UBI is implemented tomorrow. Every citizen gets $1000 per month.
Landlord now knows you have an extra $1000 that you never had before. Why wouldn’t the landlord raise prices?
Now you have an extra $1000 a month and instead of eating rice and beans for a few meals you go out to a restaurant. The restaurant owners know everyone is eating out more so why not raise prices and maximize shareholder profit as always. The restaurant/corporation is on TV saying, “well, demand increased and it is a simple Economic principle that prices had to increase. There’s nothing we can do about it”.
Your state/country has toll roads. The state needs money for its deficit. UBI is implemented and the state/country sees it as the perfect time to incrementally raise toll prices.
Next thing you know UBI is effectively gone because everything costs more and billionaires keep hitting higher and higher all time net worth records.
You’d increase taxes along with UBI, so most middle class people would end up neutral (or slightly positive). You can’t just dump tons of money into the economy without turning other dials to keep it stable.
A wealth tax would essentially be redirecting money from the top 1% and guarantee a stable monetary floor for everyone.
Probably there’s a dozen other changes, along with bankruptcy protections, interest rates, and anti scam protection would also need to be implemented.
You identified an obvious problem, which has been considered by intelligent UBI advocates that have studied this for a long time.
I think this is kind of the big problem with the messaging. I know plenty of economists say it would work, but it’s non-intuitive to most of us.
Do people understand that rent and other necessity prices are skyrocketing right now without income increasing? They are not intertwined in the way the myth of raising rent to match UBI is presented.
Rents are skyrocketing because demand is high and we literally do not have enough housing for the number of people we have in the places they live.
Suddenly dumping more money into the economy would just increase the price bar on that demand, and prices would go up more.
Prices can increase for a lot of reasons, and going up from one doesn’t stop them from going up from another.
This seems like it’s the only way it would work.
Everyone gets a certain amount a month.
You get taxed a certain amount back depending how much you make above some threshold. The average wage could be good.
So now the high earners are funding the system. But if they get sick and can’t work the tax goes away but they’re still getting that base payment automatically.
Low earners get help and high earners get a safety net.
This is the “Negative Income Tax”, popularized by famously conservative Federal Reserve chair Milton Friedman as the approach to community support that best meshed with supply/demand.
That sounds really good for the low-earners, but what incentive is there to become a high-earner in such a system?
What incentivizes growth and development in such an environment?
A negative income tax system has the same incentive as our current bracketed tax system to earn more money: for every dollar you earn, even if a higher percentage gets taken out on that next dollar, you still have more money now.
It just shifts our brackets down so that you get “negatively taxed” - given money - for the lowest brackets of income. But a person making $100k would still be given say $15k for the first $10k of their income, $5k for next $10k, taxed at 9% for the next $10k, 20% the following $10k, so on and so forth - so that every dollar they make still means more money in their pocket, it’s just a percentage less for the additional dollars as they move brackets. Considering that’s already how it works, it seems no incentive changes would arise for high earners.
Firstly the safety net it provides.
Then it all comes down to how much you are taxed back and the threshold. Most high earners wouldn’t notice it. And they would have had the payment until they started earning high.
You or your partner could stay at home with the children, your kids would get money, you can get sick without worrying about money, it helps everyone.
High earners already pay higher taxes. So it’s no different then now.
If your argument against it is “what about selfish rich people” then I would say fuck em.
There’s also a large saving made in managing social benefits, which could result in lower tax overall.
Most people want more than the bare minimum so most people would still work. But everyone being able to afford food and shelter is a good place to start.
I have found that economy experts say that things are counterintuitive more often that any other field. I think at this point I have just accepted that the economy is some black magic that I’ll never understand. So I’m gonna smile, nod, and let the experts do their thing.
Ah yes, economy experts. The ones who can’t solve any single economic problem and who can’t predict a single crisis. Very useful people.
Well, you could blame that on the fact that economy experts don’t have the power to do any of those things. Politicians do.
