The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?

> Everyone else either performs a charade of doing their job—leaders still leading, managers still managing—or relaxes and collects an incredibly luxurious universal basic income.

For me, this was the most difficult part to believe. I don't see any reason to think that the U.S. leadership (public and private) is incentivized to spend resources to placate the masses. They will invest in protecting themselves from the masses, and obstructing levers of power that threaten them, but the idea that economic disparities will shrink under explosive power consolidation is counterintuitive.

I also worry about the economics of UBI in general. If everyone in the economy has the exact same resources, doesn't the value of those resources instantly drop to the lowest common denominator; the minimum required to survive?

Most of the budget already goes towards placating the masses, and that's an absolutely massive fraction of GDP already. It's just a bit further along the same line. Also most real work is already done by machines, people just tinker around the edges and play various games with each other.