As AI and robotics continue to reshape markets, a number of CEOs, mostly from the tech world, have spoken in favor of UBI as a policy tool to address potential labor market disruption from predicted changes. Some, like Sam Altman of OpenAI, even funded a UBI experiment that provided cash payments to low-income people to examine their spending habits and employment patterns. This week, Tesla’s activist CEO, Elon Musk, issued another provocative call for a universal high income (UHI) to mitigate the labor market impacts of the growing adoption of AI and robots.

What’s remarkable about Musk’s new statement is that he is not calling for a basic income; he is asking for a high income, arguing that inflation worries need to be laid to rest because AI and robots would be so productive that our biggest concern should be “massive disinflation,” that is, lower prices, not inflation.

From a theoretical standpoint, Musk’s point has some merit because inflation is generally characterized by an imbalance between purchasing power and the amount of goods and services available. That is, more money chasing fewer goods.

Musk assumes that as the government distributes purchasing power, AI and robots would enable markets to respond swiftly by producing enough goods to absorb that additional purchasing power, thereby keeping prices in check.

While the theory seems to make sense for goods and services whose supply is elastic, that is, supply can be expanded as demand rises without causing prices to go out of control, it would not hold true for land, which, by definition, is fixed in supply. This remark does not invalidate Musk’s argument, nor does it weaken his case for a government-distributed cash program, whether this is basic or high income. It only raises the question of how best to prevent land price inflation as more social safety nets built around the idea of free cash handouts are put in place.

Henry George warned about this scenario in his 1879 bestseller, Progress and Poverty. In it, George even defended the idea of a citizen dividend to be paid out of the rise in land values brought about by population growth and improvements in the arts and technology.