Economics is just psychology masquerading as a hard science
Public messaging is difficult for economics because of its complex nature. Even when you simplify it, the interconnected nature of seemingly unrelated things and unforseen consequences often escape people. Then there’s the human element which sometimes produces baffling outcomes.
But all that most people think is “Why do I have to pay so much for petrol? That’s bad.”
Yeah, but it’s important to drum up political support.
Unfortunately, yes
Don’t forget price controls (including rent control), strong anti-collusion legislation and strong antitrust.
Like taxes on luxury goods?
This doesn’t answer ops question at all, aside from “I’m sure ubi advocates have thought about this”.
I’d like to see any income above 2k / month get redistributed globally.
Edit: the idea is that this would fund the UBI and get everyone at least something. And for the avg person you’d likely see more than you get now silly.
Where do you live that 24k/yr is a livable wage?
Untaxed maybe?
Huh? Does that mean $2k/month is your cap for what anyone should ever need/want? It just seems incredibly low to me so I’m confused.
People are focusing too much on your number, and too little on your take.
I think that a strong progressive tax works better than just two brackets (no taxation vs. full taxation). Specially when coupled with universal basic income - the idea is to eat the rich, not the slightly less poorer, on those you just nibble.
Radical. I like it. Maybe $4000/month to keep it above the poverty line (so it’s not a such a shock to the system). Lol
UBI will cycle in the bottom of the economy.
When you give a rich person more money they buy assets and increase their wealth, it does not impact their spending activity and has no measurable impact on economic activity.
When you give a middle income person more money they buy something new or pay down debts. Buying something new stimulates economic activity, but paying down debts is really just another wealth transfer to the banks which are owned by rich people.
When you give money to low income people they spend it. They have unmet needs and always have something they can spend that money on. That money then generates economic activity.
Increasing economic activity is what all of the interest rate and inflation talk is about. If you get people spending money that generates activity which increases wages, increases income, and decreases wealth inequality.
A good example is during the GFC the Australian government gave low income people $750AUD, about $350USD. The prime minister asked people to spend this money rather than save it. People bought a bunch of things, in the people I knew it was mostly TVs and new clothes, things you can put off for ages but benefit from whenever you buy them. All of this purchasing stimulated the economy, leading to Australia being less impacted than almost any other G7 nation. We recovered very quickly and boomed from there.
If you want a more long term example look at any welfare. If you have extremely poor people they just die. They are underfed, have weak immune systems, and they face imminent death. They can’t access housing so they end up on the street. They have tonnes of inteactions with police and end up in the criminal justice system. They end up having their lives ruined and being purely a drain economically. They suffer.
If you give them enough money to have housing and food they are not going to be as costly to manage. They won’t require policing, they won’t get sick as often, and they will suffer less. Will this increase the competition for the lowest cost housing? Yes, but the answer to that is to build more housing. Even with the impact to housing cost this will not result in 100% of that payment going to landlords. People don’t pay their whole income for rent, they will buy food and other needs first, so if they are faced with too high a rent cost they will remain unhoused but at least tbey will eat.
It’s the same argument behind stimulus checks tbh. You give people money so that they can spend it on necessities and that money goes right back into the economy. Since our economy is based on growth and spending, more people spending money overall helps the economy, not hurts it. In addition, you’re spending less money on solving societal issues. Well fed sheltered people cause less problems.
Stimulus checks caused one of the best stock booms of this decade then immediately we had inflation. I don’t think stimulus checks are a well understood phenomenon
then immediately we had inflation
Gee, I wonder if there was a massive, global event that could have had a big impact on the economy around the same time…
Much bigger than 2 checks to some people… Can’t put my finger on it…
PPP handouts to the corrupt rich?
Noooooo this was a uniquely American phenomenon. We definitely didn’t fare better than comparable countries, and conservatives definitely aren’t forgetting that other countries exist… again.
The biggest driver of inflation was energy prices.
This is different though. If my rent is $2000 a month now, and I get $1000 a month from the government, the landlord can make my rent $3000 a month on renewal. Yes the money is going into the economy but it is enriching the upper class instead of helping the folks that need it.
