Lester Golden (below) asks, "Who decides what’s essential? "

Advertisers already do that. If it's advertised, it's not essential. If it was essential, we wouldn't need an advertiser (especially now with internet search).

Ergo, we could just tax all advertising to death. Simpler would be just have VAT that carries all of the costs of civilization's overhead (including UBI, good health and education for citizens to be useful to their places and each other's future).