What makes you think they don't pay taxes? AirBnB has even been forced to collect hotel taxes in SF, besides the regular taxes that all companies pay.

The answer is because the automation still costs money, and that, even if creating clothing was completely automated, the materials would still cost money, and as such, they'd still charge for the clothes. And unless you've got a job (or basic income, but I don't believe that's ever going to happen), you're not going to be able to pay for the clothes, no matter how cheap they are. Same with food. Even more so for housing.

> majority of the population providing non- essential services.

'essentiality' doesn't come into the equation. Those who managed to amass a fortune being more efficient will want servants and other people to serve them (entertainers, sex workers, etc etc), which cannot easily be provided by machines. The economy will revert back to a fuedal one, where you become "owned" by the rich. Unless, of course, the people rebel, and bring on a socialist/communist form of gov't. I doubt that will happen though, becase the rich will see it coming, and nip it in the bud.

A red future is a dark future.

So let's hope we don't go down that road.

red doesn't sell well in the USA. We'll have full communism but we'll market it as something else. Probably still calling it the "free market capitalism". That's what we inaccurately call our current system and nobody blinks.

Most likely it'll roll out like public libraries / utilities. I already drive on government owned streets kept safe by government paid cops and clean by government paid trash pickup to visit the government owned library to use the government owned photocopier when I need to do legacy media stuff. Not a huge extension of the concept at the library to use the government owned 3d printer to make stuff or the government owned protein sequencer to make me soylent-tier food, maybe in 30 years.