And you’re still gaining services you didn’t have before. People who couldn’t afford a dentist, for example, now can. You need a whole different set of laws to tackle wealth inequality. We can do both.
And you’re still gaining services you didn’t have before
No, you’re not. In the example they just provided, nothing has fundamentally changed because the money you were given was eaten up by price increases, leaving you exactly where you were before.
Because UBI isn’t like a stimulus check. Stimulus checks are temporary. With UBI, every single buisness, creditor, and landlord knows for a fact everyone’s monthly income just went up across the board, so they know they can safely raise prices without pricing out customers.
That’s the fundamental problem with UBI: it only works if it’s coupled with strong price controls and regulations to prevent price gouging, and can be rapidly adjusted if necessary. Prices can go up overnight, pay raises can be acquired over a pay period, but the UBI payout will not be as flexible.
Look how impossible it was to get the minimum wage raised from $8.
Here in the US, minimum wage is still just $7.25. I don’t think they are going to do anything about it anytime soon. We have a hard enough time rallying people to slow rise of authoritarianism
Minimum wage is $15 in my state, so wtf are you talking about?
Landlords pay taxes on their property. Pay utilities. They dont have “every need met” or they wouldn’t need to charge rent in the first place.
You’re just arguing that the system is too broken fix. Which is even more reason why we should instead of shoving our heads in the sand.
But nah, too haaaaaard. Grrrr. Bad people will keep being bad so no point doing good. Grrrr.
Fucking loser.
Not the same, IMO. Stimulus checks are not for everyone, there are rules, which means that they can’t raise prices universally, because not everyone is getting the money.
I could be wrong but I thought this was also how UBI would be implemented? It would just be a safety net for those without employment?
Edit: I just googled it and I am indeed wrong. What I was thinking of is called a guaranteed minimum income. That makes a bit more sense to me than a UBI, but if it wasn’t apparent I’m obviously not well read on the topics.
Removed by mod
May I advise you to stop calling people daft and then simplifying a complex issue? Or perhaps don’t call other discussers daft at all?
Anyway, the difference is in execution: when only a portion gets the money, corporates can’t take the whole stimulus from you, because not everyone has the same amount of money.
When everyone gets a stimulus, it’s basically free money for corporations. If everyone gets $1000, you can get corporations will find a way to raise their prices by $1000 over a short period of time.
more people spending money overall helps the economy
The idea behind this only works IF more people are spending. If Rent jumps that money goes to the landlord, who may (but probably won’t) spend the extra money, and it doesn’t benefit everyone.
I forget the term, but there’s an idea that talks about how many people/businesses touch money. So if you create a dollar into an economy (you can’t create money with out causing problems but let’s pretend it’s magic) if that money goes into a person’s bank it’s probably a bad thing. If that money goes through 10 people’s hands, you’re getting taxation on it in every place which is a good thing (for the government). Problem is landlords are usually well off (at least well enough to own more than one property). They might not be “mega rich” but they almost certainly will save that money, rather than spend it.
Besides which stimulus checks are a one time payment… not exactly the same as UBI.
If people aren’t living lay heck to paycheck, afraid of where the next meal comes from, they spend more. You forget that this money will first go to the most needing first. Yes their landlord will pocket some of that. But they will have a reliable place to sleep. They will go out and buy food. Their landlord will pay utilities and taxes… It’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than denying those who need it the necessities because “well some people might profit down the line”. Then fix the rental laws. Fix labor laws. It’s not a complete solution, but at least it’s something in the right direction.
And way to miss the point of the analogy by latching on to one trivial difference. “It’s a one time payment” doesn’t change what kind of payment it is and why it’s given. It’s still free money. If you’re gonna be that pedantic, I think your meant to be on Reddit still.
If people aren’t living lay heck to paycheck, afraid of where the next meal comes from
You’re not solving the problem of the UBI being eaten up by what they already have to pay for as everything just gets a bit more pricy.
You have this VERY strange idea of what a landlord is. A landlord’s needs are already met, that’s why he has multiple properties.
