability to life.

You bring up some great points. It will not be easy. That's why it would be nice if there was more serious talk around it so the economic and social issues could be discussed and planned for. Right now no one seems to be planning for anything except more mega returns and IPOs and disruption until the music stops. It would be nice if our society could get ahead of problems instead of merely being reactive to them. America has pulled off daunting challenges and social transformations before. A positive outlook that acknowledged the reality of AI vs a reactionary chant against the data center would be welcome. It's not like the status quo is desirable.