[orangecat]

Perhaps the future is just one where more of us end up on welfare and the government keeps us going on the spoils of the extremely smart and/or powerful.

I think that's essentially correct. The non-singularity non-fiscal-collapse endgame is that everything we need and almost everything we want can be produced by a small fraction of the population, and most people don't have sufficient skills and knowledge to be economically productive. When you're trying to cure cancer or build self-driving cars, 10 brilliant PhDs beat 1000 average high school graduates.

Prediction: the idea of a universal guaranteed income (e.g. Milton Friedman's negative income tax) will steadily become more popular.