… and it’s not a trivial difference. A Stimulus check is NOT UBI, it’s limited in who gets it, and it’s a one time payment, so it’s quickly spent whether on needs or wants, and then it’s gone. UBI is a ongoing payment meaning that the market will adjust to the new money everyone has every month. So you can’t compare the two. well you can but you just look foolish… which you’re doubling down on.
It’s not pedantic to point out that one time payments and continual payments change everything in different ways, but absolutely change the market in different ways… If you think that you might need to go back to school and get a basic economics class.
Landlords only have control over you, because you have to find a place where there are good income sources. If you have an UBI, you have a lot less pressure to move to a city with high-paying jobs.
All of a sudden, you have a bunch of new options. You can move to a rural town. You can move to places with lower average incomes. Hell, you can just buy a lot of land in the middle of nowhere and build a house.
With consumer goods, it’s a bit different, because their prices are less about artificial scarcity and more about production costs. However, as noted in some of the other comments, if you just don’t print money but finance it with taxes, it won’t be that much of an issue.
All of a sudden, you have a bunch of new options. You can move to a rural town. You can move to places with lower average incomes. Hell, you can just buy a lot of land in the middle of nowhere and build a house.
sounds nice but I seriously doubt UBI would be more than $1,000 per month. Enough for groceries and a car payment. NOT enough money to move out of town and buy land and build a house.
Long term, why would it be limited to $1000?
This is honestly an issue about the long term prospects of our species. More and more production is becoming automated, resources owned by a small proportion of the population, and complex work likely going to AIs. This causes a fundamental breakdown of our current system - people working is largely “redundant” in a world of automation; people are less and less of a “resource” and capitalism begins to make less and less sense.
We’re playing with the idea of UBI now, but we’re going to need solutions to this problem. Whoever owns the robots, AIs, land/resources owns everything. Either we let this be concentrated in the hands of an arisocratic class of billionaires, or we rebuild the system and accept capitalism is over. If people can’t “sell” their time through work, then how are people going to live. UBI is not a single solution in itself - it could allow a utopia or it could be a dystopia to that enables more control by those who want to own everything.
I know it all sounds very science-fiction but this is the reality our world is sleep walking into. Instead of coming up with plans to face this, our politicians are unsurprisingly pissing about focusing on nonsense and tinkering at the fringes of the problem at best.
Do you honestly think the government is going to pay every citizen a full living wage to sit around and do nothing for the rest of their lives? Keep dreaming.
“No it’ll be so people can go be artists, and be writers and be…”
There are legit people who believe that.
And it’s not like this money appears magically the government will need to find ways to pay for this, we still haven’t solved that problem but even if we did, we’ll see that 1000 doesn’t change everyone’s situation. Stupid people will still be poor because they spend too much money. The rich will save their money, but the middle class and lower middle won’t change much because ultimately, 1000 dollars will eventually be factored into the new price of everything.
deleted by creator
Land in the middle of nowhere really doesnt cost anything. But Yeah, you couldnt really build a house with all the modern nice things we have learned to expect. More of a small cabin
deleted by creator
You don’t know rural places
deleted by creator
And you cant get a plot of land with a 1000$/mo budget?
How are you going to buy a bunch of land with a small amount of UBI?
I found plots of land for 1-2k$ in the country I’m from. Cost of living is comparable to the US. It’s just literally in the middle of nowhere
That makes more sense then. Still would need a house, but could manage that with planning/tiny home over time.
In your hypothetical, the market just jumping in cost like that creates opportunity for competition in the market. Because everyone who could not establish a biz charging X can get into the game charging between X amd X+Y, undercutting the gougers and driving prices lower over time. Theoretically.
Which is why capitalism only works if it’s paired with strong anti-monopoly regulations.
In the current environment, damn near every good and service is cornered by a small number of companies, sometimes only one. So while all restaurant prices probably won’t go up, all vehicle prices will.
