AI (Artificial Intelligence) threatens to put the majority of humans out of work. Minimum wage has often not kept up with inflation enough to keep people out of poverty. Even so, there are potential jobs that can't be offered because they don't pay minimum wage.
The solution is UBI (Universal Basic Income): the government gives money to adults for free. To start with, enough to lift USA citizens out of poverty all on its own, that's $18000 per year for all adults not already on social security. If there is UBI, then the minimum wage can be set to $0: people can survive regardless of whether they work, so there's no reason to force employers to pay any minimum wage. If people don't find a salary worthwhile they can safely quit.
Balancing the budget: I get 193 million people in the USA age 18-64, so that's a cost of $3.5 trillion per year. Total taxes in 2024 were $4.9 trillion, mostly income taxes and social security taxes, so this requires roughly doubling the US tax rate overall.
The bottom 50% of the population in income (under $55k/year) currently pays 2.3% of the total US tax revenue. The top 10% (income of $155k/year and above) is currently paying about a 23% tax rate on their reported income, producing 75% of the total tax revenue. Doubling the tax revenue would mean doubling the tax rate on the top 10% from 23% to 46%. They can afford it (they'd get UBI too, though for them that's always much less than the tax increase). This might be done more by redefining what income is rather than actually raising the rate, because there are a lot of loopholes. I don't propose increasing taxes on companies much because companies can easily cook the books to have $0 income, so $0 taxes. In fact I'd propose not taxing the bottom 50% of the population at all, they wouldn't even be required to turn in a tax form unless their income is over $50k/year. Having the government compute everyone's tax bill rather than people filling out their own forms would also eliminate a lot of loopholes.
UBI might cause laziness. People not working just because they don't have to. Which could tank the economy. Experiments have suggested otherwise, but who knows. The solution is to introduce this gradually and watch what happens. Start with $1k/year, then every 4 years if that is OK, double it. You'll get to $16k in 16 years, then $32k or whatever the future inflated equivalent of $18k is in 20 years.
If UBI goes to children as well as adults, eventually that will cause a class of overbreeding freeloaders. The solution is to not give UBI to children if you have 4+ children some of whom are not adults, adjust 4 up or down as needed, or even deny UBI to the adult. Not giving UBI to children at all is probably a reasonable solution to that problem. There are various knobs to that could be adjusted there. Even if you decide there are way too many people, the solution isn't to kill off existing ones. The solution would be to lower the birthrate so the population gradually shrinks through natural deaths from old age. So we would need a way to support the population in the meantime. So if the population is suddenly entirely useless, then we still need (especially then we still need) UBI.
AI may eliminate many, maybe even most or all, jobs. Without UBI the alternative seems to be for people to starve to death. A higher tax rate for the well-off in exchange for avoiding mass starvation (and revolution) is a good deal. AI may cause very very few to be employed, or even eventually have only AI be employed. Whoever is reaping the benefits of the economy should be paying the taxes that keep people solvent. At the moment a poverty-line UBI is doable but difficult, but as automation continues to improve it will become easier and easier. A $40K UBI today would be comfortable but it isn't currently practical.
At the moment we're in an AI stock-market bubble. I expect it to collapse. But I also expect it to recover. Eventually the main economy will be AI building AI and selling it to AI companies who want to build more AI. In space, using solar energy in space to run AI compute in space. It will grow much bigger than the earth economy and won't involve people hardly at all. Because if AI is the actual source of almost all value, and doing almost all the thinking, it will be getting almost all of the pay too. Earth, with all the people on it, will be a backwater that is mostly left as-is as a historical landmark. The highest paid positions for humans will be for artists with particular tastes and perspectives that the AIs find interesting. They'll be paid a small amount from the AI economy, which will be much more than anyone earns today.