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.
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.
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.