The idea of a carbon tax based initiative as presented by James Baker makes a lot of sense. This is a place where you tax what you want less of instead of Gates proposal to tax robots.
Ultimately, I am a believer simply because there is going to be no other choice. Unless we embrace Sanders idea of a job for everyone, which is absurd since it means we are just enslaving people 8 hours a day to do nothing meaningful, we are going to face massive unemployment.
The technology job killing spree is just getting going. We did well to fend it off by creating many useless jobs. However, corporations are going to resist that in the future. It is not in their best interest to employ any more than they have to. They are all about the bottom line.
Carbon tax is good, but if it succeed it will gradually lower funds for UBI until full success make zero UBI.
Gates suggestion is looking further into the future, where carbon problems may be eliminated, but automation is going even stronger. There may be other solutions, but a carbon tax is in lack of better words, doomed to succeed.
I would like to add, that it is the corporations, the ones looking for profits, that ironically is the main drivers of useless jobs, like administration, PR, layers ++. But you don't need much insight to see that capitalism actually isn't economic at all. Useless jobs, planed obsoletions, global chase of cheap manpower ++ are all the opposite of economical