Branson is right. Charles Murray has run the numbers and a universal basic income program as a replacement for all other poverty alleviation and income transfer programs (including Social Security) would be cheaper than what we do now (his proposal was $10K per year plus $3K for catastrophic health insurance) -- see his book In Our Hands: A plan to replace the welfare state.
Unlike needs-based income transfer programs, this scheme removes the disincentive to work created by what is functionally a confiscatory tax rate on the first dollars earned -- loss of benefits not being made up for by income from work -- an effect which has created the permanent underclass in America. The savings come from the abolition of the massive bureaucracies that exist at the federal and state levels to determine eligibility for needs-based benefits. Nor is the cost equal to the amount paid times the number of recipients (under Murray's proposal all legal residents 21 years of age or older) since the money is taxable income -- the money is recouped at the top-marginal rate for the recipient.
This proposal will become more and more urgent as we approach the point where all jobs that can be reliably and enjoyably done by persons of average intelligence or below (including picking soft fruit and prostitution) can be more reliably and economically done by AI-driven robots, along with a fair number that require a good deal more intelligence (radiology is already better done by AI than by a board-certified radiologist, and a lot of routine legal work can readily be automated, though the bar will surely get Luddite measures through all the state legislatures to forbid lawyer-bots,...). No, there will not be new jobs for those of below average intelligence created by the new economy, what's worse the amount of intelligence required to do the new jobs created by AI displacing human brain-power will increase until eventually only people with IQs of 120, then 135, then 150,... will be able to find work for which their efforts produce enough value to pay a meaningful wage.
Take your pick: the vast majority of humanity even in the developed world out of work and in grinding poverty, a UBI, or the "Butlerian jihad" from the Dune novels ("thou shalt not make a graven image of the human mind" and smashing all AI-driven devices to implement the new commandment.) Somehow I like the UBI.