Hell, with this whole “inflation” bullshit we’ve seen that the entire economy is happy to influence public opinion to allow for an orgy of price hiking. Not necessarily in a coordinated way, but not not in a coordinated way.
Egg prices would go up exactly $1000 / mo
Except real estate is limited and a necessity. So you have people bidding on where they want to live. The person with the most money wins.
If my landlord raises my rent to match the UBI I’m getting then I’m going to move to the Apartment down the street that DIDN’T raise their rents because I FINALLY can afford to do that! Or are you saying that Landlords are ILLEGALLY colluding with one another to ensure Rent remains high? If that’s the case why are you bringing up UBI?
Because they actually are illegally colluding. UBI is a proposal to address a lot of stuff, not just rent
“In the absence of knowledge about competitors’ pricing strategies, property managers can only make their best educated guesses and set their prices at optimal positions, usually a bit lower than what offered by competitors—to attract renters in the market,” the lawsuit argues.
The complaint quotes Yardi marketing materials that say landlords who use the service “beat the market by a minimum of 2%” and “gain on average more than 6% net rental income.”
This is a problem, but the claim made in the lawsuit is pretty far from saying that the market might as well not exist and this company is able to arbitrarily choose prices, they’re talking about a slight edge gained by shared information. Supply and demand etc. all still applies.
I compare landlords to gas stations, if one increases the cost of gasoline for 0.20 USD overnight, believe me that the one less than a block away will follow suit in less than 6 hours.
Only if the price is actually increasing. Otherwise you’d just sell cheap petrol and put them out of business
You’d go up at least 10 cents. Still worth it to cross the street, but more profit while it’s available.
Right, but the in order for the other station to not go out of business they have to match. But are incentivised to beat that price by a further 10c to increase the amount of business they get See where I’m going?
If there’s competition, yes.
If there’s scarcity, where the supplier side has more leverage, the math changes. They may well just volunteer to make more profit.
Where I live, the difference of one block is 50 cents over two intervals. One price on this street, 50 cents cheaper a block further, and another 50 cents cheaper another block down. $1 in difference total.
They’re all in business and have been this way for years.
I actually don’t believe you. $1 difference in petrol price and people still go to the expensive one? You’d have to be a moron surely
I’m not telling you where I live, but it’s near an interstate.
I’m not lying and I don’t enjoy the accusation.
You also, after the veiled ad hom, did nothing to address the topic.
Or are you saying that Landlords are ILLEGALLY colluding with one another to ensure Rent remains high?
No… I’m saying that a Landlord can read a paper and know that people have an extra 1000 dollars, so they can raise their rent 330/660/ or real dickbags 1000 dollars since you now have extra money.
One thing nobody ever considers about landlords. . . It costs them a considerable amount of money for their property to be empty. Most of them will accept slightly lower rents to keep the property occupied constantly. This cost avoidance ensures that there are always landlords at below market value, thus keep the higher rents in check.
Most of them will accept slightly lower rents to keep the property occupied constantly.
They might, but Demand is high enough in California they’re still raising rates. Demand doesn’t change because of this. Supply doesn’t change. But the amount of available cash that a rents has will have changed, which means the market will change accordingly.
That doesn’t seem to happen when you raise minimum wage, so probably not. Also, it hasn’t happened in the places that have tried UBI.
Raising the floor doesn’t mean raising all wages.if when raising minimum wage every other wage were increased by the same amount you’d see a very different pattern.
Also, nowhere tried UBI uniformly to every member of the country. The problem with UBI is that testing it with a subset of the population doesn’t have any predictive power because these people individually exist in a society that doesn’t have UBI.
Think about it this way: the lowest amount of money a person needs to survive is your break even point. Ideally, your minimum wage should be a little higher than that so people can save some money for emergencies etc.
For the sake of ease of use let’s make that our unit of value, call it 1L for Life.
So, every person working (ideally) receives at least 1L, if you’re not working you either have savings worth 1L for the span of time you won’t work, or you’ll have to incur debt or other hardships.
Now, if you took absolutely everyone, working or not, and gave them, say, 0.5L for free, this won’t raise the floor, it’ll mean everyone will.amke at least 1.5L if working, 0.5L if not.
This leads to either lowering of wages back to a level where the total is closer to 1L, or the increase of the minimum cost of living to 1.5L, or more likely a mix of the two.
The reason why money is valuable isn’t random, it’s because money is finite and scarce.
The amount everyone has is the null amount whether that is 0 or 100L, because it’s the differential between your income and that null amount that gives it purchasing power.
Look at the effects of the covid stimulus and bailouts on purchasing power, and you’ll see a much closer result to an actual UBI than looking at the european UBI trials which ended up being much closer to randomly giving welfare to people than actual UBI.
No, because having money is power. The more money you have, the more leverage you have, in general. This argument comes up a lot and I think it’s mostly coming from a widespread attitude of learned helplessness about money. Especially a UBI that is funded by some form of redistribution would mean a lasting shift in wealth inequality that could not be undone just because some businesses would like it to be.
In areas that have housing shortages you probably would see a rise in rent as the market of people looking to buy nicer places increases quickly but actually increasing the housing stock in desirable areas takes some time.
I think in the long run it would be a net positive and also would need to be paired with some measure of regulation around arbitrary increases in rent for landlords.
would see a rise in rent as the market of people looking to buy nicer places increases quickly
I think it would rise some, but not enough to absorb the whole UBI, because not everyone is looking to throw all of their money at living in the most fancy place they can, most people I think would prefer to do something else with most of their money. To me at least ‘niceness’ doesn’t matter that much if the living space is functional.
but actually increasing the housing stock in desirable areas takes some time
Also takes political will to overcome protectionist policies preventing new construction and preventing denser housing. My ideal combination of policies would be UBI plus reforms and subsidies to increase the housing supply and intentionally crash the housing market by doing so. As for direct price controls, I don’t think the economy works in a way that it could ever be effective beyond the very short term and a majority of economists tend to agree.
Formally, market efficiency makes this impossible without price fixing.
Practically, UBI does result in mild inflation of consumer prices in most models, but it’s because the market changes shape slightly to meet new consumer demand, as opposed to a blanket price increase of everything.
I’ve been saying this for a while, and that’s why I think a complex problem like this needs a more complex solution than UBI.
Essentially I think successful UBI would need to be something like UBS instead (Universal Basic Support). Instead of only being money it needs to consist of free services. That way it’s harder for third parties to leech it away.
So instead of “Here’s $1000 a month, do whatever you want” it would need to be more like “You can get free healthcare here, free electricity through this company, free food rations from this grocery store.” Then if you want things above UBS you need to have some source of income.
But at that point economy gets lesser stimulation from disposable income, which UBI in part addresses.
deleted by creator
No, because you could choose to spend it elsewhere, and you might not even feel obligated to live at or work at where it’s most expensive anymore. The real problem with UBI are the way speculative investors (meme stocks, crypto, penny stocks, casinos, any gambling addiction, etc) would prey on the vulnerable people, and there’s a lot of ways to handle that but only if there is a will.
But the real reason UBI won’t happen is because getting people to die is much cheaper than paying them to live so they have to pay even more for future generations. UBI can’t happen without proper future planning for entire societies. It works great in the short term and in test cases, as a lot of charitable ideas do until the predators come in.
My understanding is that UBI would benefit the impoverished the most, allowing them to get out of debt, put food on the table, or maybe even put a roof over their head, finally opening the door for them to live a prosperous life. This significant change and opportunity for them outweighs the inflation they may face. Food, water, shelter, and healthcare are a human right and UBI is one way to deliver that, so we should probably commit for that reason alone. With no other changes, worst case scenario, those of us that are better off can begrudgingly cope with the inflation potentially created. But besides the potential price hikes it’s worth mentioning that we will all see a return on investment as a society when our weakest are made stronger.
As for where the money should come from and how to fight the potential inflation so us in the middle class don’t lose the quality of life we’ve become accustomed to, we need to make the ultra wealthy finally pay their fair share, break up monopolies to create competition, and properly punish exploitation.
This is a problem due to monopolies. Any industry that is a monopoly should be nationalized or very heavily regulated.
I don’t know, food production and household goods production is owned by a few big names. It would make sense to regulate them, but not sure how you nationalize something like Proctor and Gamble.
Sorry I misworded it. I meant to say any industry that must be a monopoly/trust, so things that are based on scarce or shared resources. Housing, telecom, energy, etc. Monopolies that don’t need to be monopolies should be broken up into smaller companies.
I find it is a systems-question, not a political-question,
and I think the correct answer is to have a publically-owned portion of any market, be public/not-for-profit, as a means of enforcing honesty/integrity into that market.
IOW, you don’t nationalize every damn thing, because institutional-mentality is every bit as evil as corporatism-psychopathy-machiavellianism, only different in style…
( anyone who isn’t understanding that … hasn’t tried living & working among it, either in Washington DC or in Canada’s Ottawa, or in whatever England’s equiv, the EU’s equiv, etc. )
you instead make certain that a portion of the oil industry is national, a portion of the (whatever) industry is national, etc, and if there is huge discrepancy between the nationalized-portion & the private-portion, then you go in with criminal-investigators, after the C-suites of the corporations used to gaming the country’s economy.
Putting 3 barracuda in the fish-farm-pen, in order to make all the survivors in the pen be fit is a related concept: same principle, different domain.
You put some not-for-profit operation into the functionally-cartel-domains, & you use those “barracuda” to force integrity into those specific domains.
Do it strategically, not just reactively ( comms, transport, energy, food, journalism, etc )
Any UBI system worth it’s salt wouldn’t be providing a flat amount, it should be based on regional cost of living. So if prices all went up, UBI would have to go up as well.
I feel like that is neither universal or basic.
Is it not universal or basic to provide enough to meet the same standard of living wherever you go? If that’s to be the case it cannot be the same everywhere.
Quite the opposite. A UBI will flatten differences in cost of living across different regions.
I don’t know how this answers the question, though.
I’m a landlord in city 1, UBI there is 100/mo. I jack my rental prices by 50.
I’m a landlord in city 2, UBI there is 200/mo. I jack my rental prices by 100.
City 1 responds by raising UBI to 200. Landlords follow suit. City 2 to 300. Landlords to 250.
OP is suggesting that capitalist class just says “uwu, for me?~~~ 👉😍👈”, regardless of the amount or location. OP is suggesting that in practice this is just another slice of pie to be extracted by the capital holders.
I don’t have a fucking clue if it’s true, but I don’t think this response addresses the question asked.
That would be a state of rampant inflation, so the fed would hike interest rates to slow it down.
That would discourage people from spending money (harder to borrow and the interest encourages people to leave their money in savings), which decreases demand and thus prices (loosely speaking).
The most pronounced spending effect that results from hiked interest is on housing. It would drive home ownership even farther out of reach for people who already can’t afford it. Further entrenching the divide between those who own property and those who do not. Further empowering landlords.
I think trying to implement UBI is hard, not because it’s an intrinsically difficult concept, but because what nobody wants to admit is without new legal levers, it will eventually devolve into what pretty much every social net turns into: a subsidy for the rich capitalist class.
Most people who recieve social assistance work, and work AT LEAST full time. Every dollar of social assistance is unpaid fair wages from their employers.
I’m not against UBI AT ALL, but exploitive labour practices and a failure to enforce antitrust laws are why there is even a problem at all.
Or deliver the UBI as a basket of subsidized services and goods.
If, for example, we chose socialized medicine instead of a $5000/year UBI, a landlord can’t very well say “Your rent is going up 30 tablets of lisinopril this month.”
Talk about inflation spiral. lol
There will be some changes in prices, but I don’t think it is going to even out to everyone ending up even.
You’ll probably see some inelastic demand goods increase in cost, but I don’t see that taking up the whole paycheck.
If anything, I think the largest impact will be the unskilled labor market, as the threat of starvation will no longer be as real.
